Friday, September 15, 2023

Amy Wax, academic freedom and Penn, once again

As I've noted before (also here), most of Penn's case against Amy Wax involves trying to punish her for her lawful extramural speech, and is thus a flagrant violation of the University's contractual commitment to her academic freedom. 

But the student newspaper now reports that Professor Wax has once again invited Jared Taylor--an actual white supremacist, with no scholarly or intellectual merit--to speak in her class on conservative political and legal thought.   Whether this invitation is protected by academic freedom depends on whether scholarly experts in conservative political and legal thought would deem this an appropriate invitation (I very much doubt they would).  Academic freedom, recall, imposes significant limits on classroom conduct and choices, namely, those that are imposed by the standards of the discipline in question.  You can't invite a geocentric crank to lecture in your astronomy class, and it's arguable you can't invite a racist crank to lecture in any class, even one on "conservative political and legal thought."  Here Penn may be within its rights to act.

 

 

https://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2023/09/amy-wax-academic-freedom-and-penn-once-again.html

Faculty News, Of Academic Interest, Professional Advice | Permalink