On September 16, 2019, students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School hosted a town hall with law school dean Theodore Ruger to discuss the "issues" surrounding Amy Wax.

A tenured professor at the law school, Wax had sparked outrage earlier that year when she argued, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, that the United States should favor immigrants from countries with similar values to its own. Since those nations "remain mostly white for now," Wax said, her approach implied that "our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites"—even though, she stipulated, the policy "doesn't rely on race at all."

In audio of the town hall obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Ruger told students that Wax's comments were "racist" and had caused "harm." He also suggested they could be grounds to fire her: It "sucks" that Wax "still works here," Ruger said, adding that the "only way to get rid of a tenured professor" is a "process" that is "gonna take months."

The town hall set the stage for a protracted battle over academic freedom. Since January 2022, Penn has been trying to sanction Wax—potentially by revoking her tenure and dismissing her—for statements the law school alleges violate its anti-discrimination policies. The case is testing the argument, aired by one of Wax's colleagues, that a professor's academic views can be so "offensive" that they "undercut" her ability to teach students and provide a "good case for termination."

Wax's views are undeniably controversial. She said in a 2017 interview that black law students "rarely" finish in the top half of their class. She has argued that black poverty is self-inflicted and, in the context of immigration policy, expressed a preference for "fewer Asians," citing their "indifference to liberty" and "overwhelming" support for Democrats. She even invited Jared Taylor, a self-described "white identity" advocate, to speak to her class on conservative thought, saying his views were "well within the subject matter of the course."

But tenure is intended to protect provocative speech. It came about in the 1920s after many professors were fired for endorsing then-controversial ideas like evolution, atheism, and free love. Robust job security meant academics could speak and teach freely about charged subjects, even if doing so was considered blasphemous.

That's why Wax's case has raised alarm about the future of academic freedom and the power of tenure to protect it. Unlike Princeton University's Joshua Katz, whom the school sacked ostensibly over his consensual relationship with a former student, Wax is under the microscope only for what she's said. Her dismissal would set a new precedent, signaling that tenured professors can be booted for airing views that students or administrators deem offensive.

"This is a game-changer, because it's a pure case of speech," Wax told the Free Beacon. "If they succeed in punishing me for that, it will eviscerate academic freedom as we know it."

Faculty across the political spectrum echo that warning. Wax's defenders include the conservative Princeton professor Robert George and the liberal Harvard Law professor Janet Halley, both of whom say Penn is playing with fire. "Statements on issues of law and public policy"—and the act of "inviting a controversial speaker" to class—are "unquestionably protected by academic freedom," Halley wrote in July on behalf of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit that defends faculty speech rights.

George, who cofounded the alliance, said that punishing Wax for either would have a chilling effect. "The message to faculty and students alike will be clear," he said. "You had better not defy the campus orthodoxies, because if you do, the consequences could be severe."

The law school has maintained the case is about fairness rather than free speech. Ruger told Penn's faculty Senate in June that Wax's comments had led "reasonable students" to conclude that she would grade them "based on their race"—despite the law school's blind grading policy—and implied she had sabotaged the job prospects of minority students. She therefore deserved "major sanctions," a term defined by Penn's faculty handbook to include suspension and termination.

With that statement, Ruger triggered a disciplinary process that has been used just a handful of times in the university's history: The last time Penn axed a tenured faculty member, it was because he killed his wife.

This report—based on emails, memos, and recorded meetings—provides a window into Penn's efforts to oust its most controversial professor. It sheds light on tactics that, if successful, are likely to be employed against other tenured dissidents, including the concealment of evidence and the use of surreptitious probes. Penn, for example, ignored the results of an outside investigation that found "no evidence" Wax had treated students unfairly—then launched a second investigation, without disclosing it to Wax, and kept the results of both probes secret for months.

The opacity has alarmed the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, another free speech watchdog defending Wax, which told the Free Beacon that it would compound the case's chilling effect. "Anything less than total transparency," said Alex Morey, the group's director of campus advocacy, "sends the message that administrators will find a way to punish controversial academics at any cost."

Ruger, the dean of the law school, did not respond to a request for comment.

Penn's crusade against Wax is something of an about-face for the university, which as recently as 2015 awarded her its top teaching prize. But Wax, who holds Ivy League degrees in law, biophysics, and neuroscience, has always been an intellectual bomb-thrower: Her most explosive position may be that racial disparities have more to do with group differences in IQ than with racism, a belief she has defended in books, law review articles, and popular essays,

That view set the stage for an official complaint against Wax, filed in April 2021 by eight law school alumni, alleging that her "derogatory remarks" had harmed students. The complaint seized on her 2017 statement that black students rarely finish in the top half of their class, which, it said, had caused minority students to "reasonably assume" she had violated the school's anonymous grading policy.

Rather than adjudicate the complaint internally, Penn asked Daniel Rodriguez, a professor and former dean at Northwestern University law school, to serve as an outside investigator and determine whether there was any merit to the complaint. In August 2021, Rodriguez presented Penn general counsel Wendy White with a 45-page summary of his findings, based on interviews with 26 alumni.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by the Free Beacon, found that the most serious charges against Wax were baseless. There was "no evidence"