Professor punished for Racial Opinions

I previously posted that U Penn was trying to fire one of its prominent professors, Amy Wax, and not it has announced its punishment:

A controversial law professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose alleged “racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic” comments repeatedly landed her in hot water was publicly reprimanded and suspended for a year—with only half-pay—after years of fighting.

Amy Wax, a tenured professor at Penn’s Carey School of Law, was sanctioned for her controversial comments on race after a lengthy review process that took over two years.

Wax has now become the first tenured professor at the Ivy League university to face sanctions in about 20 years, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. ...

Wax’s comments about race began to draw criticism after she co-authored an op-ed published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017. In a later interview that same year, Wax said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half.” ...

In his final report, Rodriguez found that “Professor Wax has made a number of comments in class and a few outside of class which could reasonably be viewed as derogatory and harmful,” but also ultimately found that there was no evidence of discrimination against any individual student.

So they could not find that she said anything incorrect, or that she failed in her teaching duties in any way. Her main offense was to reveal an inconvenient fact.

My guess is that Penn would have fired her, but lawyers advised that it would lose a big lawsuit. Maybe with this lesser punishment, it will not be worthwhile for her to sue.