11/8 Webinar: Academic Freedom and “Professional Norms”: The Amy Wax Affair and Freedom of Thought in Higher Education
A Freedom of Thought Webinar
Friday, November 8, 2024
11 AM – 12:30 PM ET
Earlier this fall, the University of Pennsylvania’s law school announced several disciplinary sanctions against tenured Professor Amy Wax. Among other things, she would be stripped of her named chair, denied summer pay, and required to disclose, when speaking at public events, that she speaks for herself and not as a member of the law school faculty. The administration argued that the sanctions are consistent with the school’s commitment to academic freedom and that Professor Wax was not being punished for views she expressed, but for violating “behavioral professional norms” and creating a “hostile learning atmosphere.”
The Amy Wax affair is not the only recent controversy involving academic freedom and professional norms, even in the state of Pennsylvania. Penn’s interim president criticized the “reprehensible” antisemitic cartoons of a lecturer at Penn’s Annenberg School of Communication. The lecturer has no tenure protections but continues to teach political cartooning at the school. Meanwhile, a professor at Muhlenberg College was recently fired for re-posting a statement from a Palestinian-American poet on her Instagram account: “Do not cower to Zionists. . . . Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces…”
How should we think about these cases? How easy is it to distinguish concerns for “professional norms” from violations of “academic freedom”? Are there consistent standards at Penn for what constitutes a supportive learning atmosphere? Or for assessing extramural speech? Are university administrators holding faculty to a predictable standard on statements that might cause students to feel uncomfortable or disfavored? How broad should academic freedom be? How might the ABA’s newly adopted Accreditation Standard 208 on academic freedom affect academic freedom and free speech within law schools?
Featuring:
Prof. Stanley Fish, Presidential Scholar in Residence, New College of Florida
Prof. John O. McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Laurie Ellen Moore, University of Pennsylvania law student
Aaron Sibarium, Reporter, Washington Free Beacon
Moderator: Hon. James C. Ho, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
