Golkin Hall, University of Pennsylvania Law School. Courtesy photo.

The dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School on Tuesday condemned as racist comments made last week by controversial professor Amy Wax, but he did not say she will be pulled from the classroom as a result—a move hundreds of outraged students and alumni have demanded.

Still, Wax won't be teaching during the upcoming year, according to law school spokesman Steve Barnes. She will be taking a planned sabbatical instead. Barnes declined to comment on whether Wax will still teach once her sabbatical is over.

Amy Wax.

Wax spoke last week on an immigration panel at the National Conservatism Conference. A July 17 article in Vox described Wax as “explicitly advocating” an immigration policy that favors people from Western countries over those from non-Western countries. Wax was quoted as saying America “will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites,” and defending that position by saying that the preference is based on culture and not race.

Following an outcry among students and other critics, Wax said she was misquoted in the Vox article and that other media outlets had amplified the error. But the law school reviewed several media sources and concluded that the essence of what Vox had reported was accurate.

“At best, the reported remarks espouse a bigoted theory of white cultural and ethnic supremacy; at worst, they are racist,” Dean Ted Ruger wrote in a message to the law school community. “Under any framing, such views are repugnant to the core values and institutional practices of both Penn Law and the University of Pennsylvania.”

Wax did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Ruger's condemnation of her statements or whether her sabbatical had been previously planned for the upcoming school year.

In the wake of the Vox story, the law school's Latinx Law Students Association drafted a petition calling on the school to remove Wax from teaching, among other changes focused on diversity and inclusion. Several hundred current Penn students and alumni signed it, as did more than 1,500 others. The petition was sponsored or co-sponsored by 10 other Penn Law student organizations, which argued that Wax's latest and previous comments on immigration and affirmative action have made minority students feel unwelcome.

“Throughout her tenure at Penn Law, Professor Wax has continuously antagonized students of color and the Penn community,” the petition reads. “In the two years since Professor Wax disparaged our Black classmates, students of color have continued to feel marginalized, isolated, unsupported, and unprioritized.”

In a statement issued in response to Ruger's message to the law school community, the Latinx Law Students Association—along with five other Penn Law affinity groups and student organizations—said the dean had failed to address their specific demands regarding Wax and diversity on campus.

“While we will always celebrate the hiring of more diverse tenure and tenure-track professors, we know that there are many students who do not agree with Dean Ruger's assessment that Penn has achieved concrete results or structural changes when it comes to creating a more inclusive environment for students of color,” reads the response from the student groups. “In fact, the administration undermines its own efforts to make Penn Law a more diverse and inclusive community by continuing to provide a platform for Professor Wax to spew her baseless views.”

Penn Law is complicit in perpetuating white supremacy as long as Wax remains on the faculty, the students wrote.

Wax's sabbatical plans have landed in the news before. She wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in February of 2018 that claimed Ruger asked her to take a leave of absence in the wake of an earlier controversy about an op-ed she co-authored in 2017 that many viewed as racist—which she framed as an example of ongoing attacks on campus free speech.

Barnes refuted that claim at the time, saying instead that Ruger had a routine discussion about taking a scheduled sabbatical.

“Mentioned in her recent op-ed was a discussion with the dean about the timing of a regularly-accrued sabbatical, a discussion the dean has with many faculty members each year, as every tenured faculty member enjoys a sabbatical benefit, with full pay,” Barnes said.

Wax again found herself at the center of controversy in the spring of 2018, when video surfaced of an earlier interview she had done in which she alleged that black students underperform at Penn Law—part of her argument against affirmative action. “I don't think I've ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely in the top half,” she told interviewer Glenn Loury, an economics professor at Brown University.

Ruger refuted Wax's claim that black students don't succeed at the law school and she was removed from teaching required first-year courses—an action students demanded after both the 2017 op-ed and after her affirmative action comments. Ruger said Wax had violated confidentiality rules surrounding grades.

In his statement Tuesday, Ruger wrote that attracting diverse students, faculty and staff is the school's highest priority and that he appreciates the engagement of students and alumni on the matter. He added that he understands the “pain and outrage” that many feel regarding Wax's comments.

“My colleagues and I pledge to work with you so that together we can heal, and learn from this experience and each other,” Ruger wrote. “That students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds are flourishing at this school and in their subsequent careers is an unassailable rebuke to those who question their full participation in our academic enterprise and our nation.”