andure to join us july 21 22 when we will feature our journey to alaska. watch lascaux weekend on c-span, c-span.org, or listen on the c-span radio app. ♪ announcer: this week, university of pennsylvania law professor amy wax. professor wax talks about free speech on university campuses in the united states. ♪ brian: amy wax: before i ask you questions about why we asked you to come here, i want to go through your background.

where are you from? amy: i was born and raised in troy, new york, in a small city near albany in upset new york. my parents are both deceased now but were part of a very cohesive jewish community up there of fairly devout people, conservative and modern orthodox jews in that area. the tri-city area. my father worked in the garment industry. he eventually bought a small business, a factory up there and worked very hard his whole life to support his family, my two sisters and me. my mother was a teacher for a while and an administrator in the government in albany. i kind of come from the middle bourgeoisie, people who are not very well-connected or in any way, i think, privileged. so i regard myself kind of as a

working-class girl, certainly as a yeoman class girl. i attended public schools in troy, new york. i went to college at yale college in the early 1970's, which was when yale was just beginning to accept women. i majored in physics and biochemistry. i then went to oxford on a marshall scholarship to study philosophy. i attended harvard medical school. i did a year of harvard law school and really -- law seemed attractive to me so i decided to continue to pursue it. i ended up at the justice department under the reagan and bush administration and the office of the solicitor general, which handles all of the united states business before the supreme court of the united states, a very exciting place to

be, a really wonderful shop in the justice department. i then started teaching law at the university of virginia law school. after about seven years, i moved to the university of pennsylvania law school. i have been an appellate practitioner. i have worked in medicine. and i have been an academic, a legal academic. brian: go back to what you said about being part of the bourgeoisie. what does that word meaning? amy: i had reason to think hard about what that word means. part of the reason i have become infamous, in my small way, is i published an op-ed about so-called bourgeois values. my understanding of bourgeois values is a set of presets or or habits or

guidelines that middle-class people in the west, especially in the anglo sphere, have developed as an ethos and set of practices which is suited to democratic capitalism. one can make a list of the bourgeois virtues and values. i feel that my family was very self-consciously invested in those values. they were adherents, i guess you would say, including being hard-working, being law-abiding, trustworthiness, frugality, honesty, punctuality, restraint, prudence, all of these good things that make for flourishing within a particular context, which is ours. brian: when you talk about your parents, where did they come from or your family? amy: they came from eastern europe.

they were immigrants during the first part of the 20th century, part of that wave of jewish immigration from russia and eastern europe. brian: but as someone with a lot of education, when did you get originally interested in learning? amy: i can't remember a time when i was not interested in learning. my parents were not super well-educated. my mother did eventually get a college degree. my father worked for an associate degree at night. they did not start out their life terribly well-educated. but they clearly revered learning and a certain kind of intellectual rigor and honesty, a searching approach to the truth, to empiricism, to facts and arguments and logic. that was their modus operandi, the way they approach the world.

and also irreverence for all the reverance for all the high achievements of civilization in art and music and literature. so i recall very distinctly that attitude being imparted to me and in all sorts of ways, big and small. brian: when you went to yale, what did you study in undergrad? amy: i majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, an interdisciplinary major. but i also studied philosophy, literature, history. i consciously and deliberately familiarized myself with the western ken. i guess you could say my

heritage, my tradition. one of my favorite courses in college was victorian poetry, which was really so much more than victorian poetry. i mentioned to a friend of mine, an englishman and quite literate, a poem by alfred lord tennyson called "marianna" and he had never heard of it and said i'd "out-tennysoned" him. i wanted to know what they great knowledge was. what the great ideas and besidesents were getting just a great education.

brian: at the end of yale, what did you do? amy: i studied at oxford, a new undergraduate program that had been launched called ppp. i did another undergraduate course, and all of this was by way of trying to decide whether i should continue on in science or go in another direction, perhaps philosophy. i did decide to go on to medicine, although that is not what i ended up doing at the end of the day. i guess you could say i drifted off into another area. really by way of the justice department. brian: did you get your medical degree? amy: i did. neurology. brian: so you could have been in neurology? neurologist.

amy: that was an option. brian: when did you give that up and why? amy: that was a long time ago. it is hard for me to reconstruct exactly why. i think the main reason is that i was temperamentally not terribly well-suited for the practice of medicine. you know, what you learn when you start in one field and and up in another is that the reasons why one feel this suitable to you and others may not be can often be a rather humble reason, like just your personality or that kind of person that you are, what floats him your boat, what you look forward to when you wake up in the morning, your temperament. i was not really a people person. i was more of an idea person, which doesn't mean that i don't enjoy people. but i don't think i get the kind of pleasure and satisfaction from helping people that maybe we associate with the female

persona -- that is a hoary cliche because there are many men who are that way and many women who are not. so i found that law was more compelling and satisfying for me. it is interesting because it helps me advise young people that i have done both things, young people who are trying to decide, often grappling with decisions about which direction they should go in. in many cases, it is under parental pressure. there is familial and parental pressure to enter one field rather than the other, something that i, myself, felt when i was younger. so i am entirely sympathetic to what they are going through and i try to help them make the decision by asking some very simple questions about themselves, and what they like, what they enjoy, moment by moment, day by day, hour by hour. and every field involves its tedium.

every field has its aggravations, irritations. which irritations you find the least irritating? and what compensation do you find more compensating? i think 20, 21-year-olds are not always equipped to make those decisions. brian: so you got your medical degree from? amy: harvard. brian: did you ever practice? amy: i did a residency in neurology. when i decided to return to law school, i faced the challenge of paying my tuition.

by then this period of exploding tuition started to take off. you are probably aware that the cost of higher education has increased dramatically. so it was already in the 1980's and i had to work part time to put myself through law school. so i had to work in clinics in the south bronx and in brooklyn, hmo's actually. some of the fledgling hmo's to help put myself through columbia law school. brian: so your degree in law is from columbia. amy: yes. brian: what was your experience like working for professor meckler. amy: he is a terrific person, a great judge.

he was very nice to his clerks, the highest intellectual caliber. my co-clerks were also wonderful. thoroughly enjoyed that experience. i don't think he and i saw eye to eye politically. although, at that point in my life, that was back in the 1980's, i wasn't particularly politically aware. i didn't think about politics all that much. and i think the general atmosphere was far less polarized than it is now. so judges and clerks didn't really have to match up. there was no feeling that clerks had to be an the same page or have the same ideas. the notion was that law was this autonomous field that should be depoliticized as much as

possible. and that was the right way to do it. so we got along just fine. i enjoyed that experience. that was the year that bork was nominated and was going through his hearing. little-known fact that bork, who was on the d.c. circuit at the time, and bork was still hearing cases, they were very close friends. they had gone to law school together at chicago. so bork was frequently in the office. consulting about the whole

ordeal. we were not privy to these conversations, but it was striking that they clearly were very close friends and robert bork trusted him. his wisdom, his acumen, and his advice. brian: how did you get your job in the solicitor general's office under -- which president? amy: reagan. charles friede was the solicitor general at the time. i had lucked into a summer internship at the solicitor's office while i was at columbia law school. i had a visiting professor from chicago who is rather famous and prolific. i had taken a couple of courses with him. in he had said to me, it's clear that you love to argue. he said, you should really think about doing an internship at the justice department at the solicitor general's office. the solicitor general is the master litigator for the united states government and everybody

in the office is devoted to that mission. and i applied and got the job. so i spent a summer there. i got to know charles freed, people in the office, and they asked me to come back on the permanent staff after my clerkship was over. it was quite a challenge because i was very green. i was a newly minted lawyer. i did not have a lot of experience. i did not have any litigation experience. it was a little reckless on charles freed's part. but i learned the ropes. i argued 15 cases before the court during my tenure there. i participated in all the activities. it was the most wonderful, the best years of my life. i can honestly say that.

the people there were really wonderful all-around. they were the smartest people i ever worked with. they were people of very high integrity. the office has a highly collegial atmosphere, like none other. we were all involved in a mutual endeavor, which is to do our very best for the government before the supreme court. the supreme court trusts the solicitor general's office, and the office tries to repay that high trust. and i think that they do. brian: 15 times you argued before the supreme court. do you remember the first time and what was it like? amy: yes, i do. it was quite exhilarating, i think because it is a grand privilege to argue before the supreme court. not very many people get to do it. it was a rather humble case involving a technical question, on social security benefits and

how the government collects and refunds social security benefits, but obviously very, very important to many people because the social security program is enormous. it's massive. a lot of money was involved. what struck me about the experience was that it is a very intimate one. the court room is relatively small. the advocates are right up in front of the bench of nine. one of the challenges is that you are so close that it is hard to see all of the justices at once. you kind of have to turn your head and make sure you are monitoring the situation. and it is a performance. that is another thing you realize. it is a great training ground for any kind of performance the you will ever have to deliver.

and anything in your past life that involved performance is preparation for it. so when i was an adolescent in troy, inigh scol, i was on the piano competition circuit. i was an amateur pianist. certainly not of the highest ranked by good enough to participate in these competitions and occasionally win a competition. i drew on that experience the most, i think, in preparing to argue before the supreme court, because there is this trajectory of focus, of concentration, of preparation, of developing knowledge and expertise, of getting comfortable with what you are about to do that for

is at and forethought common feature in any kind of performance you are preparing for and planning. you are supposed to sound spontaneous, but in fact, if you haven't planned every answer to every question, if you are at all surprised, then you have fallen short in your preparation to argue before the supreme court. brian: how long have you been teaching at the university of pennsylvania? amy: since 2001. it is in philadelphia. west philadelphia. it is a private university in west philadelphia. it is an ivy league school. brian: how many students and how many professors at the law school? amy: students, i don't know the precise number. i think it is on the smaller side for an elite law school. it is something like maybe 700, 600.

that might not be quite accurate. says onhat's what it the wikipedia site. amy: yes. for professors, we have a relatively small faculty. i think we have 50 tenure-track full-time faculty. we have many adjuncts, many people from the community, the law community in philly, which is quite a distinguished one, teaching part-time, various courses at our law school. brian: with that background, let me get to the reason we asked you to come talk. this is march 18, 2018, this year. it is written by heather is with theo manhattan institute. the headline on it is "the penn law school mob scores a victory." "the campus mob has scored a hit. professor amy wax will no longer

be able to teach first law of courses. -- dean announced last week " i'll stop there. what's that about? amy: there is a whole story that leads up to that. i think it began when i published a little, innocuous op-ed. it was in the philadelphia so i regard that, it was titled "paying the price for the countries bush while bourgeoise values."

in it my co-author, larry alexander, and i talked about this bourgeois script that i've mentioned, some basic precepts of behavior, and have the loss of common fealty and adherence to those behaviors as the hallmark of mature dolt would, which we had identified as taking place over the past 30 to 40 years in our country, and the concomitant result in change of behavior we thought inflicted some damage on our country, not being the only thing that happened, but something was -- that was important. effect, that standards of behavior had declined and all of us were paying the price for that in various ways. and some of the behaviors we talked about was respect for law, criminality, which has leveled off to some extent,

although there is the question of whether the figures are accurate, but certainly saw tremendous surge in the 1960's and 1970's. the breakdown of the family that many children in some quarters, most children are born out of wedlock. they are not raised in intact families. that people use profanity quite liberally, that patriotism is out of fashion, that there is an adversarial relationship very often between employers and employees. we sort of made a list of -- we should have added a decline in thrift and frugality, which is quite dramatic. and all of these put together, we have taken a hit from it. brian: you first published it in the philadelphia inquirer. what happened? when did it surface again?

amy: we also said this that ruffled a lot of people, that not all cultures are alike. thisre trying to tout behavior that is suited to our democratic capitalist society and compare it to other cultures which are not as functional. we gave some examples. that immediately caused a firestorm. the very next day, there were protests and petitions. social media contributed so much to this. people were going to my dean and objecting and saying this was a white supremacist talk, racist talk, xenophobic, putting all sorts of labels on it. a group of graduate students issued a statement condemning

me. a bunch of professors at drexel and temple signed a statement asdemning the op-ed injurious, harmful, racist. i did an interview quite unwisely the next day. it added fuel to the fire. it was for the student newspaper. that added fuel to the fire because the interviewer basically accused me of being a white supremacist, saying that whites were superior. i said no and i very naively tried to correct him and said that was not at all what i was saying. i was saying that a certain culture that came out of a european heritage, really of anglo heritage, the anglo sphere was our heritage and a higher function of heritage. and the functional superiority of it is measured by the fact that everybody wants to live in europe.

migrants flock to europe, not to venezuela, not to southeast asia. the proof in the pudding is in the eating. we discovered something. we worked something out which works really well. and is came out as europeans are superior because migrants want to go to europe, which is not that far from what i was saying, but many people found extremely offensive in the current climate. as my husband said, you pushed the western sieve button. what i learned is that one is not allowed to praise the achievements of the west. that has become a suspect move

in the intellectual game. that is what people objected to. as far as i can tell. i am not entirely sure because i am not of that mindset. brian: this is back in august of 2017. i'm looking at the daily pennsylvanian, there is a dorothy roberts, a sarah barringer gordon, a serena, sophia lee, tobias barrington wolf. who are they? amy: those are my colleagues. there were multiple pieces published and letters and protests published. that is an attempt by for -- four historians on the faculty to write a substantive response to our piece. i did not object to that piece. i did not agree with it at all. i thought the argument was transparent really fallacious. but praising bourgeois in the

1950's, which was the high water mark of it, in our country, they objected to that. as far as i could reproduce their argument, their argument was "you can't praise the 1950's because the 1950's were a time of patriarchy, racism, sexism, mistreatment of minorities, terrible things happened during the 1950's, discrimination was rampant, and ergo there was nothing good about it." i consider that a complete non sequitur. they seem to be making an argument that the only reason the 1950's were good for the people it was good for was because they mistreated all these other people, which is a very strange argument to make. if we stop mistreating people, these other people, which is a very strange argument to make.'? i don't know what they were

trying to get at. brian: let me read what they said, some of what they said. amy: ok, well, as a factual depiction of the 1950's, that is accurate. we actually said in our op-ed there were detriments, there were flaws in that period, which have since been corrected. but what they seem to be saying, which i disagree with, is that those were core in the sense that the bourgeois virtues and the ability and willingness to practice bourgeois virtues were dependent on keeping all of

these people down. and that is a very odd argument and i don't agree with it. the virtues of the period and the vices of the period were not inextricably linked in the way that that piece suggests. it is entirely possible, in my mind, to revive and practice some of the virtuous behaviors and cycles that we associate with the 1950's without attaching to it the kind of discrimination, inequality, and bigotry that the period also exemplified. you can point to an example. let's take an example. just in the area of family breakdown, right? the upper middle class today, whites, asians mainly, because minorities have always had

weaker families, they, in effect, have 1950's-type family patterns. they talk the 1960's, but they live the 1950's. they are married at a very young age. their marriages in do our. children grow up in traditionally two-parent families. they are highly traditional in the way they conduct their family lives relative to the rest of society. they are this little bastion of the 1950's. they marry later and after a period of sexual experimentation. that is a changed from the 1950's. but they also believe in diversity and inclusion. they abhor bigotry.

they are onboard with the abolition of all sorts of nefarious discrimination and sexism that we have effectuated both culturally and legally. that is an example of being able to have it both ways. i think this op-ed is saying you can't have it both ways. why not? brian: after the university of pennsylvania and newspaper published the stories, when did it hit "the wall street journal"? amy: i wrote an op-ed for them a couple months after this initially unfolded. it spread like wildfire. a lot of people wrote about it. there were a lot of comments. there was a very critical event, which was something of a watershed, which was that 33 of my colleagues at penn law signed a letter, also in the newspaper, "the daily pennsylvanian," condemning and categorically rejecting all of my claims and statements, condemning everything that i had said, i guess, in this op-ed and

subsequently, categorically rejecting everything that i said. no argument, no reasons given, boldan outright condemnation and categorical rejection. -- 33?33 question 33. no argument, no reasons given, no logic to it, just under out bald condemnation and categorical rejection. 33. and it was instigated by one person in particular. and i really reacted to that very negatively. i thought this was a fundamental betrayal of academic values. and i don't use the term free speech because i think that is the wrong term. it is the wrong term for a number of reasons. first of all, the free speech rights that we all value so much do not apply against private institutions. people forget that. public institutions have to

adhere to a free speech code. private institutions can fire you for whatever they want. we have this implement at will. technically, i have no free-speech rights. i have tenure. that is something different. and they have the free-speech right to categorically reject all my claims. and the students have the right to call me a racist and a sexist and a xenophobe and a white supremacist. this is not a matter of rights. brian: what happened on a personal basis? what was it like in the hallways of penn law school for you? amy: i think -- first of all, the 33 people who signed it didn't necessarily treat me in a friendly way. what is striking is that none of them came to talk to me about why they signed it.

and after it was released, it was released with very little notice to me. it was all done in secrecy. there was not any forthrightness about it. in fact, it was formulated and circulated in a way that was designed to keep me from knowing about it. that in itself is telling. and after it was published, one person came to explain to me why he signed it. it became immediately apparent that he did not really categorically reject all my claims. he didn't really disagree with every darn thing that we had said in the op-ed. i mean, how could they? you know? if they raise their own children this way, i mean, the hypocrisy here is stunning. the inconsistency here is incredible. one person came said what you

said was sort of nazi talk. these are crude rationales for signing a condemnation. brian: what about the professor you ran into after the summer and you asked "what kind of a summer did you have?" -- if you could tell that story. amy: after this condemnation and a number of conversations, the few i had with people on the faculty that were very hostile, very negative towards what i had written, i decided that i would write a piece for "the wall street journal." i initially gave it as an invited speech to hillsdale college. they have a center here. i recounted my experience and why i thought people had behaved inappropriately in an academic setting, given what the academy is supposed to stand for and how they are supposed to conduct themselves.

this whole saga fell far short of that standard. and someone who read that piece sent it to "the wall street journal" and said you should publish this because it is a very down-to-earth, blow-by-blow particularized account of what is going on all around the country, the kinds of responses, unorthodox, what is considered a deviation from the progressive catechism, the dogma, the politically correct mind, what kind of response it elicits these days more and more. so i wrote this piece for "the wall street journal" in which i recounted my experiences around this op-ed and some of the stories i told, the few conversations i had with my colleagues. one involved going up to a colleague in the street the summer immediately after i published this, two weeks later, and greeting him and him giving

me a hostile look and saying, "well, actually, my summer has been terrible." and i said "why?" and he said, "because of you, because of your op-ed and what you wrote, which i consider an attack on our school, an attack on our students." so this language of attack, of harm, damage. that by expressing an opinion that people don't like, you have inflicted an injury. i found that very striking and frankly rather frightening, if the truth be told, and quite emblematic in the way the left is now responding to any sort of dissent, and especially one that trenches on identity grievance

politics, which of course is everywhere and has infected everything. brian: go back to the dean. what kind of power does the dean have? amy: his response to the op-ed was to immediately announce through his spokesperson that my opinions were not endorsed by the law school, which should be understood. and also, he saw fit to publish his own op-ed, saying i rejected "i reject the positions culture is better than others," which is

unresponsive to what we said and a distortion of what we said. that has been the hallmark of this entire saga, selective quotations, distortion, restatement, dishonesty of that sort. but in terms of his power, he has the power to assign courses to me and control what i teach and my schedule and the like. he has a fair amount of power to control my professional life. what he does not have the power to do is fire me entirely because i have tenure. and according to the rules of the professional organization that we are a member of, i guess the american university professors society, the association of american law schools, and all of these, i have to continue to be employed and i have to continue to be paid my salary, at least my base salary. and the only grounds on which i can be fired, i think, are professional misconduct, egregious professional misconduct, or various forms of criminal behavior. brian: so what did he do? how did he level a penalty on you? amy: well, in the immediate

aftermath of my initial article, he resisted many calls to both strip me of first year mandatory classes and fire me as a general matter. i think the reason why mandatory classes became a pressure point is that students are assigned to a particular professor in the first year of law school. there is a fixed curriculum of courses that students have to take. they are basically told what they have to take and who will be teaching it. so that is an exception to the rule in academia that students get to pick what they want to take and the like. obviously, there are requirements as undergraduates as well, but a lot more leeway in deciding who your teacher will be. so the students thought "we should not be required to sit in this woman's classroom." students shouldn't have to be taught by her because she is

clearly a racist and it is harmful, it is uncomfortable, it is damaging -- once again, that language, subjective, emotional harm, trauma, this language that all the students have learned to use, all the psychologizing, pedagogy -- that is damaging to us. so, a lot of pressure to take me out of the first year. they initially resisted that pressure, i think in part because i am a good civil procedure professor. i'm one of three professors in the university that got something called the limbach prize a couple of years back. i get very high ratings as of professor. maybe that was part of the motivation, i don't know. but there was a denouement that

the students, especially the black students association, really set their face against me. they went on a trolling operation to look back through my entire record to find something that would get me removed or fired. and what they found was this five minutes of an interview i had with glenn lowry. brian: let's watch it. this is 48 seconds. this is september 10. "fireable is my offense" rate here. brian: glenn lowry runs this blog he has tv show. you are at penn? amy: and i was on it several times. brian: people can watch any of these. let's just watch these 48 seconds. [video clip] amy: here is a very inconvenient fact. i don't think i have ever seen a black student graduate in the

top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half. i can think of one or two students in the top half in my required first year course. what are we supposed to do about that? you're putting in front of this person a real uphill battle. and if they were better matched, it might be a better environment for them. that's the mismatch hypothesis, of course. we are not saying they shouldn't go to college. maybe some of them shouldn't. [end video clip]

brian: what do you mean by "better match"? amy: i mean that their incoming credentials, law school admission test score, and gpa, that is college grade average, which are the main parameters and criteria that admissions officers use for law school admissions, and law school admissions is highly quantitative or has been until very recently, the minority students, the underrepresented minority students at top law schools, let's say the top 10, their numbers are significantly lower than the numbers of other students who get admitted and come to the law school. there is a gap. brian: when you grade somebody in your law class, do you know -- in the old days, there used to be blue books. the professor would not ever know who they are. amy: no, in the first year, the far, we have by blind grading.

the students are assigned a number. they write the number on their exam or their blue book. and i give an objective exam. if i asked multiple-choice or shorter questions, i so that the same distribution. that was a pretty good test of knowledge, how much the student had studied, how much learned. i have no idea who i am assigning a particular grade to when i assign it. i give it to the registrar. she registers the grade. and then she unblinds the list. i find out after-the-fact who got what grade. at that point, i cannot change the grade. the reason they are unblinded for us, the professors, because we are in the position of recommending to organizations that are hiring these people how they did in our class. we have to write recommendations. and if we request it -- but we

have to request it -- we are even given the rank in class. there are some judges, the most elite and sought-after, who want to know where the students rank in the class. brian: and the school does not publish the grades or the ranking of any of the students in penn law school? amy: they have become increasingly secretive about the grades. when i was in harvard law school in ancient times, the grades were posted. the rank in class was open information. the law review was determined strictly by rank and class. our grades were not confidential or they were not considered such. there was not an open effort to disclose them. but people thought nothing of imparting that information.

brian: we need to get glen lowery's response to you in that interview. [video clip] >> do you have a racial diversity mandate? for long review appointments at penn? amy: yes. brian: so you're saying that students of color are at the bottom? amy: i haven't done the survey. i have not done a systematic study. i'm talking about -- i have a class of about 89 students every year. so i see a big chunk of students every year. i'm going on that. a lot of this is a closely guarded secret, as you can imagine. [end video clip] brian: what is a solution to what you are talking about?

amy: first, you have to decide there is a problem. brian: does anybody think there is a problem? amy: one of the distortions that has come out of this tiny clip, which is completely taken out of context, is the conclusion that i am completely adamantly and totally against affirmative action and that i have some kind of crusade going about that. i don't. my attitude towards affirmative-action, like any good small school conservative is, it has pros and cons, it has costs, it has benefits. we are not going to bring about utopia because every benefit, every upside has a downside. my view is, if we are going to have this kind of social engineering, which is what it is, if we are going to have this policy, we should at least be honest about it and evalutate it on the facts.

it used to be that, when people discussed affirmative-action and thought about it, whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, they were pretty forthright about the facts. now they have doubled down and tripled down and decided that even discussing the facts, the actual questions of disparities of academic achievement going in and the resulting academic achievement that comes out of it, performance beyond school for affirmative action admits, that all of the subjects are verboten to even talk about them is racist. so that involves you in this bizarre -- we have gotten ourselves into the situation of denial as a

test of moral virtue. this involves us in some bizarre contradictions. i've been talking about this around the country. on the one hand, every good person believes in affirmative-action. if you are against affirmative action for underperforming minorities, and we know who we are talking about here, we are about blacks, to some extent hispanics, because asians don't need affirmative-action, indians need affirmative action because they are doing well. in many cases, they are doing better than the white population. we are talking about underperforming minorities. you have to be for affirmative action. but if you get down to discussing why we need affirmative action, which is blacks and hispanics lag behind in test scores, in academic knowledge and academic performance, even mentioning that is dangerous because that is considered an insult to students, a denigration, putting

them down, an attack, which i consider bizarre. it's not an attack. it's a report. and then, to talk about once they get to a very competitive institution, how did they do, is their performance catching up or does it continue to lag behind, does the myth of affirmative-action, which is once you get there, everything is fine, is it a myth or does it actually occur, is their magic dirt for these institutions where we just bring people in and all of the deficits are erased? you certainly can't talk about that. it's weird that the dean says, on the one hand, everything she is saying is false. everything i'm saying is false? i have a whole filing cabinet of my grades in civil procedure for 20 years, and i will sit here

and tell you what i said about the performance of black students in my class for the past 20 years is not false. all right? i don't know about the rest of the school. as i admitted, i am not privy to this information because it is kept secret. but on the other hand, he says, we don't keep records by race. we don't even have this information so he cannot possibly disclose it. brian: do you believe it? amy: there is a contradiction and no one has called them on a contradiction. that?on't believe brian: what is it you believe they know? amy: i believe they could easily

compile that information. i don't know when i am returning. the dean has not communicated with me since he told me that he was stripping me of my first year teaching responsibilities. i have become persona non grata. brian: why do you stay there? amy: i have a very good job. they pay me very well. the other reason i stay, you know, i get to write and think and i have a lot of projects underway right now. and there is a core of students who i think i am very important to. brian: do you expect any student to boycott your classes in the fall? amy: yes. i think that is definitely going to occur. on the other hand, i teach a seminar in conservative and legal thought, for which there was a waiting list this year. there are students at penn law who are hungry for a broader exposure to a range of ideas, which are more and more systematically excluded from the

elite academy. brian: of the 50 full-time professors at the law school, how many of them are conservative? amy: at this point, well, "conservative" is a rather buggy -- muzzy concept. brian: how many are right of center? amy: maybe 4, 3 or four. i don't want to speak for the dean, but i would say that many people on the faculty think that purging the faculty of people who don't subscribe to hardline progressive ideas, except maybe in the economics sphere, where they are willing to tolerate more range of opinion, that purging a lot of so-called

right-wing ideas is a great thing, because those ideas are errant. they are wrong. and they are morally suspect. not only are they false, but they are immoral. this is a new era that we have now. opinion has become moralized. and dissent is a kind of insult or an assault or an attack. so we have a new rhetorical universe in which moralization and the language of harm has become the leverage of discourse and ideas. brian: amy wax is a professor of law at the university of pennsylvania. in also has a medical degree

neurology. and all we have talked about today is on google. we thank you for joining us. amy: well, thank you. ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] announcer: next week, syndicated columnist mona charen talks about her book. announcer: next, live, your calls and comments on washington

journal. then, the final day of the supreme court term as it releases decisions on the docket. at 12 noon, the u.s. house begins the week with legislative speeches. >> this week, the c-span bus travel to juneau, alaska, as part of our 50 capitals tour with the help of our cable partner gci. us july 21 and 22 when we will feature our visit to alaska. weekend" ona c-span, c-span.org, or the c-span radio app.

>> this weekend and washington at 8:00 a.m. and later, todd harrison from the institute for strategic studies speaks about donald trump's proposal for a space force as a new u.s. branch. host: this is an opinion day at the supreme court with six opinions yet to be announced at the court finishes its session. some of the court's decisions not only will determine the fate of president trump's travel ban, but also the future of public sector unions. in the house this week, questions on if a compromise immigration bill will be passed and even if such a bill could get support from republicans in the senate. there are reports as of this morning that a bill only looking at family reunification could be the bill that gets voted upon. and so many reactions to white house press secretary sarah sanders being asked to leave the premises of a