Prof Wax's gofundme links to a 0714 Daily Pennsylvanian article which mentions broad generalizations she made on Tucker Carlson's show like "Blacks feel resentment at the accomplishments of Western Civilization". I appreciate that Glenn made a point of saying that he doesn't agree with Prof. Wax about everything, but I am wondering why some offensive public statements she has made, which are not backed by scholarship, were not discussed on the podcast.
Thank you for the excellent interview. Also thank you for lowering the subscription cost during this period of inflation- allowed me to continue subscribing.
To date, the first 2:05 of this vid is the most convincing phrasing of why heterodoxy on our campuses is so important. A sense of humor is indicated to let some air out of the ball in our current climate. Note this is from seven years ago and censorship has only become more entrenched.
Obviously from the message here, I disagree w many of Amy's ideas on race.
My husband has tenure and though I've raised a lot of money for Heterodox Academy, I constantly remind him to mind his p's and q's lest we lose our house.
Thank-you again for your tremendous courage and integrity. My solution is to have every non-POC identify and register as a POC and every man to self identify as a woman. That way we will all be POC females. Since there is no unambiguous definitions out there, no one can reject it. If you can’t beat them; join them and get that full ride, job offer and promotion. Much love guys. <3
Red Tails had nothing to do with Affirmative Action and one reason they were successful is precisely because they hadn’t developed their skills based on Affirmative Action handouts.
Thank you for speaking out. It sounds like you've paid a tough price. Putting that aside for a moment. I suspect that if you were a white male they would have kicked you out by now. Keep fighting, you have a lot of people who believe in you and your cause.
Loury really went out on a limb for this one, backing Wax unequivocally and calling her a “friend,” despite his repulsion for some of her propositions. He will get tons of flak from the usual suspects and maybe some fresh ones besides. So it was stunning to hear Wax tossed off a mild “thanks” in Loury’s direction at the end of it all. She needn’t scratch Loury’s initials into her bicep to prove her gratitude, but a bit more appreciation certainly is in order. What a sour note on which to end. Can she really be that tone deaf? Never mind.
I have said my piece about Amy Wax being on this show ever again but I am just gritting my teeth here. I am sorry that her family was harassed.
I am receptive to "class-based affirmative action" arguments that many elite universities with a poor record of social mobility are claiming that AA is an instrument of social mobility when for them it is not. But the "contradiction" here is that the universities are claiming they would not have ENOUGH Black students if not for AA and individual students are claiming that any individual Black student got there because of AA when they are not privy to the decisions of the admissions office and that student might have got there absent AA. (G-d forbid that student might be a legacy or a recruited athlete or a poor immigrant story.) The way that I understand the admissions process at super-elite schools (and they have some investment in keeping it mysterious), they could fill their whole class with students with perfect grades and test scores. Every single person who gets in has to have a gimmick. They have to have done something extraordinary. For the people who got in because of AA, being of an underrepresented race is an enhancer to the extraordinary thing that they have already done or helps the admissions office understand why it was extraordinary.
That said, after a whole generation of no AA at the University of California the voters continued it because younger people didn't understand why AA was supposedly necessary. I agree with Wally in the sense that the Black community has learned to take the guarantee of a few people getting out over the enormous task of everyone getting out.
UC is supposedly not considering AA, but in truth, they are doing so, albeit through various euphemistic policies such as 'holistic measures' for admission, removing the SAT, etc so that it becomes harder to pin accountability on the university.
Old wine in a new bottle, to shut up the critics, that's all it is
It’s not that alumni ,fire or even government run by the gop will change the ideology of universities. But it provides dissenters in the colleges allies to prevent suppression of their ideas and writings.
Amy is correct in saying the freedoms of the academic world wouldn't be curtailed if a republican administration were in power. Since this is a topic very dear to Glenn's heart (and John's), it never fails to amaze me why they would repudiate Trump so vehemently then. Very strange.. Trump was totally against the woke mob, cancellation, for school choice, and for section 230, etc which would have weakened the power of both Unions and university admin significantly.
"Amy is correct in saying the freedoms of the academic world wouldn't be curtailed if a republican administration were in power."
Oh, dear. Just as I was about to sign off on this comment section, I saw this, which is so far from the truth that it requires at least one quick corrective comment. Ron DeSantis, Florida's Republican governor, is in the news again precisely for trying to impose speech codes (the "Stop Woke act") on universities - and beyond.
Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is nonpartisan, but is often accused by those on the left of being a right-wing organization) observed that the Stop Woke Act's "provisions about higher education are probably the most clearly unconstitutional legislative threat to academic freedom I’ve seen in my 21 year career."
Ilya Somin, who is associated with for the libertarian Cato Institute and who writes for The Volokh Conspiracy at Reason Magazine, notes that the Stop Woke Act violates the First Amendment.
Seth, if you had soldiered on for a bit longer through this thread, you would have noticed that I conceded the point! Unlike most (il) liberals, I am occasionally capable of spotting the faults in the political party I favor.
Though I might personally think a ban on CRT is a wonderful thing, I could never countenance such an act in reality. Instead, the acceptable alternative would be to support school choice, which gives both parents, teachers and schools the freedom to choose.
No she's not. Progressive chokeholds over campus culture got *more* monolithic during the Trump years, not less; Trump gave the Progressives a convenient enemy to all rally against, and with which to tar their local opposition.
Note that this isn't an argument for dumping Trump; heterodox academics certainly seem to be caught in the left's "heads I win, tails you lose" game. Instead, it's an argument for acknowledging that the American university system, such as it is, is extremely polluted and needs root and branch remediation. With all due respect to the learning communities that Prof. Loury reveres, that's just not what we have anymore. Tax-exempt status for endowments should be attacked. The illusion of "academic freedom" needs to be put out of its misery, and the excesses curtailed using existing civil rights law and/or new legislative enactments.
This need not mean that the U.S. populace go uneducated; there is already significant evidence that the quality of education provided by liberal arts programs has decreased as the proportion of the population attending college has increased. Additionally, the coming decades will see a massive demand for industrial workers as global supply chains break down and industrial production re-shores closer to input production and end-product markets. This will require a vast number of engineers, technicians, foremen, inspectors, accountants, transportation workers, logistics professionals, etc. Technical education institutions to meet this demand can be stood up rapidly, in communities not suffering outbreaks of excessive wokisme, and without the bloated administrative barnacling that liberal arts colleges and universities have accumulated. The cost of this education can be comparatively low, and the time investment required minimal, thus also decreasing the burden on students and limiting the barriers to mid-career reskilling.
You have a point. Academic freedom remained under jeopardy when Trump was President. The universities do seem to be a law unto themselves which operate independent of politics, and I suspect their assured federal funding plus big donor big bucks make them invulnerable. I don't know what the answer is, to make them more accountable. Don't know if it's even possible. Truly tragic.
There have been grand institutions of learning and inquiry which did not conform to the current research university level. There will be again after Harvard has passed from memory.
"I have a dream..." said a man who is becoming less relevant by the day. Racializing society was poison the first time. What sane person thinks the result will be better if different people do the same thing?
It’s as if it’s revenge. This bad thing was done to us so now we’re going to do that bad thing to you. Which of course this will just create an endless cycle of umbrage and vengeance. What happened to “When they go low, we go high”?
Penn Law's case against Professor Wax is laughable when you look carefully at the charges and at what she's actually said and written. I've done a close consideration of some of the "offenses" her Dean believes merit serious sanctions against her: https://alexanderriley.substack.com/p/latest-on-upenn-laws-effort-to-purge
But, as Professor Wax suggests here, they know it doesn't really matter how pathetically weak their case is.
They are cynically relying on the fact that few people will look carefully at the charges, even those who are disposed to dislike this kind of woke DEI overreach. There is a huge contingent of the American public that will just hear the vapid mantra "racism!" and immediately agree with what Penn Law wants to do, and another large contingent of those who are vaguely concerned about the woke revolution but too intellectually lazy and afraid to stand up to it, especially if it's not (at the moment) attacking them personally.
You might want to read this critical assessment of Dean Ruger's bill of indictment against Amy Wax:
https://alexanderriley.substack.com/p/latest-on-upenn-laws-effort-to-purge
Prof Wax's gofundme links to a 0714 Daily Pennsylvanian article which mentions broad generalizations she made on Tucker Carlson's show like "Blacks feel resentment at the accomplishments of Western Civilization". I appreciate that Glenn made a point of saying that he doesn't agree with Prof. Wax about everything, but I am wondering why some offensive public statements she has made, which are not backed by scholarship, were not discussed on the podcast.
Affirmative action is institutionalized racism. Pure and simple.
Thank you for the excellent interview. Also thank you for lowering the subscription cost during this period of inflation- allowed me to continue subscribing.
https://youtu.be/ipwMa5uT5es
To date, the first 2:05 of this vid is the most convincing phrasing of why heterodoxy on our campuses is so important. A sense of humor is indicated to let some air out of the ball in our current climate. Note this is from seven years ago and censorship has only become more entrenched.
Obviously from the message here, I disagree w many of Amy's ideas on race.
My husband has tenure and though I've raised a lot of money for Heterodox Academy, I constantly remind him to mind his p's and q's lest we lose our house.
Thank-you again for your tremendous courage and integrity. My solution is to have every non-POC identify and register as a POC and every man to self identify as a woman. That way we will all be POC females. Since there is no unambiguous definitions out there, no one can reject it. If you can’t beat them; join them and get that full ride, job offer and promotion. Much love guys. <3
If you haven't, read up on the "Red Tails", or - 332d Fighter Group - the Tuskegee Airmen.
They held the unequaled record of Never having lost a bomber they were escorting over Germany during WW2.
As far as I know the Luftwaffe had no Affirmative Action policy.
Red Tails had nothing to do with Affirmative Action and one reason they were successful is precisely because they hadn’t developed their skills based on Affirmative Action handouts.
If you haven't, read up on the "Red Tails", or - 332d Fighter Group - the Tuskegee Airmen.
They held the unequaled record of Never having lost a bomber they were escorting over Germany during WW2.
As far as I know the Luftwaffe had no Affirmative Action policy.
Thank you for speaking out. It sounds like you've paid a tough price. Putting that aside for a moment. I suspect that if you were a white male they would have kicked you out by now. Keep fighting, you have a lot of people who believe in you and your cause.
Forgot to mention, hats off to you Glenn. You give me hope. Your truly a champion of logic and truth.
Loury really went out on a limb for this one, backing Wax unequivocally and calling her a “friend,” despite his repulsion for some of her propositions. He will get tons of flak from the usual suspects and maybe some fresh ones besides. So it was stunning to hear Wax tossed off a mild “thanks” in Loury’s direction at the end of it all. She needn’t scratch Loury’s initials into her bicep to prove her gratitude, but a bit more appreciation certainly is in order. What a sour note on which to end. Can she really be that tone deaf? Never mind.
Amy Wax said that the student was only there because of AA?? That's different.
I have said my piece about Amy Wax being on this show ever again but I am just gritting my teeth here. I am sorry that her family was harassed.
I am receptive to "class-based affirmative action" arguments that many elite universities with a poor record of social mobility are claiming that AA is an instrument of social mobility when for them it is not. But the "contradiction" here is that the universities are claiming they would not have ENOUGH Black students if not for AA and individual students are claiming that any individual Black student got there because of AA when they are not privy to the decisions of the admissions office and that student might have got there absent AA. (G-d forbid that student might be a legacy or a recruited athlete or a poor immigrant story.) The way that I understand the admissions process at super-elite schools (and they have some investment in keeping it mysterious), they could fill their whole class with students with perfect grades and test scores. Every single person who gets in has to have a gimmick. They have to have done something extraordinary. For the people who got in because of AA, being of an underrepresented race is an enhancer to the extraordinary thing that they have already done or helps the admissions office understand why it was extraordinary.
That said, after a whole generation of no AA at the University of California the voters continued it because younger people didn't understand why AA was supposedly necessary. I agree with Wally in the sense that the Black community has learned to take the guarantee of a few people getting out over the enormous task of everyone getting out.
Discrimination based on race and gender is discrimination regardless of the race and gender. You are for discrimination and I am against it.
UC is supposedly not considering AA, but in truth, they are doing so, albeit through various euphemistic policies such as 'holistic measures' for admission, removing the SAT, etc so that it becomes harder to pin accountability on the university.
Old wine in a new bottle, to shut up the critics, that's all it is
I forgot the removing the SAT part. I will accept any change that cannot be gamed by "prestige school or bust" parents.
It’s not that alumni ,fire or even government run by the gop will change the ideology of universities. But it provides dissenters in the colleges allies to prevent suppression of their ideas and writings.
Amy is correct in saying the freedoms of the academic world wouldn't be curtailed if a republican administration were in power. Since this is a topic very dear to Glenn's heart (and John's), it never fails to amaze me why they would repudiate Trump so vehemently then. Very strange.. Trump was totally against the woke mob, cancellation, for school choice, and for section 230, etc which would have weakened the power of both Unions and university admin significantly.
"Amy is correct in saying the freedoms of the academic world wouldn't be curtailed if a republican administration were in power."
Oh, dear. Just as I was about to sign off on this comment section, I saw this, which is so far from the truth that it requires at least one quick corrective comment. Ron DeSantis, Florida's Republican governor, is in the news again precisely for trying to impose speech codes (the "Stop Woke act") on universities - and beyond.
Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is nonpartisan, but is often accused by those on the left of being a right-wing organization) observed that the Stop Woke Act's "provisions about higher education are probably the most clearly unconstitutional legislative threat to academic freedom I’ve seen in my 21 year career."
https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1560368698682183680
Ilya Somin, who is associated with for the libertarian Cato Institute and who writes for The Volokh Conspiracy at Reason Magazine, notes that the Stop Woke Act violates the First Amendment.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/21/federal-court-rules-against-florida-law-banning-woke-workplace-training/?comments=true#comments
I'm afraid academic freedom isn't held in high regard by *either* political party these days.
Seth, if you had soldiered on for a bit longer through this thread, you would have noticed that I conceded the point! Unlike most (il) liberals, I am occasionally capable of spotting the faults in the political party I favor.
Though I might personally think a ban on CRT is a wonderful thing, I could never countenance such an act in reality. Instead, the acceptable alternative would be to support school choice, which gives both parents, teachers and schools the freedom to choose.
No she's not. Progressive chokeholds over campus culture got *more* monolithic during the Trump years, not less; Trump gave the Progressives a convenient enemy to all rally against, and with which to tar their local opposition.
Note that this isn't an argument for dumping Trump; heterodox academics certainly seem to be caught in the left's "heads I win, tails you lose" game. Instead, it's an argument for acknowledging that the American university system, such as it is, is extremely polluted and needs root and branch remediation. With all due respect to the learning communities that Prof. Loury reveres, that's just not what we have anymore. Tax-exempt status for endowments should be attacked. The illusion of "academic freedom" needs to be put out of its misery, and the excesses curtailed using existing civil rights law and/or new legislative enactments.
This need not mean that the U.S. populace go uneducated; there is already significant evidence that the quality of education provided by liberal arts programs has decreased as the proportion of the population attending college has increased. Additionally, the coming decades will see a massive demand for industrial workers as global supply chains break down and industrial production re-shores closer to input production and end-product markets. This will require a vast number of engineers, technicians, foremen, inspectors, accountants, transportation workers, logistics professionals, etc. Technical education institutions to meet this demand can be stood up rapidly, in communities not suffering outbreaks of excessive wokisme, and without the bloated administrative barnacling that liberal arts colleges and universities have accumulated. The cost of this education can be comparatively low, and the time investment required minimal, thus also decreasing the burden on students and limiting the barriers to mid-career reskilling.
You have a point. Academic freedom remained under jeopardy when Trump was President. The universities do seem to be a law unto themselves which operate independent of politics, and I suspect their assured federal funding plus big donor big bucks make them invulnerable. I don't know what the answer is, to make them more accountable. Don't know if it's even possible. Truly tragic.
There have been grand institutions of learning and inquiry which did not conform to the current research university level. There will be again after Harvard has passed from memory.
"I have a dream..." said a man who is becoming less relevant by the day. Racializing society was poison the first time. What sane person thinks the result will be better if different people do the same thing?
It’s as if it’s revenge. This bad thing was done to us so now we’re going to do that bad thing to you. Which of course this will just create an endless cycle of umbrage and vengeance. What happened to “When they go low, we go high”?
Penn Law's case against Professor Wax is laughable when you look carefully at the charges and at what she's actually said and written. I've done a close consideration of some of the "offenses" her Dean believes merit serious sanctions against her: https://alexanderriley.substack.com/p/latest-on-upenn-laws-effort-to-purge
But, as Professor Wax suggests here, they know it doesn't really matter how pathetically weak their case is.
They are cynically relying on the fact that few people will look carefully at the charges, even those who are disposed to dislike this kind of woke DEI overreach. There is a huge contingent of the American public that will just hear the vapid mantra "racism!" and immediately agree with what Penn Law wants to do, and another large contingent of those who are vaguely concerned about the woke revolution but too intellectually lazy and afraid to stand up to it, especially if it's not (at the moment) attacking them personally.