Amy Wax and William Jacobson Address Campus Antisemitism
On March 24, the Cornell Federalist Society sponsored a panel discussion on “Reforming Academia and Higher Education” featuring Penn Law Professor Amy Wax and Cornell Clinical Law Professor William A. Jacobson.
A YouTube recording of the event was posted
Prof. Wax was notably suspended from her teaching duties by the Dean of the Carey Law School at the University of Pennsylvania for drawing student complaints regarding a published op-ed and in-class remarks about controversial topics such as race or national origin. Prof. Wax challenged the suspension, and her case is still before the courts. Prof Jacobson, in 2020, made comments critical of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, which drew a letter to the Cornell Sun from other clinical professors. Although the Dean of the Cornell Law School did not undermine his job security, he did face pressure to tone down his public remarks. Rather than speaking to their own cases, both law professors were asked to address the broader problems of reforming higher education.
Prof. Amy Wax Presentation
Prof. Wax would summarize the problem with Higher Education as involving “capture” by the far left. Faction associated with wokeness. Prof. Wax would define “woke” as the belief that the world can be divided into the “oppressor” and the “oppressed.” The white, Western world is the oppressor, and the third world is the oppressed. Further, the goal of education is to pursue social justice, to rectify “this terrible situation.” Woke assumes that any disparities between groups must be due to discrimination.
Survey data show that higher education has moved further and further to the left, and there are fewer middle-of-the-road or conservative people within academia. Higher education at both private and public universities is “self-perpetuating, closed systems.”
Prof. Wax claims there is a “cult of diversity, which has become a sacred item of faith, without proving its bona fides.” “The values of free expression, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry have taken quite a hit from the woke capture of higher education.” Wokeness entails that “not all ideas are worth hearing.”
According to Prof. Wax, the purpose of higher education is “the search for truth, creating new knowledge, and preserving what is worth preserving in our culture and civilization.” Under this framework, woke ideology has three problems. 1) “Woke ideology is full of falsehoods and fairy tales.” 2) Fragility has been redefined. “The concept of ‘harm’ has become subjectivized and psychologized.” The left has expanded harm (and the permissible scope of government intervention) through Civil Rights and the concepts of harassment and trauma. “I have been sanctioned by my own university because my ideas are so offensive and upsetting that students can’t be in the same room as me.” America’s whole First Amendment jurisprudence rejects that – that is called a “heckler’s veto.” 3) “feminization – the university is more and more female.” Women tend to prioritize inclusion and making everyone comfortable. “What I call the values of the nursery and the kindergarten.” The feminization also results in the “moralization of disagreements.” Some woke people view the loyal opposition as “evil” because they disagree with you.
Academic freedom was redefined to allow the woke professoriate to have the right to determine which ideas are worth airing instead of allowing debate and research to select the ideas that can prevail.
K-12 education also suffers from capture from the left. The left is sexualizing primary education. School teachers are far to the left of the typical parents.
Prof. William Jacobson’s Presentation
Prof. Jacobson asked, “Why is it that the one place that should be most open in societies, the universities, is in fact the most closed? Why is it that the Universities almost alone have speech codes?” “Why have universities become the least free place in the United States when they should be the most free place?” It is most certainly true that higher education at the elite level has been captured by one political viewpoint.
The Cornell Daily Sun looked up the political donations of faculty members and found that they were overwhelmingly to Democrats. This creates a bubble between the university and taxpayers who pay the university’s bills. The Harvard Crimson conducted a faculty survey and found that on 3% of respondents identify as conservatives, but 38% of the general population identify as conservatives.
So, the universities have done themselves a disservice by building a monoculture. This model has failed and must change. But universities cannot reform themselves, because there is no internal opposition left. Therefore, you have President Trump come in with his Executive Orders.
Jacobson concluded by noting that the problem with DEI is that it forces people to be judged as members of a group.
Audience Q & A
The first question observed that Prof. Wax is in a position of great power and influence. Why should she find it necessary to make remarks that denigrate or dehumanize people who do not look like her? Why does Prof. Wax feel that this is in pursuit of the truth? Prof. Wax disputes that she is a person of great power. She also challenges the claim that she has “denigrated or dehumanized” anyone. Academics must make observations and comparisons. One cannot analyze reality and seek the truth without “saying negative things about some aspects of the world.”
The second question was whether universities should refrain from accepting federal aid. Prof. Wax said that it would help if universities would stop feeding at the trough of the federal government. But that does not solve the problem of the lefty capture of academia.
The third question is whether universities lean left due to self-selection. Prof. Wax agrees that self-selection can be one factor. That does not explain why 50-60 years ago things were much more evened out. Prof. Wax believes that the Trump Administration could leverage federal funding for higher education to demand the hiring of a more viewpoint-diverse faculty. Critics would then claim that such a condition would be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The government can ask a university to advance a purpose that is germane to the purpose of the funding. For example, the federal government could condition funding upon a required course in British History.
As an extreme proposal, Prof. Wax speculated as to what would happen if a state passed a law banning anyone with an advanced degree in Education from teaching in the state.
The next question asked whether college admissions should be based on standardized tests or subjective essays. Prof. Wax favors objective criteria because they are less manipulable. Private universities can run admissions as they please. “The equal protection clause does not incorporate the SATs.”
The next question asked about race-based affirmative action, and Prof. Jacobson said that the questioner was assuming that skin color correlates with specific viewpoints. Prof. Wax says we should look under the hood and judge the ideas rather than look at the identity groups advocating for the ideas. Prof. Wax will never say that ethnicity does not matter, but that does not mean that there should be proportional representation.
The final question asked whether Prof. Wax saw any cause for optimism and what she would advise people who sympathize with her views. Her advice is to find a community of like-minded people. Prof. Wax’s optimism is based on the communities on the Internet that are truth-seeking. There are fact-oriented people on the internet discussing the issues that you cannot discuss on college campuses.
