Dr. Amy Wax is a conservative flamethrower at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is a tenured professor who is now facing sanctions for her perceived racist comments both in and outside the classroom.
Does she use freedom of speech as a coaxer or a cudgel?
To this Penn undergraduate alum, her comments are alarming, if not abhorrent.
I have spent weeks thinking about this column. I have sought the opinions of friends who are attorneys whose intellectual depth I respect. Still, I sit alone on a writer’s island awaiting clarity from my ephemeral muse. It can be a lonely perch.
Dr. Wax, a neurologist as well as a lawyer and professor, undeniably opposes affirmative action. Her chronically inflammatory comments reflect disdain for Blacks who eschew bourgeois values, question the cognitive aptitude of African- American students and criticize Asian students who strive for conformity and vote Democratic.
She aligns herself with White Nationalists. Her public statements bluntly condemn wokeness and a culture that cancels conservative speakers and critics such as this determined Ivy League lightning rod. She virtually dares my alma mater to remove her tenured status. She’s a relentless warrior of free speech, unfettered by condemnation by students and colleagues.
Readers would be unsurprised to learn of my disgust for what strikes me as a pattern of bigoted remarks by a brilliant teacher who exhibits little or no reluctance or contrition to voice hurtful and hostile remarks. While her perspectives mostly happen outside the classroom, she has insulted students inside her academic realm. She decries their sensitivity; I despair of her damning asides.
She seems oblivious to the impact of her comments. In fact, she displays an attitude contemptuous of criticism from students and colleagues.
As I contemplate my position on this columnist’s weekly pedestal, I find myself defending Professor Wax’s right to utter free, though outrageous speech. I cringe more than a little bit at this conclusion. The discomfort experienced by her students is bothersome, if not outright despicable.
But she has the right to claim her niche as a conservative speaker at a university considered liberal. Her tenured status provides unassailable academic freedom. That freedom underscores the basic tenets of an educational institution unaffected by political concerns and constraints.
Amy Wax seeks no pulpit but the one offered at Penn Law. She has no political ambitions. She rejects implicit or explicit censorship. Unfortunately, she and the law school are engaged in a battle royale that produces headlines injurious to a brilliant professor and esteemed law school. The media is providing a public venue for litigation.
The dispute has been roiling the campus since 2017. Regrettably, it has attracted considerable media and academic attention. I suspect that a legal settlement is out of question since freedom of speech has become a national cause celebre. The sides are intractable.
Among friends, classmates and readers, my stance will be unpopular. I will understand their consternation. I still support Dr. Wax’s right to be appalling.
Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. After 44 years in Easton, Howard and his wife, Liz, moved in November 2020 to Annapolis, where they live with Toby, a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who has no regal bearing, just a mellow, enticing disposition.
Robert D Siegfried says
Supporting Dr Wax’s “ right to be appalling” is certainly Mr. Freedlander’s right . However , that is very different than the right to allow Dr.Wax to use the facilities – class rooms and lecture halls of the University of Pennsylvania to spew racism to students with whose education she is entrusted by the University. Intentionally spewing misinformation as an employee on an employer’s property is a cause for termination. It has nothing to do with the question of tenure and nothing to do with “ free speech”. Rather in this situation it is a gross violation of workplace conduct and harassment of others in the workplace .
Her employer- the University of Pennsylvania- has a responsibility to its entire community NOT to the employment contract of Dr Wax when her behavior is a threat to the well being of the community and its members.
Sadly, Freedlander has misconstrued the Wax situation with respect to both Wax’s responsibility as an employee to her workplace and Penn as her employer to assure a safe and proper work environment .
John Fischer says
We all hope you will find a safe place, Mr. Siegfried, where you will not feel harassed or threatened by free speech.
Michael Davis says
I agree. Pre-retirement, I could stand up at every “Hyde Park” in the world and spout my views. But I could not do it as a representative of my organization. This distinction, namely employee vs. individual, is upheld almost everywhere. That is why, at least up to Donald Trump, the military were not allowed to wear their uniforms at political events. While Trump encouraged it, it was still offensive. Under a sane administration, it could result in a service member being discharged.
When Ms. Wax uses her position at the University of Pennsylvania to spread irrationality and hate, they have a moral justification to fire her.
Willard T Engelskirchen says
I agree fully with Mr. Siegfried’s comments. It is one thing to posit positions which are outside the mainstream. It is quite another to insult students and to say that they do not belong in a classroom because of their ethnicity.
Jane C.Murphy says
I agree with Mr. Siegfried. As an attorney who accepted many pro bono cases from the ACLU, I am deeply committed to free speech. But Prof. Wax’s comments, both inside and outside the classroom, are not protected speech. As a parent of a UPenn Law Class of 2021 grad, I am appalled that she had to avoid classes taught by Prof. Wax while she was in law school. Finally, as a former law professor, I do feel sympathy for Prof. Wax’s dean, Ted Ruger. I know how much pressure he faced from students and faculty to sanction Prof. Wax. His decision to do so now reflects his thoughtful and considered balancing of the many competing interests
inherent in this situation and so many like them around the country today.
Alex Sydnes says
Aside from the moral posturing congratulations on finding some degree of sanity.
Dan Watson says
Penn is a strong institution and will be there still, 50 and 100 yrs out, when Wax is forgotten, or a footnote. As to media attention, it’s all news to this inattentive Quaker. Let her speak. Toughen up.
DW
Hugh (Jock) Beebe says
Reading all this I have the thought of being grateful to The Talbot Spy for bringing it to us in unfiltered reality. How fortunate we are have the Spy. Thank you.
Mike McConnel says
I consider myself a “Friend,” Howard! Your stance is consistent with our Constitution. Bravo! No one needs to agree with Ms. Wax and students to not have the right to be made comfortable.
Mike McConnel
Mickey Terrone says
Professor Wax has every right to express her ignorance and bad citizenship by espousing white supremacy/racism to her heart’s delight. She can appear on TV or speak out at KKK rallies daily if she so desires. But she’d be just another deranged, albiet well-educated racist without the platform of U Penn faculty member to give her lofty status. Without that faculty position, the “gravitas” of her words would be significantly diminished to where she could just take over for David Duke.
IMHO, the University should remove her, publicly express its support for free speech, express its position(s) on racism, white supremacy and its commitment to freedom and equal rights for all Americans. I’d argue that Penn would be supporting her right to free speech as a member of some other school faculty. Let the lawsuits follow and the chips fall where they may. Penn has a reputation to maintain as an institution with responsibility for equal opportunity in education. Let’s see what other school may take the opportunity to hire Wax to reflect their educational values.
Its difficult to understand how professing white supremacy and racism in the context of law school can be articulated without advocating for removing or undermining equal rights and full freedom for any minority. That should certainly be grounds for removal from any distinguished university faculty. This goes well beyond appalling. Penn needs to toughen up and give Wax the opportunity for free speech elsewhere.
Mike McConnel says
Justifying the termination of Wax’s tenure on the grounds that her views are a threat and violate standards of workplace conduct would make a mockery of academic freedom. This has been addressed by the Academic Freedom Alliance in a letter dated July 18, 2022 to the President of Penn. See, academicfreedom.org The AFA is a non-partisan, non political organization composed of hundreds of faculty members across the country and dedicated to defending faculty who find their academic freedom under threat.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Rather than name calling, why not discuss that facts at issue regarding Amy’s Wax’s qualification to teach at an American law school. Below is a bio taken from Wikipedia:
“Amy Laura Wax (born Jan 19, 1953)is an American lawyer, neurologist, and academic. She is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. She has often made remarks about non-white people that have been described as white supremacist and racist.
Early life
Wax was born and raised with her two sisters in a Jewish household in Troy, New York, where she attended public schools. Her father worked in the garment industry, and her mother was a teacher and a government administrator in Albany, New York.
Education
Wax attended and graduated from Yale University (B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, summa cum laude, 1975). She then attended Somerville College, Oxford (Marshall Scholar in Physiology and Psychology, 1976).
She next attended both Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1981) and Harvard Law School (first year of law school, 1981). Wax practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in the Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn. She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School (J.D. 1987; Editor of the Columbia Law Review), working part-time to put herself through law school.
Following graduation, Wax clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988. She was admitted to the New York State bar in 1988.
Legal career
Wax first worked in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States of the United States Department of Justice from 1988 to 1994. During her tenure in the Office, she argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She taught at University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 2000.
Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, having joined the law school’s faculty in 2001. She received the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, and the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2015, she received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, making her one of three Penn Law professors to have received the award in 20 years.
Her academic focus is on social welfare law and policy, and the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. Wax authored Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century (2009).
As to her Controversial statements alleged to by white supremacist and racist, those claims can be found in the very same Wikipedia article. Why not discuss her qualifications and alleged racist claims rationally, factually and civilly, rather than smear her with vague generalities and race baiting insults?
Deirdre LaMotte says
And the point is what? The Governor of Florida
has an Ivy League education and is a fascist.
Same with many in the GOP clown show on the Hill.
How does she or their education keep them from being
despicable humans? It doesn’t, that is the point.
Mickey Terrone says
It is important to read some of the racist trash that Prof. Wax espouses as a member of the distinguished University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty. I’ll take this opportunity to shine a light on her atrocious statements for the benefit of Spy readers. This professor now brings an abased, white supremacist plague to her campus and is abusing her privilege of tenure to degrade that institution. At what point does a school act in its own community’s best interests to separate itself from a member who has fallen off the edge of decency and into senility?
From Wikipedia:
2017 and 2019 about African Americans and race
In an August 2017 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer titled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture”, she wrote with San Diego law professor Larry Alexander that since the 1950s, the decline of “bourgeois values” (such as hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and respect for authority) had contributed to social ills such as male labor force participation rates down to Great Depression-era levels, endemic opioid abuse, half of all children being born to single mothers, and many college students lacking basic skills. The authors asserted that “all cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy.”[13][14] She told The Daily Pennsylvanian that “everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans” because of their “superior” mores. In the same interview, Wax strongly emphasized that she did not believe in the superiority of one race over another, but was describing the situation in various countries and cultures.[15]
In a September 2017 podcast interview with Professor Glenn Loury, Wax said: “Take Penn Law School, or some top 10 law school… Here’s a very inconvenient fact… I don’t think I’ve 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 who scored in the top half in my required first-year course,” and said that Penn Law has a racial diversity mandate for its Law Review.[16][17] University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean Theodore Ruger responded, “Black students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process.”[18]
In July 2019, at the Edmund Burke Foundation’s inaugural National Conservatism conference, Wax said, “Embracing… cultural distance nationalism, means in effect taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.”[19]
In 2021, Wax wrote that “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.” She claimed that Asians are ungrateful for the advantages of living in the US and vote disproportionately for the “pernicious” Democratic Party, which she called “mystifying” because the Democratic Party “demands equal outcomes despite clear . . . group differences” and “valorizes blacks.” She cited Enoch Powell while calling for stricter race-based immigration restrictions against Asians.[36][37]
During a January 2022 interview, Wax stated that among her past students “there were some very smart Jews”, but “Ashkenazi Jews are ‘diluting [their] brand like crazy because [they are] intermarrying.'”[38]
In April 2022, Wax said on Tucker Carlson Today that “blacks” and other “non-western” groups harbor “resentment, shame, and envy” against western people for their “outsized achievements and contributions.” Wax then attacked Indian immigrants for criticizing things in the United States when “their country is a shithole” and went on to say that “the role of envy and shame in the way that the Third World regards the First World […] creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind.”[39]
Wax’s syllabus for her seminar “Conservative Political and Legal Thought” that was released in August 2022 included a scheduled speech by white supremacist Jared Taylor the editor of the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance.[38]
From “Inside Higher Ed”: Specifically discussing “Asian elites,” she (Wax) asked, “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?” She defined the “spirit of liberty” as “people who are mistrustful of centralized concentrations of authority who have a kind of ‘don’t tread on me’ attitude … who are nonconformist in good ways.”
By contrast, “Asians tend to be more conformist to whatever the dominant ethos is,” she noted, citing “wokeness” as the prevailing elite ideology.
When (Glenn) Loury posted an email from a listener who took issue with Wax’s characterization of Asian immigrants, she doubled down: “I find Asian support for [Democratic] policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest. We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite.”
“As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration,” she added.
Appearing on TV, she takes opportunities to say derogatory, often generalized, demonstrably inaccurate and overtly bigoted comments. A reasonable person might even guess that she has experienced a breakdown. Clearly, she no longer belongs on a distinguished faculty and likely needs emotional or psychological support.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Micky, Thank you for taking the time and effort to add specific details to your various charges against Professor Amy Waxman. This allows for the start of an intelligent discussion for the benefit of all readers. Given the number and serious nature of your charges, discussion will take me some significant time and space, so I will try to take your comments one paragraph at a time, over a series of posts that may extend over several days.
So as to your 1st paragraph, the actual text of the Philadelphia Inquirer Op-ed was, and I quote:
“Paying the Price for Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture, by Amy Wax (Pennsylvania) & Larry Alexander (San Diego):
Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more raised are by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.
That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime. …
Would the re-embrace of bourgeois norms by the ordinary Americans who have abandoned them significantly reduce society’s pathologies? There is every reason to believe so. Among those who currently follow the old precepts, regardless of their level of education or affluence, the homicide rate is tiny, opioid addiction is rare, and poverty rates are low. Those who live by the simple rules that most people used to accept may not end up rich or hold elite jobs, but their lives will go far better than they do now. All schools and neighborhoods would be much safer and more pleasant. More students from all walks of life would be educated for constructive employment and democratic participation.
But restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture will require the arbiters of culture — the academics, media, and Hollywood — to relinquish multicultural grievance polemics and the preening pretense of defending the downtrodden. Instead of bashing the bourgeois culture, they should return to the 1950s posture of celebrating it.
These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement. Adherence was a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.”
See https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/08/wax-alexander-paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture.html
Mickey Terrone says
Hello Reed. I appeciate the opportunity to engage in a meaningful discussion regarding Prof. Wax’ white supremacist commentary and her relationship with the reality of 2023.
She seems to claim America needs to return to the “basic cultural precepts that reigned from the lase 1940’s to the mid-60’s”. How do the millions of “bypassed” working class whites, who believe they are being replaced, start to return to the 1950’s? Are they not more interested in arming themselves to the teeth with assault weapons to defend themselves against the federal government? Why does this “superior” segment of the American people not qualify for the jobs and careers that foreigners and people of color do qualify?
I remember enough of those days in the 1950’s and early 60’s when many if not most working class white families could survive and prosper with one salary and moms could stay at home. While tangible assets are unequally distributed, financial assets are much more unequal. In 2004, the top 1% controlled 50.3% of the financial assets while the bottom 90% held only 14.4% of the total US financial assets. Large portions of our lower and middle classes live paycheck to paycheck with little or no substantive savings. Prof. Wax doesn’t cover how the bottom 50% of Americans only share 2% of total household wealth while the top 1% hold 35% of that wealth these days. How does she think this will change things?
Don’t these bypassed whites vote for politicians who vote massive tax breaks for the Top 3% of income earners? Don’t they vote against unions and low cost health insurance and increases in the minimum wage?
“Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans”, according to Prof. Wax. Lest ye forget, most predominantly white European countries are predominantly socialist, making education, health care and security safety nets well assured. Prof. Wax says: “the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”. She wonders of Asians “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?”
Reality is that many of Wax’ comments are bizarre, racist generalizations nearly impossible to quantify. She doesn’t explain how the country goes back to the 1950’s so we can make America great again? If she had any idea whatsoever, she’d have explained it. She is a lost soul with mindless racist anger in her heart. Her commentary is abased, indefensible and unworthy of any university’s faculty.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Hello Mickey –
Thank you for your reply. We share many concerns, including these, “While tangible assets are unequally distributed, financial assets are much more unequal. In 2004, the top 1% controlled 50.3% of the financial assets while the bottom 90% held only 14.4% of the total US financial assets. Large portions of our lower and middle classes live paycheck to paycheck with little or no substantive savings.” And I share your determined desire to seriously discuss and address such real problems in these times.
My original intent was to address the Amy Wax’s and Larry Alexander Philadelphia Inquirer Op-ed in ways that might have addressed your concerns with it, before going on to Wax’s troubles.
But now, I have listened to several hours of her interviews and read various articles, and my views as best as I can understand her behavior are formed. Here they are. Her statements are a tragedy, most particularly as to these times we are in, and the problems we face. Her statements, as too often expressed, don’t help to resolve problems, but tend to acerbate them.
But, at a time when we must build trust and understating and good will, we must not allow comments that we or others find offensive or hurtful, to shut down free, open, and meaningful dialogue on all sides. This only hardens all sides into warring camps. This is the very time. we need desperately to do the reverse, to be resilient in the face of offense, to learn to hear all sides, to consider and learn from criticism from all points of view, and to acknowledge our own ignorance, even if it amounts to a kick in our own pants. For, if we are serious, surely we’ve come to know that we are frequently wrong or ignorant in many ways and on many levels, and that often in times of history this has been true most of the time, if our histories are any guide. So, to counter that and reach solutions that bind us and those who hold opposing and/or variant views, we must be constantly open to free expression, and discussion, including to direct criticism from others and learn lessons from them and from our own failures, which all of our histories tell us are often chronic in many ways.
So, for example, for me it is important to note that in the interviews I listened to, taken altogether, Amy Wax managed to give offense to just about every group in the country. And after awhile I was not surprised. I have known many people like Amy Wax, particularly among brilliant people. Indeed, in my experience, it can often be the norm, from Witch like Burnings in Salem to offenses on a far smaller and/or more subtle scale, but pervasive nevertheless. Who can avoid it today, its ALL OVER cable news, social media, newspaper, and our streets.
And in our daily private lives too. For example: My primary mentor in the law and life generally, matched Amy Wax, in brilliance, achievements, and offensive comments, and Hyman Rickover too. I recall that in his preparation for a presentation before the Supreme Court, he explained to me how he’d tailored his oral remarks carefully to suit both the Court’s bright members and its stupid members. His obituary, written by those who loved him, noted how, by the end of his argument, he’d managed to offend his way to 9 to 0 defeat. And, as is typical in these cases, he was a serial offender. Even after he almost single highhandedly changed the world of Modern biblical archeology, a subject he called his hobby. He did it to everyone. Early on he told me, I was only fair to meddling lawyer. Likely he was right. In any case, his comment proved to be a favor. If I exceeded my original talents, it was my effort to prove him wrong. But I never got a retraction from him. Yet he was the key man in my professional and hobby life, and quite loyal too in his own way. This happens all the time in our World. We and it are fallen -full of paradoxes, ironies, and behaviors, including our own, beyond our ability to understand, or even discern, much less fully solve. But we must do our best to deal in the world. And if we do, we might well be surprised at our success.
Take Glenn Loury’s example.
I invite all here interested in this subject to watch very carefully Glenn Loury’s Youtube interview of Amy Wax linked in below. Note carefully how their relationship changed over the years, and over the interview. Glenn is masterful. Note carefully how Amy Wax reacts to his forceful charges. Does she even understand them? I’ve seen those reactions many times before. And often wondered if Autism, even mild Autism, inhabits this neighborhood. And perhaps age too. Or some other part built into aspects of human nature we’ll likely never understand.
“Main signs of autism
1. finding it hard to understand what others are thinking or feeling.
2. Getting very anxious about social situations.
3. finding it hard to make friends or preferring to be on your own.
4. seeming blunt, rude or not interested in others without meaning to.
5. finding it hard to say how you feel.”
How do we get around such perennial problems today, Micky, I will try to get something relevant to this in my next post, using the Wax Op-ed.
SEE YOUTUBE VIDEO FOUND AT – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gJv2BRW7mc
Mickey Terrone says
Hello again, Reed. I’m going to add to my comments regarding Amy Wax and her misleading, precipitous and arbitrary rhetoric designed to deepen the divide among Americans. This false, misleading propagandizing is nothing new.
That type of rhetoric is designed to anger and strike fear into people who see themselves as vulnerable; that is, poor whites who feel bypassed or vulnerable because they have no safety net for their health care or education or fear that their government will come to take away their guns. Wax, et al, fan the flames of abject apocalyptic fear.
The European countries ruled by white Europeans in their bourgeois culture aren’t worried about getting shot. They have virtually zero mass shootings and the populations don’t worry about their socialist governments coming to take away their guns. Why? Because they have virtually no guns and certainly no assault weapons. Americans have 20 million assault rifles.
Some of these fearful, “bypassed” white Americans seem to believe they are “patriots” trying to save America, even as they support the overt attempt to overthrow our electoral system to install a man who lost the election. Somehow, despite the complete lack of evidence, they claim to believe the Big Lie that a man who got clobbered in the 2020 election was robbed. This is the result of the demagoguery of false narratives from the far right.
We need to discuss this, Reed.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Hello Mickey,
Please recall that my next step was to try to take apart and discuss the primary substance and import of the the Amy Wax’s Philadelphia op-ed, namely:
“Paying the Price for Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture, by Amy Wax (Pennsylvania) & Larry Alexander (San Diego):
Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more raised are by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.
That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime. …
Would the re-embrace of bourgeois norms by the ordinary Americans who have abandoned them significantly reduce society’s pathologies? There is every reason to believe so. Among those who currently follow the old precepts, regardless of their level of education or affluence, the homicide rate is tiny, opioid addiction is rare, and poverty rates are low. Those who live by the simple rules that most people used to accept may not end up rich or hold elite jobs, but their lives will go far better than they do now. All schools and neighborhoods would be much safer and more pleasant. More students from all walks of life would be educated for constructive employment and democratic participation.
But restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture will require the arbiters of culture — the academics, media, and Hollywood — to relinquish multicultural grievance polemics and the preening pretense of defending the downtrodden. Instead of bashing the bourgeois culture, they should return to the 1950s posture of celebrating it.
These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement. Adherence was a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.”
End of Op Ed Quote.
Let me first say that I will not defend Amy Wax’s comments outside the text of the Op-ed that you quote, because I do not agree with those comments, and typically strongly disagree with them, and find them at best to be irrelevant to general thrust of Op-ed whick I believes she fails to understand or accurately express, likely because it has been built by others.
In addition, as to what is expressly in the Op-ed, I find objectionable the following:
I have no idea what she means by the words “bourgeois norms by the ordinary Americans”, whether they be “in the 1940 to 1960” or at any other time. Nor do I agree on any era of America’s past having “hegemony” enforced on any specific group over our future. Hence to I find ridiculous the idea that we are going back to the 194Os to 1960″ or any other era per any special groups’ mandate.
BUT
This is not to say that we cannot learn from those times, or any times, and honor what worked then, and morn what what we’d loss to our great detriment and what we should resurrect and encourage if we can so as to rebuild the enormous loss of our human capital, our citizens, most especially our children. But “race” should have nothing to do with achieving these goals, as in reality race is a fiction. And the idea that particular cultures, or their elements, or behaviors, are specific to a “race”, or enforceable by one “race” upon another “race”, I find repulsive in the extreme.
So where am I coming from? If asked to name three polestars, as starting points, they would be:
1/ The works of Thomas Sowell generally, as to summations particular to this Op-ed, see Black Rednecks and White liberals, 2008, and Discrimination and Disparities, Enlarged edition, March 5, 2019.
2/ Becoming Human, a theory of ontogeny, Jan., 2019, by Michael Tomasello.
Becoming Human looks at those things that make us unique and how they are constructed and/or lost during the first seven years of a child’s life. Book identifies eight pathways that are necessary to built humanity into each individual human child: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity.
3/ E. B. Hersh, The Knowledge Deficit, 2007,
“An important message, eloquently expressed.” –Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works “If we did what E.D. Hirsch said, and made sure that all students, regardless of race, income, or neighborhood, were exposed to a rich, challenging, sequenced curriculum in important subjects, schools could make a much bigger difference than they already do.” –Ed McElroy, president, American Federation of Teachers
I will be back to this post.