Supporting Penn Law Professor Amy Wax
Plus Take Back Our Schools episodes on Title IX, racial indoctrination and sex-ed curriculum
I want to share with you the story of Amy Wax, who could use our help. Amy is a tenured law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is one of the very few openly conservative tenured professors in the Ivy League. She is outspoken, courageous, a terrific teacher, and one of the smartest people you will ever meet. She has also become a friend, after she reached out to me to show support after my own Brearley letter went viral, last year.
Recently, the Dean of Penn Law, Ted Ruger, asked the university to impose “major sanctions” on Amy, including stripping her of tenure and her teaching position at Penn. I’ll let Amy speak for herself:
“I am now threatened with losing my job….A sample of Ruger’s most recent accusations, littered with indignant invective and unsubstantiated and distorted claims, can be found linked to this recent Penn newspaper story. https://www.thedp.com/article/2022/07/amy-wax-penn-law-dean-report-major-sanctions-faculty-senate.”
“Penn Law Dean Ruger’s latest steps are part of a longstanding campaign at Penn Law School against me based on my stated positions, opinions, and speech, and despite my stellar performance as an award-winning teacher and academic during my decades-long career as a law professor. Penn’s actions represent an unprecedented and deeply destructive threat to the practice and traditions of free expression on campus and the tenure protections afforded to professors who express unpopular views. They are further evidence of the “woke” takeover of our university system, which seeks to stifle and punish dissent and purge our campuses of any deviation from a narrow set of progressive dogmas.”
Amy is committed to fighting Penn’s effort to silence, punish and fire her, and she has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her legal defense. If you have the means to help her, please consider doing so.
We must support those fighting for intellectual diversity and freedom of expression, both on and off university campuses. So much is at stake.
As always, I want to share with you the last three episodes of the podcast I co-host with Beth Feeley, Take Back Our Schools. We talked about Clarence Thomas and racial indoctrination with Charles Love, Title IX regulations with Bob Eitel, and sex-ed curriculum and parent activism with Erin Phillips. I hope you’ll have a listen and let us know what you think. Take Back Our Schools is available on all major podcast outlets, including Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher.
Race Crazy: Charles Love on Clarence Thomas, Black Progressives and Racial Indoctrination in the Classroom
On this free-flowing episode of Take Back Our Schools, Beth and I speak with author, activist and social commentator, Charles Love. We speak about Charles’s involvement in the recent, “Open Letter Denouncing the Attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas.” Charles shares his views on why black progressives are silent on the racist attacks against Justice Thomas, and what Republicans need to do to engage with the black community and encourage them to join the culture war. Charles also shares his own personal experiences engaging with his young son’s school on issues of racial indoctrination in the classroom.
Charles Love writes frequently on race, politics, current events, and cultural issues and is passionate about solutions rather than partisan bickering. He is the Executive Director of Seeking Educational Excellence (SEE), a non-profit whose mission is to empower disadvantaged students to reach their full potential, and the host of The Charles Love Show on AM560 The Answer, and co-host of the Cut The Bull Podcast. Charles is also a scholar at 1776Unites, contributing writer at City Journal and the author several books. His latest book is Race Crazy: BLM, 1619, and the Progressive Racism Movement.
Title IX: Endangering Women’s Sports and Attacking Free Speech
On this episode of Take Back Our Schools, we speak with Bob Eitel about the Biden administration’s proposed changes to Title IX rules. Bob explains how the Obama administration manipulated Title IX to erode due process in favor of kangaroo courts and secret inquiries. He discusses how the Trump administration under Secretary Betsy DeVos reversed the Obama changes, and how the newly proposed Biden rules not only threaten free speech and academic freedom, but trample parental rights and have the potential to destroy girl’s and women’s sports at the university and K-12 level. Bob also shares his view that Title IX is being used to usher in radical gender ideology and is effectively a backdoor to fundamental cultural change.
Bob Eitel is a co-founder and president of Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI), a non-profit, non-partisan organization that is fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and the influence of government sector unions in education and workforce policy and to defend the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans in the classroom and the workplace. Bob previously served as Senior Counselor to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from 2017 through 2020 where he supervised the implementation of the Secretary’s regulatory agenda and was an architect of the Secretary’s reforms concerning Title IX and the Higher Education Act.
Additional information about the proposed Title IX rules can be found on DFI’s website (https://dfipolicy.org/titleix/). Concerned Americans can submit a comment about Title IX to the Department of Education through either www.dfipolicy.org or https://protecttitle9.org.
Inappropriate Sex Ed Turned Me Into an Activist
In this episode of Take Back Our Schools, Beth and I speak with parent activist, Erin Phillips. We learn how discovering the Sex Ed curriculum in her child’s school turned Erin into a parent activist and led her to start a national organization focusing on parents’ rights. Erin shares her experiences of leading this growing organization and her advice on how to encourage other parents to get involved. We discuss the power of the teachers unions, and Erin’s efforts getting teachers to leave the national unions. We also talk with Erin about the prospects for true education freedom and school choice in the state of Nevada.
Erin Phillips is the co-founder and president of the non-profit organization Power2Parent Union and is spearheading Education Freedom for Nevada PAC. Under her leadership Power2Parent formed as the first parent union in Nevada with more than 10,000 members, and now has chapters in 6 states across the United States. In 2021, Phillips launched a signature-driven effort to create Education Freedom Accounts, to allow parents the freedom to choose the education that best fits their child’s needs. She is a regular guest on talk radio and has represented Power2Parent on local and national news.
I hope you enjoy these episodes of Take Back Our Schools. As always, please share any ideas or suggestions, including for podcast guests. You can contact me through the website: speakupforeducation.org or email me at andrew@speakupforeducation.org. I am also on Twitter @AndrewGutmann.
Amy Wax is a provocateur, and someone who makes people think. I don't always agree with her methods, but I think censoring her does much more harm than letting her speak freely.
It boggles the mind that one of the most basic tenets of education- critical thinking coupled with free speech- is being eliminated at all levels of education. Good for Amy Wax, a truly brilliant, objective, and courageous law professor. My husband and I both contributed to her Go Fund Me page, and I encourage others to do so, too. We must all fight this group think that is sweeping the country and distorting our educational institutions from coast to coast.