Letter represented ‘unsupported condemnation of a colleague,’ professor claims
A law professor at an Ivy League university who recently wrote a controversial op-ed is firing back at some of her critics, claiming that their criticism of her is “pointless, divisive, and destructive of dissent.”
Amy Wax, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of a recent column that celebrated the “bourgeois culture” of midcentury America, released a letter to the school’s newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, claiming that an “open letter” published in The Daily several weeks ago and critical of her column, suffers from a “total lack of any explanation or justification.”
That letter, written by “33 Penn law faculty members,” declared that the signatories “categorically reject[ed] Wax’s claims” on 1950s American culture, but offered no explanation as to why.
“The message is clear,” Wax wrote: “no explanation or argument is needed. It’s all simply beyond the pale…[W]hat kind of message does that send to students? That reasons are not necessary. Just condemn, just denounce!”
Students, Wax writes, will “learn that unpopular dissent gets called out by public condemnation – without any stated reasons at all.”
Wax continues:
If I were the Dean of our law school, I would ask the signatories of the DP letter to write a retraction. Actually, I would have done my utmost to persuade law professor Professor Jonah Gelbach, the zealous instigator of the letter (and, in my view, a bully pure and simple) not to publish such a letter of unsupported condemnation of a colleague, and one that contained nefarious insinuations of “bias” and “stereotyping.” To me, those steps would be leadership, and the leadership we need. That is the leadership we are lacking in academic institutions today.
“The…open letter,” Wax claims, “clearly conveys to those who take unpopular positions that there is a price to be paid, in the form of unsupported public condemnation, and potentially even more of a price if they don’t have tenure.”
Read Wax’s full statement here.
IMAGE: Youtube
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