Ivy League School Tried to Buy Mistreated Professor’s Silence

Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon reports embarrassing news for a prominent Ivy League school.

The University of Pennsylvania tried to cut a deal with Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who endured years of disciplinary proceedings over her controversial remarks. The school offered to water down the sanctions against her if she agreed to stop discussing—and criticizing—her treatment at the hands of the university. She refused.

So Penn announced Tuesday that it was suspending Wax for a year at half pay and stripping her of an endowed chair. The sanctions, which also include a permanent loss of summer pay, were immediately condemned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which framed them as a precedent-setting blow to academic freedom.

“After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook,” the group wrote in a statement. “Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn’s willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor.”

But behind closed doors, the school was prepared to let Wax pay a much lower price—provided she keep her mouth shut about the two-and-a-half-year-long case that made Penn a pariah among academic freedom advocates and compounded the fallout of anti-Israel protests on campus.

The quid pro quo was outlined in a draft settlement agreement presented to Wax in August and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. That agreement—the product of months of negotiations between Penn and its embattled gadfly—would have let Wax keep her base salary during the course of her suspension and thrown in a one-time payment of $50,000, partially offsetting the loss in summer pay.

In return, Wax would agree “not to disparage the University” over the two-year-long process to which it subjected her. She would also waive her right to sue Penn or disclose the evidence she had presented in internal hearings to clear her name, including testimony from former students who called into question the charges against her.

Wax refused to sign the non-disparagement clause, she told the Free Beacon.

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