Especially for those who plan to go or want to go to UPenn, what are your thoughts on the Amy Wax controversy? Amy Wax used to be a 1L professor who stated that African Americans rarely finish at the top half of her classes. She also made numerous other racist statements in the past as well.
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60 comments
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
This thread is very bothersome. I thought this was a community to uplift and encourage each other.
@ebs1995601 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
Couldn't have said it better. As a woman of color, I find it counterproductive give too much attention to this kind of thing.
But what if it is true? I have no idea because schools don't publish that data. But if GPA and LSAT scores are predictive of law school success, I would assume that the average URM student performs at a lower level than their peers. I don't think that should be ignored. If that's the case, then schools should be proactive in helping disadvantaged students succeed.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/wMvESGxZ0Cqd2/giphy.gif
"It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: (B)lack students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate." - Dean Ted Ruger, University of Pennsylvania Law School
This is why racism should. not. be. tolerated. Because people start to believe non-facts that come out of professor's mouths.
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
UPenn has been officially crossed off my list
I'm not entirely opposed to this and certainly have less warm feelings toward UPenn. But if they couldn't fire her because of tenure, then wouldn't we say UPenn pretty much handled this right?
According to the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), Tenure was never established as a 'guarantee of lifetime employment. Rather, tenure provides that no person continuously retained as a full time faculty member [...] may be dismissed without cause." (https://www.aaup.org/issues/appointments-promotions-discipline/termination-discipline-2004) The keywords here are 'without cause.' And I'm sure we can all agree that racism against minority students is just cause.
There are several examples of professors having their tenure revoked. It is rare but it certainly does happen.
Futhermore, the Dean's comment on Free Speech as an excuse for racism is unacceptable. The Founding Fathers did not create free speech so racists can demoralize an entire group of people.
Free peech no longer becomes free speech when it harms other citizens. As a professor who has control over students grades, futures and well beings, racist thoughts and beliefs should never be tolerated.
How UPenn decided to handle the situation is why it's a no brainer for me to not think twice about putting an application in. There are too many other excellent schools to spend one's time applying to.
@tristandesinor505 said:
I really take issue w all the people here who said “blacks” smh
Cool.
UPenn has been officially crossed off my list
There's a fine line between being conservative and being racist and she crossed that line (more than once) in my opinion with her comments.
@tristandesinor505 said:
This thread is very bothersome. I thought this was a community to uplift and encourage each other.
I agree. Some of the comments made on this thread about African Americans and the suggestion that Wax was correct shocked and disheartened me.
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
...? But that’s not the topic being discussed.
There were those on this thread who were indeed discussing it. The overall post was asking the reaction to the UPenn scandal. I'm not sure why individuals would bring up stats on African Americans specfically during law school and debate whether or not Blacks are smart enough to score in the top of their classes. But again, they should carry on with their debate if they can't help themselves...
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
It certainly seems awful to me that Prof Wax's absurd statement that African American students rarely end up in the top half of their class and never in the top quarter is being treated not as the racist and incorrect lie which it demonstrably is, but as an invitation to try to guess how few African American students end up in the top quarter or half.
The reason Wax was claiming African American students don't succeed in top law schools was not because she was nearly making an important point, but because she needed a pre-text to argue not to accept African American students.
I agree; debating the percentage of african americans at the top of their class somehow became a topic of discussion amongst some on this thread even though the orginal post was not about that at all.
I agree with your plan to attent UPenn if accepted. I think it's a personal decision and you should absolutely attend if it works with your vision.
Now I'm confused. Who said that they'd attend UPenn law if accepted? Didn't @tristandesinor505 state that he (she?) wouldn't attend (the same for Chicago), even with applications out to both? The only claim I saw here is that people (including myself) would judge UPenn holistically and not on the basis of Wax.
As for the modal claim about what blacks "can" do, I wouldn't have even engaged in discussion on here if I interpreted someone as actually floating that claim. Obviously, you're well on your way to bigotry once you start trafficking in such claims (em, as in the general "you"). The idea I took people to be considering was whether, as a matter of fact, blacks haven't done [fill in the blank about academic achievement at UPenn]. That's an empirical claim--one that I seriously doubt when filled in as Wax filled it in, but it may very well be true. I just don't have access to the numbers to say definitively one way or the other (and I doubt that she did either). I just thought it was interesting to think about what one should say if one granted such empirical claims to Wax. It doesn't seem to me that what one should say is anything close to what Wax has said. I'm honestly most surprised that the interviewer (Glenn Loury) seemed to agree almost all of what she put out there.
Thankfully, it had been definitively answered by the Dean of Penn Law though. So there really is no question that many African Americans have placed in the top quarter of the class at Penn Law and many more in the top half. Continuing to act like this is an open question or accepting Wax's premises for the sake of argument doesn't make sense when you know they are false.
Two things. Just because the dean said that in a statement doesn't mean its true. Unfortunately, in today's climate, public statements cannot just be taken on faith, even if they are one's in which one wants to believe.--I happen to believe the dean's statement though, and took up the question from the position of someone who might have been more skeptical of the epistemic value of those comments.
The second point is that the discussion doesn't have to do with Wax, per se. One can imagine circumstances where such comments are made and they have more merit to them as far as empirical support. In such conceivable circumstances, I think that it is important to question any Wax-like conclusions which might be drawn from it. I entertained the hypothetical with that in mind.
First of all, the Dean really couldn't have easilly been lying. Doing so would run the risk of others who know the truth correcting him. The circle of people who know something of the grade distribution at Penn is probably fairly small, but far bigger than it might seem at first glance. Other administrators know. However, so do employers. If there are employers who have interviewed hundereds of people from the top of Penn's class and none of them were Black, they could reveal the Dean if he was lying. He would obviously be hesitant to generate the kind of huge negative publicity such a revealed lie would bring. Additionally, things like the fact that the law review is not selected based on race (Wax claimed it was) and thus that the Black members of Penn's Law Review over the years have probably nearly universally either done very well in Penn or done very well on the write-in competition would be even harder to make up. There are probably at least several if not dozens of different Penn Law students making those decisions about law review members every year who would know if race were a factor being used. Since it isn't and Black students have been on it, we know Black students sometimes do very well at Penn in terms of 1L grades.
Additionally, I do not think that imagining a hypothetical world where Wax is right would do any good. First of all, such a world would need a number of things resolved. The first thing would be how could Black students at Penn end up never making the top quarter of their class and only rarely be making the top half. LSAT scores and GPA could not explain that result because people with low LSAT scores and GPAs compared to their peers regularly end up getting good grades because those two variables combined only explain about 25 percent of the variation in first year grades. The answer to how Black students could be so unlikely to get top grades in your hypothetical would have to be an astonishing degree of racism in grading of exams. But of course since this isn't real it doesn't make sense for anyone to boycott Penn over their endemic racist grading policies. Instead, we should probably stick with a consideration of what to do in response to the actual problem that Penn is employing a racist professor who makes up negative claims about Black students at Penn in order to bolster racist internet trolls arguments that Blacks should be kept out of law schools for their own good.
@tristandesinor505 said:
This thread is very bothersome. I thought this was a community to uplift and encourage each other.
I don't know if anything that has been said is incompatible with these aims. As far as the delicate subject-matter, I take people to have been pretty non-hostile to be honest. I think people were just trying to articulate their respective views about how the Wax scandal affects/should affect law school deliberations (this involved a good deal more than just that question, but that's the way these things go). Were it negative, I probably would have let the discussion be and it probably would have been locked out already (I think 7sage generally does this, no?).
Granted, the discussion is tiresome in a way, given its trigger; but, alas, the dynamics of social media! Luckily most posts on here are about smaller, immediate issues regarding the LSAT and admissions. A saving grace--A.c.S
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
It certainly seems awful to me that Prof Wax's absurd statement that African American students rarely end up in the top half of their class and never in the top quarter is being treated not as the racist and incorrect lie which it demonstrably is, but as an invitation to try to guess how few African American students end up in the top quarter or half.
The reason Wax was claiming African American students don't succeed in top law schools was not because she was nearly making an important point, but because she needed a pre-text to argue not to accept African American students.
I agree; debating the percentage of african americans at the top of their class somehow became a topic of discussion amongst some on this thread even though the orginal post was not about that at all.
I agree with your plan to attent UPenn if accepted. I think it's a personal decision and you should absolutely attend if it works with your vision.
Now I'm confused. Who said that they'd attend UPenn law if accepted? Didn't @tristandesinor505 state that he (she?) wouldn't attend (the same for Chicago), even with applications out to both? The only claim I saw here is that people (including myself) would judge UPenn holistically and not on the basis of Wax.
As for the modal claim about what blacks "can" do, I wouldn't have even engaged in discussion on here if I interpreted someone as actually floating that claim. Obviously, you're well on your way to bigotry once you start trafficking in such claims (em, as in the general "you"). The idea I took people to be considering was whether, as a matter of fact, blacks haven't done [fill in the blank about academic achievement at UPenn]. That's an empirical claim--one that I seriously doubt when filled in as Wax filled it in, but it may very well be true. I just don't have access to the numbers to say definitively one way or the other (and I doubt that she did either). I just thought it was interesting to think about what one should say if one granted such empirical claims to Wax. It doesn't seem to me that what one should say is anything close to what Wax has said. I'm honestly most surprised that the interviewer (Glenn Loury) seemed to agree almost all of what she put out there.
Thankfully, it had been definitively answered by the Dean of Penn Law though. So there really is no question that many African Americans have placed in the top quarter of the class at Penn Law and many more in the top half. Continuing to act like this is an open question or accepting Wax's premises for the sake of argument doesn't make sense when you know they are false.
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
It certainly seems awful to me that Prof Wax's absurd statement that African American students rarely end up in the top half of their class and never in the top quarter is being treated not as the racist and incorrect lie which it demonstrably is, but as an invitation to try to guess how few African American students end up in the top quarter or half.
The reason Wax was claiming African American students don't succeed in top law schools was not because she was nearly making an important point, but because she needed a pre-text to argue not to accept African American students.
@ebs1995601 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
Couldn't have said it better. As a woman of color, I find it counterproductive give too much attention to this kind of thing.
But what if it is true? I have no idea because schools don't publish that data. But if GPA and LSAT scores are predictive of law school success, I would assume that the average URM student performs at a lower level than their peers. I don't think that should be ignored. If that's the case, then schools should be proactive in helping disadvantaged students succeed.
I think the issue here is that it is not true and there is evidence to support that it is false. From what I can tell just by reading this thread, she made an offhand, overgeneralized comment that had no backing to it, which turned out to be wrong, and ultimately revealed what is very likely to be prejudice.
If she had noticed an empirical trend based on statistics, then maybe there would be room to suggest that something bigger was at play here. In that case, she'd almost have a duty to bring it to the attention of her superiors (imo). But, that is a moot point because that doesn't seem to be what happened.
I'm still waiting on a decision from Penn.
However, I think that this incident stands in pretty sharp contrast to the Chicago Burke Society racism because the administration handled it fairly well. They didn't fire her because she is tenured. However, they corrected her faulty reasoning and inaccurate facts. Additionally, they stopped her from teaching mandatory 1L classes. Other professors from the school generally denounced her oped and statements. Finally, though the Federalist Society let her speak to them about efforts to silence dissent, almost all of the questions afterwards(well politely phrased) were critical of either her racist positions or her allegations that she was being unfairly silenced. It is good to know that the pro-free speech students on campus are not largely racist bigots.
She was absolutely wrong about her premises. Penn Law stated that Black students have graduated at the top of the class, been on law review, and that their journals did not have diversity requirements and did have plenty of black students.
Additionally, it seems she likely violated the blind exam grading common to all Top 14 schools. Either she made up that Black students didn't do well in her classes, knew who was who when grading her exams(inviting the possibility that she graded them poorly because they were black), or went back after grading in the hope that she could find out that the black students in her class were doing as poorly as she expected.
Even aside from the racism in her oped, she is pushing a faulty idea about how predictive LSAT scores and LSAC GPA are of performance in law school. LSAT score has a correlation coefficient of about .3 with law school exams and GPA and LSAT together bump that up to just above .5. That leaves lots of room for individual less numerically qualified students to excel in law school(and for those with high numbers to do poorly), though on average they do worse. So since minority students often require lower LSAT scores and GPAs to get into the same law schools as their white peers, it is unreasonable to think that this means that none of them would graduate in the top quarter of their class over years or decades based on those scores and GPAs. The only thing that could cause that would be if the professors were bigots seeking to stop minorities from getting good grades which thankfully does not seem broadly true at Penn.
@ebs1995601 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
What support do you want? He can't just release students' grades without their permission. I guess he could be more specific about top of the class as far as a percentage. But he definitely can't start telling you students names and grades. Are you suggesting that there used to be African Americans in tbe top quarter of the class at Penn, but that there have not been any in the past 11 years? Why would there be a change?
Additionally, it seems to me that the burden of proof should probably be Professor Wax's. She is the one making the statistically absurd claim that for not one but 11 years no African Americans have finished in the top quarter if the class.
I'm confident that on average African Americans likely place lower in the class because they are admitted with lower LSAT scores and GPAs on average which are the best predictors we have of how people will do in law school. The same is true for legacies and people with work experience. However, I think the suggestion that no Aftican American student has placed in the top 25 percent for years strains credibility not just because Professor Wax has a clear racist political motive, but because LSAT and GPA only account for about 25 percent of the total variation in 1L grades at law schools.
Does it violates the privacy of students when statistics about groups are published? I guess a problem could arise when the group is too small. I would have liked the Dean to directly state that the black students were performing at the same level as the rest of the class. If that isn't the case, then I would have liked the Dean to explain what the school is going to do change that.
"Are you suggesting that there used to be African Americans in tbe top quarter of the class at Penn, but that there have not been any in the past 11 years? Why would there be a change? "
The Dean's quote never said anything about the top quarter. I didn't bring up the timeline because I agree with Wax; I brought up the timeline because I think people are erroneously using the Dean's remarks to refute Wax.
"burden of proof should probably be Professor Wax's"
I don't think it's reasonable to expect her to bring the statistics to the table. She was already violating policy by broadly sharing a 'trend'. But I'm going on a tangent. I don't really care about Wax or what she claims. I think the truth is somewhere between Wax and the Dean. Jumping to either side has dangerous implications.
You said the timeline was an issue. Either the timeline is an issue or it's not.
The Dean hasn't said anything remotely controversial. He said Black students have done vwry well at Penn Law. Given that's what we should expect, that some Black students would have done very well at Penn and others would have done poorly as with any other group of people in law school including other groups with lower than average LSAT scores(like those with wotk experience and alumni advantage), he really doesn't need to provide any extraordinary evidence. Given the small number of Black students at Penn Law he definitely would risk identifying someone by giving precise statistics. For an example of this just look at how people tried to find out Obama's grades using the fact that he transferred and his race.
When you make the claim as Wax did that no black students have graduated in the top quarter of the class, you need evidence. Otherwise people rightly realize you are just making up a statistic to try to stop non-white students from being admitted to your school.
Finally the truth isn't between the Dean's somewhat vague, but definitely true statements and Wax's blatant lie.
I would have liked the Dean to fire Wax for making up negative statistics to slander African American students at Penn.
@ebs1995601 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@ebs1995601
"In the email, Ruger explicitly stated that her claims are false.
'[B]lack 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,' the email read. 'And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.'"
http://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/penn-law-dean-ted-ruger-professor-amy-wax-removed-racial-conservative-graduate-upenn-philadelphia
The problems I take with that quote:
'top of class' isn't clearly defined.
The school has been around since 1850. In one of her many qualifiers, Wax narrowed the timeline to 2007-2018. The Dean doesn't specifically talk about that timeline. For that reason, I don't think what the Dean said even contradicts Wax.
The Dean didn't give any numbers. For all we know, a comparatively small number of black students graduate in the top of the class each year.
Besides saying that she was wrong, I don't think the Dean provided any support.
What support do you want? He can't just release students' grades without their permission. I guess he could be more specific about top of the class as far as a percentage. But he definitely can't start telling you students names and grades. Are you suggesting that there used to be African Americans in tbe top quarter of the class at Penn, but that there have not been any in the past 11 years? Why would there be a change?
Additionally, it seems to me that the burden of proof should probably be Professor Wax's. She is the one making the statistically absurd claim that for not one but 11 years no African Americans have finished in the top quarter if the class.
I'm confident that on average African Americans likely place lower in the class because they are admitted with lower LSAT scores and GPAs on average which are the best predictors we have of how people will do in law school. The same is true for legacies and people with work experience. However, I think the suggestion that no Aftican American student has placed in the top 25 percent for years strains credibility not just because Professor Wax has a clear racist political motive, but because LSAT and GPA only account for about 25 percent of the total variation in 1L grades at law schools.
@hildaakua158
Whatever your motives, don't out people. Ask in a message if you have to ask.
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
It certainly seems awful to me that Prof Wax's absurd statement that African American students rarely end up in the top half of their class and never in the top quarter is being treated not as the racist and incorrect lie which it demonstrably is, but as an invitation to try to guess how few African American students end up in the top quarter or half.
The reason Wax was claiming African American students don't succeed in top law schools was not because she was nearly making an important point, but because she needed a pre-text to argue not to accept African American students.
I agree; debating the percentage of african americans at the top of their class somehow became a topic of discussion amongst some on this thread even though the orginal post was not about that at all.
I agree with your plan to attent UPenn if accepted. I think it's a personal decision and you should absolutely attend if it works with your vision.
Now I'm confused. Who said that they'd attend UPenn law if accepted? Didn't @tristandesinor505 state that he (she?) wouldn't attend (the same for Chicago), even with applications out to both? The only claim I saw here is that people (including myself) would judge UPenn holistically and not on the basis of Wax.
As for the modal claim about what blacks "can" do, I wouldn't have even engaged in discussion on here if I interpreted someone as actually floating that claim. Obviously, you're well on your way to bigotry once you start trafficking in such claims (em, as in the general "you"). The idea I took people to be considering was whether, as a matter of fact, blacks haven't done [fill in the blank about academic achievement at UPenn]. That's an empirical claim--one that I seriously doubt when filled in as Wax filled it in, but it may very well be true. I just don't have access to the numbers to say definitively one way or the other (and I doubt that she did either). I just thought it was interesting to think about what one should say if one granted such empirical claims to Wax. It doesn't seem to me that what one should say is anything close to what Wax has said. I'm honestly most surprised that the interviewer (Glenn Loury) seemed to agree almost all of what she put out there.
Thankfully, it had been definitively answered by the Dean of Penn Law though. So there really is no question that many African Americans have placed in the top quarter of the class at Penn Law and many more in the top half. Continuing to act like this is an open question or accepting Wax's premises for the sake of argument doesn't make sense when you know they are false.
Two things. Just because the dean said that in a statement doesn't mean its true. Unfortunately, in today's climate, public statements cannot just be taken on faith, even if they are one's in which one wants to believe.--I happen to believe the dean's statement though, and took up the question from the position of someone who might have been more skeptical of the epistemic value of those comments.
The second point is that the discussion doesn't have to do with Wax, per se. One can imagine circumstances where such comments are made and they have more merit to them as far as empirical support. In such conceivable circumstances, I think that it is important to question any Wax-like conclusions which might be drawn from it. I entertained the hypothetical with that in mind.
@acsimon699 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@ebs1995601 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
Couldn't have said it better. As a woman of color, I find it counterproductive give too much attention to this kind of thing.
But what if it is true? I have no idea because schools don't publish that data. But if GPA and LSAT scores are predictive of law school success, I would assume that the average URM student performs at a lower level than their peers. I don't think that should be ignored. If that's the case, then schools should be proactive in helping disadvantaged students succeed.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/wMvESGxZ0Cqd2/giphy.gif
"It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: (B)lack students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate." - Dean Ted Ruger, University of Pennsylvania Law School
This is why racism should. not. be. tolerated. Because people start to believe non-facts that come out of professor's mouths.
I actually think that the dean’s words were reported in a misleading way—he was saying that both of those claims (of Wax’s) were false. He was not saying that their opposites were false. It seems like you took him to be agreeing with Wax, and if so, I just wanted to say that it looks like it’s just unfortunate (ambiguous) prose.
Also, what if Wax were actually correct in both claims? It doesn’t seem to me that it would somehow warrant her even raising an issue unless she were motivated by more unsavory intentions.—That type of statement gives off the impression that you believe that racial membership has some sort of deep explanatory purchase on accounting for how things are (grade performance and so on). Now that is “racist” in a rather estoteric sense—you believe that race itself explains actual behavior and capabilities instead of, at best, being a rough and ready proxy for them (because of covariance with other more explanatory properties—eg, socioeconomic status, educational attainment of parents). It is also, in this case, racist in the more everyday sense of suggesting that black students are inherently more incapable than other groups, thus playing off age old stereotypes about AAs.
Wax is not the first person to make such suggestions within academia, and almost surely won’t be the last. One of the interesting questions to chew on is why otherwise intelligent people would flout such conjectures in public. I think here, and elsewhere, there are material pressures to do so. But this is not the place to wax sociological (sorry!), so I won’t. I’ll just repeat my position that I don’t think that Wax specifically should figure prominently deliberations about whether or not to attend UPenn.—A.c.S
I do not believe the dean was agreeing with Wax. He obviously wasn’t. My post was in response to someone who wondered if Wax’s statements were correct which they obviously aren’t and the deans statement helps to prove it.
@acsimon699 said:
I honestly don’t know how much this particular controversy should factor into considerations of which law school to attend. Wax was clearly out of her disciplinary depth with the article she co-authored—I don’t think that that particular point is really contestable. In fact, I would go so far as to say laughably out of her depth. And the African American grades comment is offensive and disheartening as well, because, even granting the past numbers as in fact true, possible (racist) motivations behind mentioning them are too salient to ignore.
At the same time, unless I am to think that professor wax violates blind grading practices, or else has found some way of reliably identifying minority students on finals in order to single them out for lower grades (not impossible to conceive, but still dubious), I’m not sure about the extent to which Wax alone should affect law school deliberations.
Of course, it might be said that she is a microcosm of larger issues at Penn, and that might well be but (if I got in) I would try to view prof wax in the overall context of UPenn instead of viewing UPenn in the context of Wax, so to speak.
Couldn't have said it better. As a woman of color, I find it counterproductive give too much attention to this kind of thing. This situation is not unique to law school and this personally would not deter me from attending a school. Ranking, scholarships, and job opportunities are more important to me. Unfortunately there are some people who will always judge others based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Not doing something, (you would otherwise do) because of these people, gives them too much power. Best of luck to everyone who is still waiting to hear back from school:)
@tristandesinor505 said:
@ebs1995601
"In the email, Ruger explicitly stated that her claims are false.
'[B]lack 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,' the email read. 'And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.'"
http://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/penn-law-dean-ted-ruger-professor-amy-wax-removed-racial-conservative-graduate-upenn-philadelphia
The problems I take with that quote:
'top of class' isn't clearly defined.
The school has been around since 1850. In one of her many qualifiers, Wax narrowed the timeline to 2007-2018. The Dean doesn't specifically talk about that timeline. For that reason, I don't think what the Dean said even contradicts Wax.
The Dean didn't give any numbers. For all we know, a comparatively small number of black students graduate in the top of the class each year.
Besides saying that she was wrong, I don't think the Dean provided any support.
@ebs1995601
"In the email, Ruger explicitly stated that her claims are false.
'[B]lack 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,' the email read. 'And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.'"
http://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/penn-law-dean-ted-ruger-professor-amy-wax-removed-racial-conservative-graduate-upenn-philadelphia
@tristandesinor505 said:
@hildaakua158
Whatever your motives, don't out people. Ask in a message if you have to ask.
Agreed. Let's stay on topic.
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@tristandesinor505 said:
@acsimon699 said:
Yeah, then I was just mistaken in my interpretation. That was my other hypothesis, but I just didn’t know to whom you might be referring (someone specific, or just a general claim about who might be impressionable) if not the dean.
I was responding to someone in particular.
On a separate note I’d like to point out that there are people on this thread who are actually debating whether or not African Americans are smart enough to graduate at the top of their class which is pretty abhorrent. But don’t mind me. Carry on with your debate...
It certainly seems awful to me that Prof Wax's absurd statement that African American students rarely end up in the top half of their class and never in the top quarter is being treated not as the racist and incorrect lie which it demonstrably is, but as an invitation to try to guess how few African American students end up in the top quarter or half.
The reason Wax was claiming African American students don't succeed in top law schools was not because she was nearly making an important point, but because she needed a pre-text to argue not to accept African American students.
I agree; debating the percentage of african americans at the top of their class somehow became a topic of discussion amongst some on this thread even though the orginal post was not about that at all.
I agree with your plan to attent UPenn if accepted. I think it's a personal decision and you should absolutely attend if it works with your vision.
Now I'm confused. Who said that they'd attend UPenn law if accepted? Didn't @tristandesinor505 state that he (she?) wouldn't attend (the same for Chicago), even with applications out to both? The only claim I saw here is that people (including myself) would judge UPenn holistically and not on the basis of Wax.
As for the modal claim about what blacks "can" do, I wouldn't have even engaged in discussion on here if I interpreted someone as actually floating that claim. Obviously, you're well on your way to bigotry once you start trafficking in such claims (em, as in the general "you"). The idea I took people to be considering was whether, as a matter of fact, blacks haven't done [fill in the blank about academic achievement at UPenn]. That's an empirical claim--one that I seriously doubt when filled in as Wax filled it in, but it may very well be true. I just don't have access to the numbers to say definitively one way or the other (and I doubt that she did either). I just thought it was interesting to think about what one should say if one granted such empirical claims to Wax. It doesn't seem to me that what one should say is anything close to what Wax has said. I'm honestly most surprised that the interviewer (Glenn Loury) seemed to agree almost all of what she put out there.