IF YOU ARE COMING HERE VIA THE DISHONEST RICHARD PAINTER, SCROLL DOWN TO THE 6/12/2025 UPDATE.

The University of Pennsylvania has sanctioned Amy Wax for her offensive extramural speech, even though it is clearly protected under the applicable AAUP standards governing extramural speech (earlier coverage).  (The sanction does not involve revocation of tenure, but rather a substantial financial penalty.  I assume Professor Wax will sue for breach of contract.)   As the FIRE statement correctly puts it:

After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.

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

But academic freedom is designed to protect controversial faculty from being punished for their speech or opinions. In an era when political forces right and left are all too eager to sanitize campuses of voices and views they dislike, faculty nationwide must be able to rely on the time-tested principles of academic freedom.

UPDATE:  The Academic Freedom Alliance statement on Penn's sanction of Wax.

ANOTHER: A reader points out that the unhinged Richard Painter (he's still obsessed with me three years later!) is once again ranting about me on Twitter.   This time he was triggered by the preceding (and legally correct) defense of Wax's academic freedom rights, which, under the AAUP definition, include her right to engage in offensive extramural speech.  Painter's contempt for academic freedom rights is ironic, given that (most of) his own social media ranting and raving (including his own racist outbursts) is protected by the same rights that apply in the Wax case (being at a public school, Painter also enjoys First Amendment protection, in addition to the contractual protection for academic freedom).  (What is probably not protected by academic freedom or the First Amendment [under the Pickering balancing test] are things like Painter's abusive vendetta directed at colleagues who have criticized his dishonesty.  While this ugly and disruptive behavior has prompted administrative intervention at Minnesota, it has not led to sanctions that I am aware of.)  As in the case of Amy Wax, the cost of academic freedom is that a school sometimes cannot rid itself of noxious buffoons.

6/2/2025 UPDATE:  A reader points out to me that the (still!) unhinged Richard Painter is (still!) ranting about me on Twitter, this time having the audacity to claim that it is a "lie" that his extended Twitter abuse a couple of years ago of a colleague who called him out (rather than covering) for his dishonest behavior led to administrative intervention at Minnesota.   He knows the truth, and he knows that calling this a "lie" is itself a lie.  His administration is very tolerant of his antics, but perhaps this will end with a new Provost at Minnesota.  As always, I feel for his colleagues who must endure having a childish imbecile on the faculty.

6/12/25 UPDATE:  Since Richard is still ranting about "lies" and "defamation," let me add some detail as my final word on this tiresome subject. 

On January 29, 2023, I received an email from a University of Minnesota law professor informing me that an "Associate Dean" at the law school there arranged a "mediation" between Richard Painter and another faculty colleague he had been attacking and insulting for weeks and weeks on social media.  This, in itself, is extraordinary:  normal faculty are not asked by their administration to participate in mediation with a colleague because they have been mercilessly attacking that colleague on social media.

The upshot of the mediation was that Richard had to stop attacking that colleague by name (he has continued, however, to attack him, without naming him, "e.g., a Minnesotan said…" [followed by what the colleague had said originally that provoked Richard's ire]).  Thus, as I said in the original update from last year, Richard's bad behavior on Twitter "prompted administrative intervention at Minnesota [by the Associate Dean], [but] it has not led to sanctions that I am aware of."  Given Pickering (discussed above) and Connick v. Meyers (1983) (not all speech by public employees [e.g., petty vendettas against colleagues who criticized you] are matters of public concern warranting First Amendment protection), I think sanctions would be permissible.  (See the illuminating discussion in Professor David Rabban's excellent book on Academic Freedom:  From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press), esp. pp. 120-121.)

Richard Painter is, of course, a public figure, and even a repeat candidate for public office.  (Since he may be a candidate for public office again, his judgment [or lack thereof] is very much a matter of public concern.) Given the factual basis noted above, what I wrote was neither a "lie" nor "defamatory."  (Since Richard knows it's not a lie, his calling me a liar is itself defamatory!)