(The Lion) — A white law professor is suing her university after being disciplined for her criticism of its racial policies and diversity staff while antisemitic speech on campus went unpunished.

Amy Wax, a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, argues the university has exhibited a blatant double standard with regard to free speech.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the suit comes “after Wax was suspended for a year at half-pay and stripped of her named chair, penalties the lawsuit says are ‘illegal multiple times over.’”

In a letter to the university’s interim president and board of trustees, Wax’s attorneys argued that while the university’s discipline against Wax is supposedly based on unidentified “harm” her speech caused, “other professors and lecturers at the University have engaged in speech far more egregious, and thus potentially ‘harmful,’ which the University has never taken steps to sanction.”

The letter goes on to cite several instances in which other Penn professors made remarks that were blatantly antisemitic, even calling for the destruction of Israel, remarks that were met with passive criticism by university officials but no discipline or censure.

“The imposition of academic discipline violates the University’s contractual promise to Professor Wax to abide by the principles of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit charges, adding that “the University’s Speech Policy, which is the basis of that discipline, unlawfully discriminates based on the race … of both speakers and targets of speech.”

According to the lawsuit, “Penn tolerated speech targeting Jews while punishing Professor Wax for speech about affirmative action and other racial topics.” Thus, charges the lawsuit, the issue of race was a key motivation in the university’s decision to target Wax for discipline.

The lawsuit juxtaposed the “racist” speech for which Wax was disciplined against “that of a fellow Penn faculty member, Dwayne Booth,” the Free Beacon reported, “who published a cartoon depicting Zionists drinking the blood of Gazans.

“While the university took no action against Booth ― claiming his speech was protected by Penn’s ‘bedrock commitment to open expression’ ― it did sanction Wax over a series of remarks that the school said amounted to ‘inequitably targeted disrespect.’ Those remarks included criticisms of affirmative action, claims about the racial distribution of law school grades, and the statement that diversity officials ‘couldn’t be scholars if their life depended on it,’ assertions the university said had ‘harmed’ students.”

The lawsuit charges that there is “no rational way to conclude that Professor Wax’s statements would cause more ‘harm’ than Mr. Booth’s blood-libel cartoon. Yet the University has sought only to discipline Professor Wax, while hiding behind disingenuous paeans to free speech and a supposed commitment to academic free expression to justify its decision not to lift a finger against Mr. Booth.”

The complaint argues Penn’s speech policy “discriminates based not only on the content of speech, but also the racial identity of the speaker,” claiming that white speakers “are far more likely to be disciplined for ‘harmful’ speech while minority speakers are rarely, if ever, subject to disciplinary procedures for the same.”

The university’s actions against Wax were exacerbated by months of anti-Israel protests on campus that were spurred by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.

In their letter to university officials, Wax’s attorneys pointed out that one Penn professor, Ahmad Almallah, who is Palestinian, “reportedly led a rally in Philadelphia where he chanted ‘[t]here is only one solution’ regarding Israel. Congressman Jim Banks raised this to then-President Magill … asking why Penn did not discipline Almallah, to which President Magill replied that Penn’s speech policy ‘is guided by the United States Constitution,’ which of course includes the First Amendment Free Speech Clause.”

Magill ultimately resigned from her position at the university after testifying at the congressional hearing that such calls for the genocide of Jews do not necessarily constitute harassment.