Under pressure from students and politicians, University of Pennsylvania Law School is initiating sanctions against Professor Amy Wax over her latest controversial remarks about race–this time, suggesting that Asian-American immigration is bad for America and that we need less of it.

This move to retaliate against a professor’s protected speech has rightly elicited criticism and concern. A letter to Penn President Amy Gutmann from the Academic Freedom Alliance, signed by Princeton constitutional scholar Keith Whittington, states that “[p]rinciples of free speech include the right of professors to speak in public on matters of public concern without the threat of sanctions by their university employer” and that the university must “publicly reaffirm the free speech rights of the members of its faculty.” As Cato adjunct scholar and George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin points out at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, while Penn is a private university and the First Amendment doesn’t apply, moves by university administrators to punish a professor’s speech outside the classroom clearly endanger academic freedom.

But it’s possible to strongly defend a person’s right to express opinions without being punished while condemning the opinions as repugnant, and that, it seems to me, is the appropriate pro-liberty stance in this case. In fact, “freedom of speech should protect even repugnant views” is the essence of the pro-liberty position when it comes to speech.

Somin makes a strong argument that, from a constitutional perspective, Wax’s viewpoint amounts to endorsing “invidious discrimination” and is incompatible with liberty principles. I want to add some thoughts on the moral and political dimensions of the controversy–particularly its relevancy to so-called “national conservatism,” a movement launched two years ago with the fairly explicit goal of providing Donald Trump-style nationalist populism with an intellectual foundation.

(Here, I should pause to say that I have known Wax slightly—mainly from conferences and other events—for over two decades and that our interaction has always been cordial. Fifteen years ago, I mentioned, quite positively, her remarks on affirmative action at a National Association of Scholars event in New York. The later drift of her opinions troubled me, but I never thought the time would come when I would feel compelled to condemn her rhetoric as pernicious.)

In July 2019, Wax was a speaker–a highly controversial one–at the first “National Conservatism” conference. The gist of her remarks was that immigration to the United States from “culturally distant” countries has a negative effect and should be opposed; what’s more, Wax argued, since “cultural distance” tends to coincide with non-European racial identity, “cultural distance nationalism” effectively means “taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.” Conservatives, she suggested, should stop letting these racial dimensions “spook” them.

At the time, there was a lot of debate on the question of whether Wax’s talk was racist or whether she was merely saying that conservatives should be undeterred by the prospect of being labeled racist and should talk openly about thorny subjects like “cultural affinity.” I wrote about this debate for Arc Digital, arguing that the “non-racist” reading gave Wax far too much benefit of the doubt and that “cultural distance” seemed more like a pretext to throw out taboos on racism, all the more so given Wax’s open praise for the so-called “dissident right”—i.e., the white nationalist alt-right.

Fast-forward to January 2021, and Wax is spouting even more overtly racialized rhetoric, openly declaring that we need “fewer Asians” because Asians have all sorts of bad traits that cause them to embrace “wokeness” and vote for Democrats.

First, Wax gave an interview to the eminent black scholar and pundit Glenn Loury, in which she recapitulated her views on immigration. George Lee, an Asian-American New Yorker who has opposed Bill de Blasio’s plan to scrap admissions exams for elite high schools, sent Loury a response, stressing that he agrees with Wax about the importance of American values but rejects the equation of values and race.

Wax’s riposte is striking, to say the least.

In the case of Asians in the U.S., the overwhelming majority vote Democratic. In my opinion, the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence and force in our country today. It advocates for “wokeness,” demands equal outcomes despite clear individual and group differences in talent, ability, and drive, mindlessly valorizes blacks (the group most responsible for anti-Asian violence) regardless of behavior or self-inflicted wounds, sneers at traditional family forms, undermines and disparages the advantages of personal responsibility, hard work, and accountability, and attacks the meritocracy.

I confess I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest. We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite, single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc. …

I don’t know the answer. But as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.

Where to begin?

First of all, whatever issues one may have with the Democratic Party, the idea that the Republican Party of today is a font of liberty, meritocracy, individualism and all sorts of other post-Enlightenment goodies is fairly ludicrous.

Secondly: Asian-American support for the Democrats is hardly an inalterable fact of life! Yes, in the last two presidential elections, about two-thirds of Asian-Americans voted for the Democratic candidate. But in the 1990s, Republicans consistently carried the Asian vote! George H.W. Bush got 55 percent of the Asian vote in 1992; Bob Dole got 48 percent to Bill Clinton’s 43 percent in 1996. Even in 2000, when Al Gore won the Asian vote, it was hardly an “overwhelming” advantage: 54 percent to 41 percent. It was only in 2008 that Asians seemed to shift decisively to the Democratic camp (62 percent voted for Barack Obama). Could this trend shift again? Quite possible, but not if Republicans are preaching nativism.

Thirdly: Wax’s repulsive summary of the traits that supposedly predispose Asians to vote Democratic makes me wonder what she’d have to say about an even more solidly Democratic constituency, i.e., Jews (whom she does blame for being “woke” and abusing their cultural power in her earlier interview with Loury, albeit without enumerating the traits that make them inclined to this behavior). She also never answers the points raised by Lee that her arguments against Asians would also apply to Jewish immigrants such as her own parents, or against a number of other groups including the Irish and Italians in the 19th century.

“Looking forward,” Lee writes, “I can’t think of a way for collective racial judgment to ever become consistent with our Bill of Rights.” Indeed. But Wax, whose rhetoric oozes collective racial judgment—toward Asians and toward blacks, who are pronounced responsible for anti-Asian violence as a group—does not bother to reply. Instead, she writes that we need “more focus on people who are already here, and especially the core (and neglected) ‘legacy’ population, and a push to return to traditional concepts and institutions and Charles Murray’s ‘American Creed.’”

For what it’s worth, even Murray argues that we should avoid “collective racial judgment” while recognizing group differences. (Whether his argument is effective is another question.) Wax, on the other hand, proudly embraces collective racial judgment, toward Asians and toward blacks. I would say that her ’comments go up against everything “the American Creed” has stood for at least since World War II.

It is also worth noting that Wax has vocal conservative defenders. In 2019, those rallying to defend and praise her included David Marcus in The Federalist, National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood in the U.S. Spectator, and First Things senior editor and Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein in the Wall Street Journal. Even Wax’s latest remarks were defended by Josh Hammer, opinion editor of Newsweek, contributor to numerous conservative publications, Federalist Society speaker, and a figure in the “National Conservative” movement.

Hammer did delete a tweet praising Wax for having “bigger cojones than 99 percent of the GOP,” but he followed it with this explanation:

Even aside from the ridiculous overstatement of Wax’s influence, “racist rhetoric is good if it shifts the Overton window in my direction” is not a great look for “National Conservatism.”

In his 2019 article in support of Wax, Bauerlein wrote that Wax and her far-left detractors actually agree on some things: namely, that individuals are profoundly shaped by identity and culture and that “liberals and libertarians who … imagine a world of free and flexible people,” i.e. adaptable and assimilable immigrants, are wrong. It’s just that Wax sees the West as superior and believes that America should close its shores to immigrants shaped by inferior cultures, while the leftists see the West as uniquely oppressive and believe that immigrants from non-Western cultures should be encouraged to resist assimilation to American norms.

In other words, Wax’s “national conservatism” is right-wing identity politics. Her latest interview shows how ugly and toxic this outlook is. The true “American Creed” champions a vision of “free and flexible people.”