{"id":148704,"date":"2026-04-12T14:49:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T22:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/04\/12\/cornell-federalist-society-invites-white-supremacy-speaker-because-thats-what-federalist-society-chapters-do\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T14:49:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T22:49:47","slug":"cornell-federalist-society-invites-white-supremacy-speaker-because-thats-what-federalist-society-chapters-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/04\/12\/cornell-federalist-society-invites-white-supremacy-speaker-because-thats-what-federalist-society-chapters-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Cornell Federalist Society Invites \u2018White Supremacy\u2019 Speaker Because That\u2019s What Federalist Society Chapters Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

After years of indulging Professor Amy Wax as she traded scholarly research for right-wing trolling, the University of Pennsylvania finally considered a formal complaint \u2014 brought by then law school dean Ted Ruger \u2014 against Wax for \u201cpromotion of white supremacy<\/a>.\u201d She\u2019d embarrassed the school for years, attending a white nationalism conference<\/a>, insulting Black graduates by baselessly claiming they hadn\u2019t graduated in the top half of the class<\/a>, declaring that the country needed fewer Asians<\/a>, and inviting the former editor of a recognized hate group publication to campus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Wax draped herself in \u201cacademic freedom<\/a>,\u201d confusing the freedom afforded professors to pursue published academic work<\/em> with citing Wikipedia <\/a> and going on right-wing podcasts<\/a>. At the end of the process, Wax received a sanction from the university, but kept her job and tenure<\/a>. She took the school to court, and was promptly laughed out of said court<\/a>. <\/p>\n

At this point in her career, there\u2019s not much Wax can add to a serious scholarly conversation. Thankfully for Wax, Federalist Society chapters are much more concerned with trolling than educational content, and thus the embattled professor received an invitation from FedSoc to speak at Cornell Law.<\/p>\n

A lot of folks were not pleased<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Wax\u2019s appearance at Cornell was condemned by the\u00a0Native American Law Student Association<\/a>\u00a0in a letter to the law school\u2019s student body, and law students individually.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of her platform is not to engage in any search for truth, but rather to advocate openly for a return to explicit racialized caste systems,\u201d a statement sent from NALSA to the law school student body on March 26 reads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a horizon where free inquiry ends,\u201d Ola Eboda J.D. \u201927 wrote in a letter sent to the student body before the event, arguing Wax\u2019s appearance \u201csets out to desecrate the identities of people.\u201d Eboda is the vice president of the\u00a0Black Law Students Association<\/a>\u00a0but said he wrote the letter in a personal capacity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In keeping with the sentiment that \u201cher platform is not to engage in any search for truth,\u201d Wax didn\u2019t come to discuss the finer points of labor policy, but instead to deliver an extended rant that America\u2019s higher education system has been captured by \u201cwoke ideology.\u201d More from the Cornell Daily Sun:<\/p>\n

\n

During the hour-long March 25 event, attended by about 20 people and moderated by conservative Prof. William Jacobson, securities law, Wax\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that universities are self-perpetuating institutions obsessed with a \u201ccult of diversity\u201d rather than searching for truth and pursuing new knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

William Jacobson and Amy Wax in the same room! That\u2019s like DeNiro and Pacino doing Heat<\/em>, except for white grievance farming. <\/p>\n

Jacobson, threw a fit several years ago<\/a> when fellow professors raised objections to Ivy League professors using their institutional cachet to perpetuate racist tropes \u2014 a charge he considered a direct attack on his Legal Insurrection<\/em> blog since it\u2026 does that. Specifically, Jacobson had just written a headline employing the term \u201cwilding,\u201d a byproduct of the Central Park Five case \u2014 where five minority kids were wrongly convicted of a crime. A few years later he was up in arms about how he felt persecuted because other<\/em> professors in other<\/em> classes were teaching classes about race and bias as part of the ABA\u2019s prior requirement that accredited schools offer the subject.<\/p>\n

The Cornell Sun piece delves into another disturbing aspect of this event, with sources questioning why the FedSoc talk managed to skirt the procedural obstacles other student groups face. According to students cited in the article, the required prior notice for a student-funded event dropped at 2 a.m. the day of the talk. These students may be in Biglaw soon, but until then they\u2019re not sitting at their desks at 2. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time a student group invited Wax to rant. Yale did the same thing a couple years ago<\/a>, and at the time we noted that these groups seem to be using events like this to push a sort of reverse Heckler\u2019s Veto. As opposed to the actual<\/em> Heckler\u2019s Veto, which refers to authorities using the hypothetical possibility of a protest to silence a speaker, these groups invite toxic speakers and lean on the administration to silence hypothetical protests. And right on cue, Cornell dispatched police to the talk and had the dean of students warn everyone of repercussions for any disruption.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like any of these events end with someone throwing rocks. Generally speaking, students either make a public statement and then walk out<\/a> or students show up and politely ask pointed questions that end up frustrating the speaker into a temper tantrum. Like when Fifth Circuit judge Stuart Kyle Duncan lost his mind and started calling Stanford Law students \u201cappalling idiots\u201d<\/a> for running circles around him. The \u201cfree speech crisis\u201d at law schools is a manufactured outrage designed to enforce one-way silence.<\/p>\n

So what did Wax tell the students:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe put a man on the moon \u2014 with an undiverse team,\u201d Wax said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They made a whole fucking movie<\/a> about how that\u2019s not true! It was based on a book marshaling careful research, so I can understand why it might flummox Wax.<\/p>\n

\n

Part of universities\u2019 \u201ccapture\u201d by \u201cwokeness,\u201d according to Wax, was due to\u00a0increasing<\/a>\u00a0female representation in higher education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Women \u201care much more concerned with creating a safe space, making people feel good, inclusion, you know, emotional well-being, those sorts of what I call the values of the nursery and the kindergarten,\u201d Wax said. \u201cShould we give them equal time? And I say, well, not in a university, because women\u2019s priorities are not fit to purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Look, I can think of one woman whose priorities don\u2019t seem fit to the purpose of a professional learning environment, but Wax isn\u2019t going to like the answer.<\/p>\n

Cornell Law Federalist Society Hosting of \u2018Racist\u2019 UPenn Professor Faces Backlash<\/a> [Cornell Daily Sun]<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Cornell Federalist Society Invites \u2018White Supremacy\u2019 Speaker Because That\u2019s What Federalist Society Chapters Do<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After years of indulging Professor Amy Wax as she traded scholarly research for right-wing trolling, the University of Pennsylvania finally considered a formal complaint \u2014 brought by then law school dean Ted Ruger \u2014 against Wax for \u201cpromotion of white supremacy<\/a>.\u201d She\u2019d embarrassed the school for years, attending a white nationalism conference<\/a>, insulting Black graduates by baselessly claiming they hadn\u2019t graduated in the top half of the class<\/a>, declaring that the country needed fewer Asians<\/a>, and inviting the former editor of a recognized hate group publication to campus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Wax draped herself in \u201cacademic freedom<\/a>,\u201d confusing the freedom afforded professors to pursue published academic work<\/em> with citing Wikipedia <\/a> and going on right-wing podcasts<\/a>. At the end of the process, Wax received a sanction from the university, but kept her job and tenure<\/a>. She took the school to court, and was promptly laughed out of said court<\/a>. <\/p>\n

At this point in her career, there\u2019s not much Wax can add to a serious scholarly conversation. Thankfully for Wax, Federalist Society chapters are much more concerned with trolling than educational content, and thus the embattled professor received an invitation from FedSoc to speak at Cornell Law.<\/p>\n

A lot of folks were not pleased<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Wax\u2019s appearance at Cornell was condemned by the\u00a0Native American Law Student Association<\/a>\u00a0in a letter to the law school\u2019s student body, and law students individually.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of her platform is not to engage in any search for truth, but rather to advocate openly for a return to explicit racialized caste systems,\u201d a statement sent from NALSA to the law school student body on March 26 reads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a horizon where free inquiry ends,\u201d Ola Eboda J.D. \u201927 wrote in a letter sent to the student body before the event, arguing Wax\u2019s appearance \u201csets out to desecrate the identities of people.\u201d Eboda is the vice president of the\u00a0Black Law Students Association<\/a>\u00a0but said he wrote the letter in a personal capacity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In keeping with the sentiment that \u201cher platform is not to engage in any search for truth,\u201d Wax didn\u2019t come to discuss the finer points of labor policy, but instead to deliver an extended rant that America\u2019s higher education system has been captured by \u201cwoke ideology.\u201d More from the Cornell Daily Sun:<\/p>\n

\n

During the hour-long March 25 event, attended by about 20 people and moderated by conservative Prof. William Jacobson, securities law, Wax\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that universities are self-perpetuating institutions obsessed with a \u201ccult of diversity\u201d rather than searching for truth and pursuing new knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

William Jacobson and Amy Wax in the same room! That\u2019s like DeNiro and Pacino doing Heat<\/em>, except for white grievance farming. <\/p>\n

Jacobson, threw a fit several years ago<\/a> when fellow professors raised objections to Ivy League professors using their institutional cachet to perpetuate racist tropes \u2014 a charge he considered a direct attack on his Legal Insurrection<\/em> blog since it\u2026 does that. Specifically, Jacobson had just written a headline employing the term \u201cwilding,\u201d a byproduct of the Central Park Five case \u2014 where five minority kids were wrongly convicted of a crime. A few years later he was up in arms about how he felt persecuted because other<\/em> professors in other<\/em> classes were teaching classes about race and bias as part of the ABA\u2019s prior requirement that accredited schools offer the subject.<\/p>\n

The Cornell Sun piece delves into another disturbing aspect of this event, with sources questioning why the FedSoc talk managed to skirt the procedural obstacles other student groups face. According to students cited in the article, the required prior notice for a student-funded event dropped at 2 a.m. the day of the talk. These students may be in Biglaw soon, but until then they\u2019re not sitting at their desks at 2. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time a student group invited Wax to rant. Yale did the same thing a couple years ago<\/a>, and at the time we noted that these groups seem to be using events like this to push a sort of reverse Heckler\u2019s Veto. As opposed to the actual<\/em> Heckler\u2019s Veto, which refers to authorities using the hypothetical possibility of a protest to silence a speaker, these groups invite toxic speakers and lean on the administration to silence hypothetical protests. And right on cue, Cornell dispatched police to the talk and had the dean of students warn everyone of repercussions for any disruption.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like any of these events end with someone throwing rocks. Generally speaking, students either make a public statement and then walk out<\/a> or students show up and politely ask pointed questions that end up frustrating the speaker into a temper tantrum. Like when Fifth Circuit judge Stuart Kyle Duncan lost his mind and started calling Stanford Law students \u201cappalling idiots\u201d<\/a> for running circles around him. The \u201cfree speech crisis\u201d at law schools is a manufactured outrage designed to enforce one-way silence.<\/p>\n

So what did Wax tell the students:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe put a man on the moon \u2014 with an undiverse team,\u201d Wax said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They made a whole fucking movie<\/a> about how that\u2019s not true! It was based on a book marshaling careful research, so I can understand why it might flummox Wax.<\/p>\n

\n

Part of universities\u2019 \u201ccapture\u201d by \u201cwokeness,\u201d according to Wax, was due to\u00a0increasing<\/a>\u00a0female representation in higher education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Women \u201care much more concerned with creating a safe space, making people feel good, inclusion, you know, emotional well-being, those sorts of what I call the values of the nursery and the kindergarten,\u201d Wax said. \u201cShould we give them equal time? And I say, well, not in a university, because women\u2019s priorities are not fit to purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Look, I can think of one woman whose priorities don\u2019t seem fit to the purpose of a professional learning environment, but Wax isn\u2019t going to like the answer.<\/p>\n

Cornell Law Federalist Society Hosting of \u2018Racist\u2019 UPenn Professor Faces Backlash<\/a> [Cornell Daily Sun]<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Cornell Federalist Society Invites \u2018White Supremacy\u2019 Speaker Because That\u2019s What Federalist Society Chapters Do<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After years of indulging Professor Amy Wax as she traded scholarly research for right-wing trolling, the University of Pennsylvania finally considered a formal complaint \u2014 brought by then law school dean Ted Ruger \u2014 against Wax for \u201cpromotion of white supremacy.\u201d She\u2019d embarrassed the school for years, attending a white nationalism conference, insulting Black graduates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":148553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Headshot-300x200-mEibMZ.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}