The Necessity of Courage: A Conversation with Amy Wax

Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, advocates for reason, empirical argument, and “bourgeois values.” These things, it turns out, are highly controversial.

Professor Wax has been villified and subjected to endless harassment by her academic peers for daring to question the woke groupthink—very much the opposite of empiricism and rational discourse—that has taken over the life of the mind in the United States. In this interview,

Professor Wax discusses academic freedom, the costs of speaking up, and the need for the Aristotelian virtue of courage in the academy today.

The painting is, "Allegorie der Tapferkeit" ("Allegory of Courage"), by Karl von Blaas; painted in 1859 (Museum of Military History, Vienna).