Amy Wax Told The Truth; Ruger and Penn Lied

It's not happy data, but, as I suspected, Wax was right:

As for the low number of black Penn law students graduating in the top of their class, Wax’s observations about the mismatch effect accord with all available data. The Law School Admissions Council collected 27,000 law student records in the early 1990s, representing nearly 90 percent of accredited schools. After the first year, 51 percent of black law students ranked in the bottom tenth of their class, compared with 5 percent of white students. Two-thirds of black students were in the bottom fifth of their class. Only 10 percent of blacks were in the top half of their class. As mismatch theory predicts, bar-examination failure rates were also skewed, since students put into classrooms above their preparation levels will learn less than when teaching is pitched to their current academic skills. Twenty-two percent of black test-takers in the LSAC database never passed the bar exam after five attempts, compared with 3 percent of white test-takers.

As I also noted, Penn's president's vague non-refutations of Wax's claims are a strong indication that she was right:

Unfortunately, Wax overlooked the precautionary rule for criticizing affirmative action: avoid any generalizations that can be rebutted with an even vaguer generalization. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half,” she said, clearly speaking informally and from a subjective perspective. Ruger responded in his memo: “It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: black students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law.” Ruger’s statement leaves unspecified what the “top of the class” is and how many black students over what period of time have graduated in it. But his assertion, as so broadly defined, is undoubtedly true. It is also not inconsistent with Wax’s claim that black students have graduated in the top half of the class, but “rarely.”

Look, nobody likes data like this. No reasonable person, anyway. But this sort of official lying about the numbers has to be challenged. You'd think that Penn would just let Wax say her piece, ignore her, and go back to pretending that the facts aren't the facts. But in our time, these lies are the sacrosanct lies; these lies can meet refutation with all the righteous indignation the truth might muster. Penn doesn't have to worry about making things worse. Like Google, it can look the facts in the face and call them false; they're backed up by the rest of the cultural superstructure, all of which is committed to pretending that what we want to be true must be true with respect to this topic. 

   So, bottom line: Wax told the truth; Penn lied. For her temerity, Wax was forced to stop teaching 1L civ pro, and has been branded a racist. Amy Wax, like James Damore, spoke unspeakable truths and paid the price.