Georgetown Law won’t share facts about black student performance after firing professor for saying it’s ‘lower’

Three years ago this month, the University of Pennsylvania Law School removed a professor from teaching required classes for publicly saying she wasn’t aware of black students ever graduating in the top quarter of the class.

Amy Wax’s dean, Ted Ruger, accused her of making “false” claims. He refused to get more specific, though, only saying black students have graduated “in the top of the class.” The Ivy League university ignored College Fix requests to provide the supposedly accurate figures.

Georgetown Law Center has gone a step further by quickly firing a veteran law professor who thought she was privately lamenting black student performance to a colleague in a Zoom call.

Like Penn Law, it has ignored a Fix request to provide hard figures, in this case LSAT scores for black students. Unlike its Ivy League peer, Georgetown Law has not claimed Sandra Sellers incorrectly characterized the academic performance of her black students.

The law school put another professor on administrative leave, apparently for not rebuking Sellers when she said “a lot” of her black students each semester have “lower” academic performance. Video shows David Batson murmuring “mmm-hmm” and nodding slightly as Sellers shared her “angst” that these students don’t perform better.

The Fix also asked media relations for both Georgetown University and Georgetown Law to explain how their actions against the professors, who teach negotiations law, comport with their contractual obligations to the faculty and each institution’s promises of academic freedom.

Georgetown Law is punishing faculty for accidentally shining a light on the lower admissions standards it has for black students, two lawyers said Thursday.

Hans Bader, a former Department of Education lawyer, said flatly that Georgetown had violated its own academic freedom policy even before firing Sellers, because it was “wrongly” investigating her for “telling the truth.”