Amy Wax

Wax, a lawyer and neurologist who started her career at the solicitor general’s office under Presidents Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton, has become something of a standard-bearer for the right’s war on wokeness. She started making national headlines in 2017, when, in a column that now seems mild by standards she would later set, she and a co-author bemoaned the breakdown of “bourgeois culture.” Their claim that “all cultures are not equal” in reference to “inner-city blacks” and “some Hispanic immigrants” along with “some working-class whites” sparked a flurry. Finally, in late 2021 and early 2022, Wax made a series of comments about Asians, including that we ought to accept fewer as immigrants because they vote Democratic. Since then, she’s been in a five-year dispute with her employer, insulted group after group of Americans, and said about Indian immigrants on national television that “their country is a shithole.”