Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets.

[4] Wax sued the University of Pennsylvania in response, seeking a reversal of the suspension and damages for lost wages and reputational harm.

[12] In an August 2017 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture", she wrote with San Diego law professor Larry Alexander that since the 1950s, the decline of "bourgeois values" (such as hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and respect for authority) had contributed to social ills such as male labor force participation rates down to Great Depression-era levels, endemic opioid abuse, half of all children being born to single mothers, and many college students lacking basic skills.

[24] That same month, 33 of her fellow Penn Law faculty members signed an open letter condemning statements Wax made in her Philadelphia Inquirer piece and Daily Pennsylvanian interview.

[28] As a result of these controversies, in March 2018, Dean Ruger stripped Wax of her duties teaching curriculum courses to first-year students.

[29][30] He condemned her comments as "repugnant," and, at a student town hall meeting, he said that "her presence here ... makes me angry" but that "the only way to get rid of a tenured professor is this process... that's gonna take months.

Commentator Mona Charen said that the op-ed on bourgeois values "contained not a particle of racism" and that "if the Left cannot distinguish reasoned academic arguments from vile racist insinuations, it will strengthen the very extremists it fears.

"[32] In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, political commentator Heather Mac Donald criticized the "hysterical response" to Wax's piece.

"[27] Robert VerBruggen, deputy managing editor of the National Review, cited papers he said supported Wax's claims and wrote, "If Penn Law is different, or if things have changed in recent years, let's see some numbers.

"[34] A small number of Wax's colleagues and legal experts also came to her defense on the grounds of academic freedom, though these defenders also condemned her actual statements.

University of Pennsylvania Law School Overseer Paul Levy resigned to protest what he termed Wax's "shameful treatment".

[35] Levy wrote in his letter of resignation: "Preventing Wax from teaching first-year students doesn't right academic or social wrongs.

Rather, you are suppressing what is crucial to the liberal educational project: open, robust and critical debate over differing views of important social issues.

'"[40] In April 2022, Wax said on Tucker Carlson Today that "blacks" and other "non-Western" groups harbor "resentment, shame, and envy" against Western people for their "outsized achievements and contributions."

Wax then attacked Indian immigrants for criticizing things in the United States when "their country is a shithole" and went on to say that "the role of envy and shame in the way that the Third-World regards the First-World [...] creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind.

[40] Penn Law School's dean, Theodore Ruger, called Wax's statements about Asians "racist", "white supremacist", and "diametrically opposed to the policies and ethos of this institution".

[42] Glenn Loury, the Brown professor who had hosted the interview, called her comments "outrageous" and said, "What she said about the Asians could have been said, and was said, about the Jews not so long ago.

[42][44] Wax's comments drew heavy criticism by the Indian-American community, including Penn Law faculty Neil Makhija and U.S.