Princeton University’s president is demanding one of the school’s most distinguished professors be fired, following student uproar over the educator’s criticism of woke school policies and racial politics that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.
The recommended dismissal, sent by University President Christopher Eisgruber to the school’s board of directors last week, accuses classics professor Joshua Katz of not cooperating with a 2018 investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.
The investigation looked into a relationship Katz, 51, had with a student in 2006. It was resolved internally, and saw the tenured professor suspended without pay for a year.
However, more than a year later, a second probe led by students at the school newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, aired wrongly claims that the professor didn’t fully cooperate and misled investigators during the 2018 inquiry.
The probe, not surprisingly, came shortly after Katz said he was “embarrassed” by a slew of questionable policies passed by the New Jersey university after the May 2020 killing of Minneapolis man Floyd.
Some of the programs Katz found fault with was a campaign to address the school’s “racist” history and requests to give black professors more sabbatical time and higher salaries than their white counterparts.
The move by Eisgruber, 60, is being viewed by many as a politically motivated one, with many accusing the university of targeting Katz for his outspoken criticism of the school’s liberal staff and policies and not for the already settled misconduct claims.
Katz, who started teaching at Princeton in 1998, slammed the school-made proposals in an essay published to online magazine Quillette in July 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests and other woke movements quickly spread across the country.
In the op-ed, titled “A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor”, Katz said the “proposals, if implemented, would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate”.
(Professor Joshua Katz)
He also said of the proposals, aired in a 4,100-word Princeton Faculty letter signed by students, staff, and alumni, that he was “embarrassed” for his colleagues that signed it.
“I am friends with many people who signed the Princeton letter, which requests and in some places demands a dizzying array of changes, and I support their right to speak as they see fit”, Katz wrote.
“But I am embarrassed for them”, he wen on. “To judge from conversations with friends and all too much online scouting, there are two camps: those cheering them on and those who wouldn’t dream of being associated with such a document. No one is in the middle”.
He then urged onlookers to read the letter, which was addressed to President Eisgruber and other senior administrators at the university, citing how the policies broke students and school staffers’ first amendment rights.
The essay also saw Katz denounce the extremist student group that pushed for the policies, the Black Justice League, as “a small local terrorist organization” after it successfully lobbied to have former President Woodrow Wilson’s name removed from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs, due to his support of racial segregation.
The campaign saw 30 student’s stage a sit-in inside President Eisgruber’s office, until that demand, along with others that included mandatory cultural competency training for staff and a cultural safe space on campus reserved for black students, was met.
Katz went on to pan the group for asking for “a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty”, warning of the implications it would have on staffers’ free speech.
“This scares me more than anything else”, Katz wrote. “For colleagues to police one another’s research and publications in this way would be outrageous”.
He went on: “Let me be clear: Racist slurs and clear and documentable bias against someone because of skin color are reprehensible and should lead to disciplinary action, for which there is already a process. But is there anyone who doesn’t believe that this committee would be a star chamber with a low bar for cancellation, punishment, suspension, even dismissal”.
The coalition of students from Princeton University have been widely panned by academics and onlookers alike for their extremist views, that Katz said were “emboldened” by social unrest seen in the wake of Floyd’s death.
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He said its over 200 supporters “were baying for blood” with their ever-increasing number of demonstrations and demands.
Days later, President Christopher Eisgruber responded with his own op-ed, which slammed Katz’s remarks as “irresponsible and offensive”.
(University President Christopher Eisgruber)
Now, however, nearly two years later, the school has again set its sights on Katz, for the sexual misconduct claims stemming from more than nearly two decades ago, which he was already disciplined for.
Beginning in 2006, Katz, then 36, engaged in a consensual romantic relationship with one of his of-age students, then a junior, until after her graduation in 2007.
Twelve years later, a school investigation found Katz violated school policy prohibiting sexual relationships between teachers and the students by engaging with the relationship with the unnamed student, who refused to participate in the school’s probe.
He was promptly suspended, and returned to work at the school in 2019.
However, in 2021, the school’s newspaper investigated the relationship themselves, prompting the second investigation, shortly after Katz’ standoff with school brass over its woke policies.
The school probe found two violations of school policy – the first being that Katz didn’t “fully cooperate with and misled investigators”, and that he “discouraged the former student from seeking psychiatric help when she threatened self-harm”.
The revelations then led to more protests from students, who demanded Katz be released for the reported misconduct.
Eisgruber cited those reasons in his written recommendation for dismissal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
As a result of the probe, Katz was placed on paid administrative leave back in July, in what it appears to be a classic case of “double jeopardy”.
Now, his looming termination has free-speech advocates across the globe up in arms.
“With the firing of Professor Katz, Princeton will have sent a message”, Edward Yingling, co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech, reportedly said.
“If a faculty member or student says something that contradicts our orthodoxy, we will get you – if not for what you said, then by twisting your language, by using the extensive resources of the university to shame you before the student body, and by investigating your personal life for years past”.
Faculty dean Gene Jarrett, meanwhile, who signed Eisgruber’s letter calling for Katz’s nixing, denied that politics played a part in the school’s second probe into Katz.
The board have yet to make a decision regarding the tenured professor’s prospective firing, and refused to respond to The Wall Street Journal when asked to comment on the review.
Sources: Daily Mail, National Review
