Breaking: Princeton University Fires Professor Joshua Katz
“Katz’s real offense was running afoul of the woke pieties that now dominate American campuses.”
We have been following the story of Professor Joshua Katz of Princeton University, who came under fire from campus activists for defying the progressive narrative and agenda in higher education.
Now the school has fired him.
Princeton even added insult to injury:
Princeton fired Joshua Katz this evening—and announced it publicly before informing him of the final decision. https://t.co/id36EKYrIa
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 23, 2022
From the New York Times:
Princeton Fires Tenured Professor in Campus Controversy
A Princeton classics professor was fired, “effective immediately,” on Monday after the university’s administration found that he had not been fully honest and cooperative with an investigation into his sexual relationship with an undergraduate student about 15 years ago.
The dismissal of the professor, Joshua Katz, was a rare case of a tenured professor being dismissed, and came after a fierce debate on campus and in wider political spheres over whether Dr. Katz was being targeted for an article in an online journal that criticized anti-racist proposals by faculty, students and staff.
The board voted to dismiss him based on a “detailed written complaint from an alumna who had a consensual relationship with Dr. Katz while she was an undergraduate under his academic supervision,” according to a statement from the university issued Monday afternoon. That relationship was in 2006-07, but the alumna did not file her complaint until 2021.
When told that Princeton had announced his firing, Dr. Katz’s wife, Solveig Gold said, “That’s news to me. We have nothing.” She added, “It’s pretty damning that we don’t have it ourselves.”
Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review offers this assessment of the situation:
A Princeton Classics Professor Gets Railroaded
Show me the man,” Stalin’s enforcer, Lavrentiy Beria, liked to say, “and I’ll show you the crime.”
Beria would have done well at Princeton.
In the New York Times, Anemona Hartocollis reports the story of Joshua Katz, a classics professor at Princeton who is set to be fired soon. Ostensibly, Katz is being fired for “his conduct with female students.” Really, he is being fired because, two years ago, he described a student group called the Black Justice League as “a small local terrorist organization” and suggested that he was “embarrassed for” any of his colleagues who had signed a letter insisting that “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.” Katz, “who is tenured,” Hartocollis writes, “is not facing dismissal for his speech,” but “for what a university report says was his failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago that he has already been punished for.”
This is a flagrant, insulting lie on Princeton’s part. Katz’s “failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago” was investigated and punished in 2017. Until his words “sent up a flare,” as Hartocollis put it, the incident had passed into history. Katz’s real offense was running afoul of the woke pieties that now dominate American campuses.
Katz’s attorney Samantha Harris offered this comment to Legal Insurrection:
I don’t think there’s a person out there who doubts that if Joshua Katz had not published his “Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor” in Quillette [link], that he would still be employed by Princeton University. Princeton will bend over backwards to say this was not double jeopardy; that it wasn’t simply splitting hairs to find new grounds to punish Dr. Katz for a relationship he had already been punished for. But whether it was or wasn’t, the message to would-be dissenters is clear: the price of speaking out is having your personal life turned inside out looking for information to destroy you. How many people are willing to roll that dice?
The situation could not be more clear.
Defy the campus left, and you become a target for destruction.
Here is Katz’s presentation at a Legal Insurrection online event on August 30, 2020, Academic Death Spiral: VIDEO Highlights From “Saving Higher Ed From Cancel Culture”. It’s almost like he saw it coming (excerpt):
In recent years, and especially recent months, people inside the Academy have, with frightening rapidity, persuaded a considerable segment of the populace that words are violence and need to be policed. Even more frightening is that these ideas have been coupled with violent actions and calls for defunding the actual, non-metaphorical police. My fellow denizens in the ivory tower are waging a war, and it is no longer advisable for me to retreat fully into the stacks of Princeton’s wonderful library. I only wish that I had spoken out sooner. Consider the newy dominant word “anti-racism”. It sounds attractive but isn’t. In fact, it is a Trojan horse for race-based discrimination of its own kind….
I’ve had enough. And I penned a lone letter of dissent. I believed then, and I believe now that what I wrote was measured, quite unlike the letter to which I was responding….
Nonetheless, the backlash was fierce. The president of Princeton issued a personal denunciation. A good number of my colleagues wrote and said scurrilous things about me…. And even some good has come from the presumptive “cancellation” ….
Free speech is a bedrock principle. If we cannot agree on this, then we are lost as a nation…. That’s an institutional comment, but then there’s, what’s more, most important for the mental health of anyone who walks through a firestorm. You need friends and supporters, people who will criticize, but not destroy you when you make a mistake. People who have your back, when they believe you’re right, though others seek to destroy you.
It is depressing just how many friends I’ve lost, but obviously they weren’t actually friends. Also depressing is just how many communications I received from people, including prominent colleagues at Princeton who say that they wish they could support me publicly, but, alas, are afraid of what will happen to them if they do. Still, some people, friends old and new, have stepped up to the plate, and I will be forever, especially grateful to them….
The pressure to apologize in an effort to appease one’s tormentors can be tremendous, but do not give into the pressure. If you feel you did no wrong, do not apologize. The majority of Americans loathe cancel culture; it is time to stop being afraid to express over and over again, and in as many public ways as possible, our collective disgust at the shocking illiberalism that has taken over the minds of a highly vocal, often extraordinarily privileged, minority of our citizens.
UPDATE: Professor Katz has written a response to his firing for the Wall Street Journal:
Princeton Fed Me to the Cancel Culture Mob
Nearly two years ago, I wrote in these pages, “I survived cancellation at Princeton.” I was wrong. The university where I taught for nearly a quarter of a century and which promoted me to the tenured ranks in 2006, has revoked my tenure and dismissed me. Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs, this should terrify you.
The issues around my termination aren’t easy to summarize. What is nearly impossible to deny (though Princeton does deny it) is that I have been subjected to “cultural double jeopardy,” with the university relitigating a long-past offense—I had a consensual relationship with a 21-year-old student—for which I was already suspended for a year without pay well over a decade after my offense. This was, I emphasize, a violation of an internal university rule, not a Title IX matter or any other crime.
Why would one of the country’s leading educational institutions do this to a successful faculty member who once made a grave mistake, admitted to this mistake as soon as he was investigated for it and served his time without complaint? Unfortunately, the current environment makes the question all too easy to answer: In the summer of George Floyd, certain opinions about the state of America that would have been considered normal only a few months earlier suddenly became anathema. For better or worse, I was the first on campus to articulate some of these opinions, publicly criticizing a number of “antiracist” demands, some of them clearly racist and illegal, that hundreds of my colleagues had signed on to in an open letter to the administration in early July 2020.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
God bless them and sue the lights out of the bastards
If he has a contract that doesn’t allow this kind of nonsense, then yes, sue them.
Sue them and the alumna, contract be damned. I’m quite sure a forensic examination of her bank accounts would prove fascinating.
Without grounds you will never get to see her bank account, and the best you can hope for is to avoid sanctions.
You have a common problem that I had with many attorneys I worked with, not thinking outside the box. When I wanted to get at some crooked SOB I would float a tactic, and they would come back with a you cannot do that. Eventually our interaction would lead to things I could do, or an approach where what I was doing could not be connected to me. I often spent years, in some cases over a decade or more extracting retribution.
This is what should happen to Dems and their Marxist partners. One cannot fight gutter dwellers without joining them for a time.
If I were this guy I wouldn’t want to be employed by tyrants. He ought to see this as a blessing in disguise.
They don’t care what it costs the school, just as long as he’s out.
This is scary sh*t, man.
Yes, and? Either he has a valid reason to sue them or he doesn’t. Meanwhile, get the hell away from these jerks. There is no need to work in that kind of environment. Turn your career into a free speech crusade, find a different career. I swear I do not understand why people sit there in such a toxic atmosphere. I left one myself, best decision I ever made in my life.
Easier said than done. The toxicity of the education environment wasn’t always up to one’s neck in communism, pedophelia, neurosis and narcissism. You’re talking about a man’s career changing in mid to late life, and not on his terms.
A reptutation takes a lifetime to achieve, and a second to be destroyed. He surely deserves millions from these psychos, but it ain’t their money and in their minds, it was worth it to silence this man and others that may think like him.
Can I let you in on a little secret? I changed my career midlife. It was on my terms, but it arrived at a time I didn’t expect and it was scary. It was also one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. This guy saw the writing on the wall a while ago, there is no way he was blindsided by this decision. If he was, he’s got more problems than just finding another job.
Holy hell, if your fundamental principles about how you live your life are at odds with your work, you find a new employer or a completely new line of work. Life is too short to put up with this kind of bullshit. There is no way this guy is not hirable anywhere in America.
I have no sympathy for anyone who makes excuses as to why they cannot do something they are perfectly capable of doing. Finding purpose is more difficult than finding a new job. It’s not impossible to find both. It takes resolve.
Col, do you really think he could have avoided false claims by this harpy if he had changed jobs?
“It is depressing just how many friends I’ve lost, but obviously they weren’t actually friends.”
That speaks to the shallowness of having too many “friends” these days. We need to make a more precise distinction. At a time in our history where all personal relationships are being systematically attacked, especially with God and family, on what basis are we friends with non-relatives?
We live in a truly creepy world. Most of us are just living in denial while pretending it can’t happen to us. Everything is falling apart at all levels. We are living through the Great Global Deconstruction Era. Davos Man is taking over. We will “own nothing and be happy”. Those of us who survive the operation that is… happy to still be alive.
Of course he could, just as he “avoided” them for all those years before. All it would have taken was not having an employer with deep pockets desperately looking for an excuse, however flimsy, to fire him. Changing jobs would have done that.
We can’t just run. Places like Princeton are important and need to be won back. Self segregating by running away will not lead to positive change.
Same here. I made a bad decision becoming an accountant despite making decent money and getting promoted to comptroller. I couldn’t find a way out until I was one of the 1/3 of middle management that lost their jobs in the early 1990’s when corporate America “right-sized” their companies. It was just what I needed. I now run my own RIA firm doing what I love without anyone telling me what to do. I spend most of my time talking to clients and researching what is going on in the world. Today, there isn’t enough time in a day to do what I love to do. And the money is good too.
But now you’ve just left the education and credentialing to the enemy.
Which means the next generation of doctors and lawyers will be the most Social Justice infused munchkins you’ve ever seen and you won’t be able to find an alternative.
It is only a blessing if he collects a staggering damage award. Also, 21 is well past the age of consent. This shit of former consentual lovers not taking responsibility for their decisions is crap. She needs to be canceled.
It is common for young ladies to seek relationships with older men, especially when fatheres were not in their life in a significant way. Many marry an older man, have children, and then divorce them, creating the same situation for their children. It is a viscous cycle
I’m not sure why university educated women are still being considered such weaklings in constant need of protection. What a crock!
professors aren’t supposed to have romantic relationships with their students, no matter what age the student might be.
My understanding is that she was not his student
She was not.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I’m sitting on the jury hearing about this case. He had an “inappropriate relationship.” He was punished. Fifteen years later the school fired him over it.
Hmmm. What would I think? Or more accurately, how would I vote after I was done laughing over the absurdity of the school’s excuse for firing him?
This was an idiotic action by a school that apparently does not value fairness, free speech, due process, or its own reputation. I suggest we award the professor every single penny owned by every single administrator at Princeton.
I mean, I don’t disagree that the investigation was motivated by his politics, and sure, it sucks that he’s being fired over something from 15 years ago, but as far as I know he’s not claiming that it didn’t happen.
Don’t give me this ‘consensual relationship’ BS, he was her professor at the time.
When you are a teacher/professor at ANY level, you DO NOT have sex with your students. It really is that simple.
When you do something that unbelievably stupid, it WILL come back to bite you at some point.
She was 21 years old and this was not a title ix situation which likely means she was a student but not his student.
When I was in law school, there was this young professor plowing his way through the female L1 student body – literally. Being he was a leftist, nothing happened to him.
Or, maybe there were no complaints filed.
When in law school I had a seminar taught by a visiting professor, single, who was clearly boffing at least one female student in the seminar. She made him nice ties, which she gave him in class and that he wore. Others and I knew what was going on but said nothing.
Your statement about coming back to bite the professor would be stronger if the college didn’t know until this year about this relationship.
The college did know however and it did come back and bite the professor in 2017 when they punished him for what he did. He was suspended without pay for a year.
Now the school was looking for any excuse to fire him and they decided to drag back up an issue they already dealt with regarding him. A 2nd bite at that particular apple by claiming he lied during he the previous investigation.
you’re correct that professors shouldn’t have sexual relationships with their students. However, that the school didn’t fire him at the time that the complaint was made shows that he’s not being fired for that. Suppose someone worked at a business and embezzled money – was caught, and punished (restitution/demotion/suspension) but continued to work at the company. Fifteen years later they wouldn’t be, couldn’t be fired for that embezzlement.
“Princeton fired Joshua Katz this evening—and announced it publicly before informing him of the final decision.”
That’s pretty shabby right there.
Decades ago I was an army officer. One day the colonel’s jeep driver told me that I had received some unpleasant orders. When I advised the colonel of my new orders, which he had not seen, with me in his office he called the 2-star division commander and chewed him out for letting someone other than himself inform his subordinate of unpleasant orders. He was quite a guy, and it was a good life lesson for me.
Those who are brave enough to speak up in opposition to the cult like orthodoxy being imposed by the totalitarian minded establishment must be either ‘pure as Caesar’s Wife’ or be prepared to accept the consequences. They don’t believe in extending grace or in the concept of redemption. They use fear, intimidation, ostracism, exile and deplatforming to wield the power of personal and professional destruction.
There is very little chance of a departure from these policies in many of our institutions; particularly in the academy. The legions of administrative bureaucrats put in place over the last four decades are too entrenched. Alumni should question whether to answer fund raising pleas. Parents should be very careful in which institutions their children apply especially their Sons.
“Alumni should question whether to answer fund raising pleas.”
I would hope so. But not all alumni are of the same persuasion.
If all had this man’s cour,age, cancel culture would be canceled!
I wonder if at least part of the decision was based on demands of the hate-Jews crowd?
Of course it was.
I doubt it. The outcome would have been exactly the same if his name had been Smith.
Don’t be in denial:
One-Third of Jewish Students Experienced Antisemitism on College Campuses in Last School Year, New Survey Finds
https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/one-third-of-jewish-students-experienced-antisemitism-on-college-campuses-in
ONE THIRD!!!
Help me out here. Is that greater or less than the fraction of white college students who have experienced anti-white hate?
Greater or less than the fraction of professing Christians who have experienced anti-Christian hate?
Greater or less than the fraction of men who have experienced anti-male hate?
Irrelevant. This is clearly not an example of it. Had someone named Smith written exactly what he did, he — or she — would have enraged them just as much, and been subjected to the same treatment. Had the person’s name been Kwame or something like that it would have enraged them even worse, and they’d have looked even harder for some excuse to get rid of the Oreo / Uncle Tom, for daring to leave the reservation.
It’s ingenious to argue that, since academia also has other prejudices, this particular one could not have been a factor.
Of course it could have been a factor. Anything at all could have been a factor. Perhaps, unbeknownst to any of us, he once won a large amount at poker from some important person, who took this opportunity to exact revenge. Or perhaps his dog once bit that person’s cat. But there’s no indication of anything like that, and nor is there any indication that antisemitism was at all a factor in this. What you are doing is exactly the same as those who claim that any time something bad happens to a black person it’s racism.
So they claimed.
I think Milhouse has it right. The marxist left will go after anyone that doesn’t stay in line.
Yeah. Milhouse is 100% right on this. The college went after this guy because of what he said about the black student group. He could be an atheist and the result would be the same because his alleged offense had nothing to do with religion.
Oh, they definitely don’t care about his religion, if any. Being named Katz is no indication of ones religion. What it does indicate is that one is probably a direct descendant in the male line of Moses’ brother Aharon, and therefore quite likely a (((Jooo))).
Religion has nothing to do with it. The word “antisemitism” was coined for the specific purpose of referring to Jew-hate that is not based on religion, and therefore one that Jews can’t escape by abandoning their religion.
Well, you can make a tongue-in-cheek reference to this being religiously motivated. It’s right there in the unwritten University Commandments around #4 or #5 somewhere.
The Narrative is thy One True God. Thou shalt have no other Gods before it.
I want the next Republican Presidential candidate to make this speech and mean every word of it:
“And as the economy collapses and the American people are further immeserated we should turn to the multi-generational fraud that has been imposed by the American Higher Education System. As the purpose of the state is to bring Justice, we should seek to apply justice for the students and American people who have had their wealth and futures drained and put into lifelong debt to build fabulous ivory towers for administrators and woke commissars at the expense of the American taxpayer.
As such, this fraud will be brought to an end today. I am bringing a bill to Congress that performs the following:
1) Bans degree-based licensure requirements. All professional licenses will have alternative routes that are available to entrepreneurial American people who are able to prove their competency in a given field
2) Imposes a progressive inequality tax on endowments and superfluous resources, to be no less than 80% the current value at the top bracket. This is to address the gross inequality produced by schools such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton that have exploited their reputations to produce a caste system in America.
3) Revokes tax advantages on University employees as nonprofit entities.
4) Imposes a head tax on tenured faculty and on staff. Imposes a operations tax in non-critical areas such as such as student services, DEI, litigation and advocacy. It’s time that the institutions focused on the singular purpose they have–to build a resilient, educated and competitive America. When these bureucracies aren’t creating chaos stealing-from-the-public-purse with lawyers, they’re nursing their fragile spoiled children with coloring books. COLORING BOOKS! [capitalized to indicate enunciation]. This ends NOW.
5) Reorganizes the NSF, NEH, and other grant-funding agencies to an independent review to be staffed by persons outside the University system that I shall select with the congressional majority.
6) Mandates that universities that obtain public funding must be able to have a demonstrated impartiality and balance.
7) And institutions that fall into bankruptcy will be, for the next 4 years, be eligible to undergo a court-mediated restructuring and reorganization with input from an new board within the Department of Education that I shall staff.
Consistent with the penalties for fraud, the revenues from these actions will be used to repay the student loan debts that have so captured and crushed the dreams of a generation of Americans at a 1-to-1 level until the student loans have been repaid. Students who wish to be exempted from this judgement can send in a request to the Department of Education and repay their debts under the current terms of the loans.
It has come to my attention that a small number of institutions have opted to avoid receiving federal funding for their operations. Such institutions will be exempt from such measures as they have stolen no meat from the American people at-large.
Consistent with the NGO-charity bill I’ve filed last week, we will be revoking certain nonprofit privileges for Universities that engage in public advocacy.
Finally, I will be submitting a follow-up bill on protected free speech, education in American norms and certain mal-apportioned standards in academic hiring, promotion and operations.
…
Well no (Reporter for the Washington Post); last I saw the single most politically homogeneous career class in America was University faculty. That job class voted in excess of 97% for my opponent and the administrative staff were somehow even more homogeneous. So no, I do not believe I’m losing any votes here. I’m just ending a fraudulent industry that has preyed upon America for far too long
”
——-
We fired warning shots when IndoctinateU was produced almost 20 years ago. We fired warning shots when Heterodox Academy was formed. We fired warning shots in 2017 when we imposed a 10% endowment tax.
Fire for effect.
You have fun with your 95 theses but shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’ll continue to see the doctor that went to med school and drive over the bridge built by the fully credentialed engineer thanks. And those things shouldn’t become so rarified that only DC crooks have access to them.
Now the academic bubble “studies” majors? I’m right there with you on action needing to be done yesterday to shut down these charlatans
You would remain free to see whichever doctor you liked, but I want the option of seeing one who passed all the exams but didn’t attend one of their indoctrination houses.
And what’s your plan?
I seek to only create the mechanism by which these corrupt and resistant-to-change institutions can be forcibly reformed to be something that produces things of actual value.
But right now, they act as little more than a woke cartel that are denying access to those engineering and medical jobs to anyone who’s insufficiently woke and discriminatory.
I agree.
The credentialed is just the same as the guild, just restricting competition to those in the club.
Let me decide.
Spent 50 years in small tech companies. 35 as CEO. I was CTO before my 30’th birthday. PhD in EE.
Have hired hundreds of engineers, fired too many. My batting average was about 2/3.
At one point, we were designing our own custom integrated circuits. My lead designer? I don’t think he graduated high school.
The best VP-Engineering? Never went to college, although he had a four year full ride scholarship to any University in Illinois. Why? He was too busy working as an Engineer to go to college.
Ultimately, I pretty much discounted the degree as a criterion. There were certain schools that tended to have better candidates, but I believe it was more the people that went to those schools than the actual education. Some of the “elite” schools simply graduated good students.
As an Old F==t I have been asked, Do you have guns at home? and another favorite is, “Are you afraid to go home”? Wokeness is creeping in but it’s still mostly STEM so not too bad.
I was a child prodigy, had run of a engineering university from 7th grad on, and was accepted by a top flight university.
The summer before I was supposed to start I was hit by a 68 year old black drunk, spending a year and a half with two surgery’s. My recovery very good, though I have had cramps in the affected leg.
I had started my first business that summer, and was leaving a church which I had installed a comercial sound system.
I continued operate that business while I took a few more college classes.
The truth was that I had already learned how to teach myselve any subject which I chose to pursue, and then apply that information. I worked as an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, software engineer, and architectural engineer. I ran circles around most engineers. A big part of my success was having a multidisciplinary background.
I have employed many engineers, often those with great grades were duds, and those with fair grades who had an inate appitude outperformed PhD’s.
Most of my experience was before all the woke shit. The truth is that people with 85 IQ’s who are told they deserve to be an engineer are absolute disasters.
Also 3 years as a plant engineer.
Degrees do not make someone competent, and that includes doctors.
I’ll vote for you
Opinion piece by Katz
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joshua-katz-princeton-campus-cancel-culture-woke-mob-11653350161
“Don’t send my boy to Princeton, —
The dying mother said,
“Don’t send my boy to Syracuse,
I’d rather see him dead.”
Don’t be in denial:
One-Third of Jewish Students Experienced Antisemitism on College Campuses in Last School Year, New Survey Finds
https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/one-third-of-jewish-students-experienced-antisemitism-on-college-campuses-in
ONE THIRD!!!
And I’d bet at least two thirds of black students will report having experienced anti-black racism. That doesn’t mean they did. One result of the undeniable existence of racism is that for some black people every bad thing that happens to them is attributed to that cause. Most of the time it isn’t because of that. And the same is true of Jews and antisemitism. Nobody denies that antisemitism exists, but not every bad thing that happens to a Jew is an example of it.
And I’d bet at least
two thirds90% of black students will report…FIFY
Your point is correct of course. The grievance culture trains all groups but straight white male to find grievance. Some do not succumb, but most do.
Well said, Milhouse.
I am no great fan of George W. Bush. But, a timeless quote was: “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Mine too ! That occupation is the closest to Systemic Racism I can think of. Due to Libs overly developed sense of compassion they automatically make allowances which just compounds the situations.
The ADL. Right up there with the NAACP for credibility.
I think you meant “Right down there with the NAACP for credibility.”
Tomayteau tomahteau…
Could be. But, my guess is that it is self reported. It wasn’t because you partied as opposed to studying that you got that “D”. It was because you were Jewish.
How many white, heterosexual, Christian males would report discrimination? An honest answer would be damned near all.
Suck it up, buttercup. Life ain’t fair.
an investigation into his sexual relationship with an undergraduate student about 15 years ago
A novel justice system derived from witch hunts and warlock trials popular in the world’s progressive liberal days when the people… persons deferred to a Twilight faith (i.e. emanations from penumbras, conflation of logical domains) and adhered to a Pro-Choice “ethical” (i.e. relativistic) religion. Surely, they are playing with a double-edged scalpel. Perhaps not.
That said, throw another baby on the barbie for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
This may not be what you all want to hear or believe . . . but I don’t think he was fired just for his speech or opinions about the Black Justice League == terrorists.
I am not expressing an opinion about whether an 18 or 21-year old has the right to choose which older faculty member they want to get involved with, but the rules at Princeton (where I live and where I went to school) are pretty clear these days. My wife and I are moderately clued in and know multiple Trustees and Faculty, and I would guess it was more than the one younger student (mentioned in the narrative) that Prof. Katz was “involved” with.
Not saying he did anything illegal, but it may have allowed and even required Princeton to proceed with the termination. We’ll see what Robert George comes up with in Katz’ defense, but this is a tough one.
Two points though:
1. He had already had a disciplinary action for that event so this seems like a pretext to generate another bite at the apple.
2. College students are HS graduates and 18+.
This idea of a perpetual or extended adolescence where adults must be protected from the world of adulthood in which we are responsible for our decisions is perverse. A consensual relationship is by definition not coerced irrespective of any ‘power differential’.
That’s what consensual means; the student entered into a relationship of her own volition. The University had investigated, evaluated and rendered judgment on the events years ago. Using a policy disagreement to reopen a closed case seems to me a very dangerous precedent.
Spent my life in the private sector. In the beginning, the typical rule was NO “relationships”. Then, it became “no relationships with a subordinate.” That was a recognition that many, many people find life partners in the workplace. Human nature, and if no harm done, none of our business.
As a “C-level” type almost my entire career, the rules applying to me where pretty much: “hands off the private stock”.
I was on a Board where the CEO had propositioned the HR lady. Nothing really all that untoward, just awkward. She kindly rejected him. He reported it himself. Result? He was told that it would NEVER happen again. Our Directors and Officers insurance policy had a rider excluding him from any Sexual Harassment coverage.
I find the public sector incomprehensible.
The University’s invoking a previously resolved matter as alleged grounds for firing Professor Katz is transparently a pretextual ploy. The administrators don’t want to state that Katz was fired for issuing criticism with regard to student activists (i.e., for expressing personal opinions that dissent from Leftist orthodoxies), so, bringing up this prior incident of his relations with a student is a convenient means of proffering an alleged rationale that makes it appear as though there is a substantive, non-political/ideological reason for getting rid of him.
“I would guess it was more than the one younger student (mentioned in the narrative) that Prof. Katz was “involved” with.”
Tangable proof, this is sounding a lot like Oberlin BS
Princeton, leading institution of learning? That’s in the past.
What Princeton is leading now, is a Violence and Propaganda campaign to destroy a race of people. They are at the vanguard.
Admirable, no? Despicable? Absolutely.
It’s time we returned the favor. We should tax their endowments, administrative staff and assets.
I hope that Professor Katz is promptly hired by another university that doesn’t kowtow to the fascistic Leftists’ obnoxiously totalitarian, vindictive and bullying intolerance towards people who express views and opinions that are at variance with Leftist orthodoxies and dogma.
But, are there any such universities remaining?
I wonder as to how much insurance coverage the university carries, as I expect it will need a lot.
I would bet that a competent legal firm could get that school into court. This crap needs to be fought!
All within the University
Nothing outside the University