It was a bold move, writing for the “dark web” publication, Quillette, when you’re a professor at a school like Princeton at a time when your campus is in upheaval following George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing protests, open letters and “anti-racist” demands. But tenured classics prof Joshua Katz did it anyway.
In Princeton, New Jersey, on July 4th, 2020, just two hours after my family and I sat around the festive table and read the Declaration aloud in celebration, a group of signatories now in the hundreds published a “Faculty Letter” to the president and other senior administrators at Princeton University.
This letter begins with the following blunt sentence: “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.” One important difference between the two documents might wrongly be dismissed as merely cosmetic. In 1776 there were “united States” but there was not yet the “United States”; in these past two months, by contrast, at a time when we are increasingly un-united, “black” has become “Black” while “white” remains “white.”
This was tantamount to begging for campus backlash, cries of “racist” and calls for his head. And that’s what happened.
The reaction to Dr. Katz’s views was swift and strong. Mr. Eisgruber told the campus newspaper that he objected “personally and strongly to his false description” of the student group as a terrorist organization.
But Princeton’s President, Christopher Eisgruber, was purported to be a defender of free speech, even if offensive, so calls for his head didn’t immediately metastasize, leaving Katz to take a victory lap in the Wall Street Journal. He celebrated a bit too soon.
But with attention focused on Dr. Katz, the student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, began an investigation of sexual harassment accusations against him. It culminated in a lengthy report in February 2021 about his sexual relationship with the undergraduate.
Princeton already knew about her. The university had started an investigation after it learned of the relationship in late 2017, and Dr. Katz confessed to a consensual affair. He was quietly suspended without pay for a year.
That it was old news to Princeton doesn’t make it old news to the students or their newspaper. But whether it is or not is irrelevant. The focus on Katz wasn’t because of his earlier dalliance, nor the effort to manufacture someone dirty out of taking female students to nice dinners while ignoring that he did the same with male students in order to create the impression of sexual impropriety when there was nothing to see.
And when you want to destroy the target of your progressive hatred, the only thing that matter is that your target is destroy. How or why is secondary. Any rationalization will do.
But his lawyer, Samantha Harris, said she was expecting the trustees to fire him. “In our view, this is the culmination of the witch hunt that began days after Professor Katz published an article in Quillette that led people to call for his termination,” Ms. Harris said on Thursday.
Princeton doesn’t deny that its firing of a tenured professor who became the target of campus outrage because of his “racist” Quillette article. Instead, it contends that whatever it does to Katz is pure as the driven snow, even if it had already investigated, concluded and punished the very conduct upon which it uses to punish him again.
Princeton’s faculty dean, Gene A. Jarrett, rejected that view. In a 10-page report, dated Nov. 30, 2021, the dean detailed reasons for dismissing Dr. Katz. Dr. Jarrett addressed what he said was Dr. Katz’s contention that there was a “direct line” from the Quillette article to being investigated for misconduct.
“I have considered Professor Katz’s claim and have determined that the current political climate of the university, whether perceived or real, is not germane to the case, nor does it play a role in my recommendation,” Dr. Jarrett wrote. That document became the basis for the president’s recommendation.
The contention isn’t that there was some parallel investigation into Katz at the time his article evoked outrage, but that if you ask for a campus to hate you for what you write, don’t be surprised that your actions gave rise to a deep search to look for a weapon to use against you. And as sex on campus and #MeToo were explosive issues, they were ripe to take Katz down.
Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.
–Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria
What was the basis upon which Katz’s already known, already punished, affair with a student was reignited and repurposed?
The woman in the sexual relationship did not cooperate with the original Princeton investigation. But after the Princetonian report, she filed a formal complaint that led the administration to open a new investigation, which it said was looking at new issues rather than revisiting old violations, according to the university report.
Princeton asserted that Dr. Katz had discouraged the woman from seeking mental health treatment while they were together, for fear of disclosing their relationship; that he had pressured her not to cooperate with the investigation in 2018; and that he had hindered that investigation by not being totally honest and forthcoming, according to the report.
Were these new issues, worthy of a new investigation? They certainly create the appearance of Katz engaged in some nefarious conduct, even if the woman was no longer a student and could thus suffer no Title IX injury. Whether this is a product of rationalizing ordinary conduct to create the rhetorical excuse to act upon it, to make nothing appear to be something, is unclear. It does, however, emit the usual odor of post hoc rationalization as Princeton had the essential information and imposed significant punishment on Katz for it.
But the more fundamental question is whether this is, as Sam Harris says, nothing more than a witch hunt to seek and find any excuse to punish Katz for his speech while creating plausible deniability that it’s for something else. Had Katz not posted in Quillette, there would be no search and destroy mission at Princeton. Excuses to the contrary, there is no doubt that but for his hated article, tenured classics prof Joshua Katz’s firing would not be imminent.
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