Conservative commentators and free speech advocates reacted with alarm to the news that Princeton University is planning to fire a tenured classics professor who made national headlines after he criticized his colleagues in 2020 for demanding expanded racial justice programs.
Joshua Katz, a professor of classics at Princeton who has taught at the university for over 20 years, is expected to be dismissed. The university plans to cite a consensual relationship Katz had with a student over a decade ago as the impetus for the firing despite the fact that Katz served a suspension in 2018 for his conduct, the Washington Free Beacon reported, raising fears that the move is retaliation for his speech.
On Wednesday, Katz’s looming pink slip by the prestigious Ivy League university drew widespread condemnation from academic freedom advocates and conservative commentators who recalled the nearly 2-year-old controversy and expressed hope that the embattled professor would sue the university. They also lamented the implications that firing a tenured professor would have for faculty willing to speak openly.
“If Katz is sent down, Princeton is probably lost,” conservative columnist Rod Dreher wrote Wednesday. “No professor will feel free to resist the woke totalitarians. If they can get a tenured professor of Katz’s academic status fired for crossing the ideological line, who is safe?”
Former New York Times editor and free speech advocate Bari Weiss tweeted, “I really hope Joshua Katz sues Princeton.”
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1526691908520583172?s=20&t=dsqHXaxuZbEX6dgorQFVyQ
Matthew Schmitz, a co-founder and editor of Compact magazine, blasted the pending move as “disgraceful,” adding that the incident was indicative of a “larger story to be told about the transformation of an institution once seen as relatively hospitable to differing views.”
https://twitter.com/matthewschmitz/status/1526696435978326017?s=20&t=dsqHXaxuZbEX6dgorQFVyQ
The dean of faculty made the recommendation to the university in November that Katz should be fired, even after the school’s Title IX office dismissed the complaint against Katz, concluding that the relationship with the student was a product of both parties being “willing and active participants,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Katz reportedly appealed the recommendation, noting he had served a suspension in 2018 without protest and that the decision was a “re-trial” of the previous investigation he faced. He was notified last week that he would be fired.
In July 2020, Katz published an op-ed critical of his colleagues for making a long list of demands pertaining to racial equity on campus. The professor blasted the group’s demands for a “dizzying array of changes” and called a formerly active black student organization called the Black Justice League a “small terrorist organization.” In response, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said that while Katz was entitled to freedom of speech, he did not “exercise that right responsibly.”
At the time, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit free speech organization, noted that freedom of expression includes administrative criticism of faculty and student speech but “should be careful not to convey the message that their criticism may be followed by punitive action,” which the organization said could have “chilling implications.”
Princeton acknowledged a request for comment from the Washington Examiner but did not provide a response.
