A Princeton classics professor was fired “in effect immediately” on Monday after university officials found he was not completely honest and did not cooperate in investigating his sexual relationship with a student about 15 years ago.
The dismissal of Professor Joshua Katz was a rare case of dismissal of a full-time professor and came after a heated debate at the university and in broader political spheres over whether he was a target for his policies. In 2020, he wrote an article in Quillette, an online magazine that criticized anti-racist proposals by teachers, students and staff at Princeton.
The university’s statement on the dismissal does not even hint at the problem of freedom of speech. The reasons given by the university for the dismissal are based on “a detailed written complaint from a graduate who had a consensual relationship with Dr. Katz while she was a student under his academic guidance.” This connection was in 2006 and 2007, but the graduate did not file a complaint until 2021.
Dr. Katz declined to comment immediately. But his lawyer, Samantha Harris, said Dr. Katz was not surprised by his dismissal.
She said the university’s claim that Dr. Katz had tried to obstruct the investigation into his sexual relationship with the student was a “mischaracterization.”
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And she said: “The university’s decision will have a powerful chilling effect on freedom of speech, because anyone who wants to express a conflicting opinion knows that they must first ask themselves whether their privacy can withstand the kind of ruthless control that Dr. Katz’s Life began only days after the publication of his article in Quillette. “
Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber addressed the debate on Dr. Katz during remarks on Saturday to alumni returning to campus for meetings.
He defended his record for freedom of speech and said the university should have acted when professors violated the rules of conduct.
“We take these rules very seriously here and we believe that a member of the faculty is bound by these obligations, no matter how distinctive they may be and no matter what his political views may be,” he said. “Political views are not a reason to investigate someone. They are also not protection to investigate someone. “
A statement from the university said that a 2021 investigation “found a number of cases in which Dr. Katz misrepresented facts or was not clear” during his 2018 student relationship investigation.
One such case, the statement said, was “a successful effort to discourage the student from participating and cooperating once she has expressed her intention to do so.” The investigation also found that “Dr. Katz exposed the student to injury while she was a student, discouraging her from seeking mental health even though she knew she was in trouble, all in an attempt to cover up a relationship she knew was forbidden by university rules. in the statement.
These actions, the statement said, were “not only gross violations of the university’s policy, but also completely incompatible with his duties as a member of the faculty.”
Ms Harris said investigators had taken things said between Dr. Katz and his former student during outbursts of anger and helplessness in a stressful moment and turned them into much more humiliating statements that were refuted by the context. which he has provided in modern emails.
Dr. Katz and his allies have argued that he has already been punished once – by being removed – for the relationship, and claim that it was resurrected as a pretext for revenge against him for the Quillette article. The article criticized the anti-racist proposals in a July 2020 letter signed by more than 300 Princeton faculty, students and staff.
In the most widely cited and abusive element of his article, he called the student group, the Black Justice League, a “small local terrorist organization” that made the lives of many students, including black students, miserable.
The dismissal was expected after Princeton’s president, Mr. Eisgruber, recommended its termination in a May 10 letter to the chairman of the board of trustees.
The dismissal did not go smoothly. When it was said that Princeton had announced his dismissal, Dr. Katz’s wife, Solveig Gold, said: “This is news to me. We have nothing. ” She added: “It’s pretty awful that we don’t have that ourselves.”
She later said that Dr. Katz found that the university’s announcement that he had been fired had been sent to the wrong email.
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