Joshua Katz, a respected linguist at Princeton, is not being fired because of an alleged relationship in 2006, but because he criticized woke abuses in 2020.
At Quilette, Katz had courageously condemned efforts to silence free speech and eliminate academic freedom.
“Independence of thought is considered the hallmark of academia, but everyone deserves it. In the United States, thank heavens, freedom to think for oneself is still a right, not a privilege,” he concluded.
In typical fashion, the radical leftists whom he had criticized in a restrained, civil and respectful fashion, unleashed the full fury of cancel culture and set out to destroy him.
What followed was Lavrentiy Beria’s “Show Me the Man and I’ll Show You the Crime.”
Since none of the false claims that Katz was in any way a racist or had engaged in hate speech, could go beyond impotent fuming they had to find something else.
And all this witch hunt came up was this…
Princeton University’s president has recommended that the school’s board of trustees fire a tenured classics professor, concluding he didn’t cooperate fully in a sexual-misconduct investigation, according to a copy of his letter to the board’s chair reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Salem witch trial judges would be embarrassed by this.
The report said that in 2018, Dr. Katz didn’t fully cooperate with investigators examining a consensual sexual relationship he had with an undergraduate student beginning in 2006, after her junior year, and continuing until her graduation. The student declined to participate in the investigation at that time.
We know exactly why Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber wants Katz fired. He told us so himself in an op-ed in 2020, deeming his speech “irresponsible and offensive.”
“Our policies, however, protect Katz’s freedom to say what he did, just as they protected the Black Justice League’s. He can be answered but not censored or sanctioned,” Eisgruber claimed.
Now he grubbily seeks to bypass those policies.
“Show Me the Man and I’ll Show You the Crime.”
somehistory says
If the student didn’t cooperate, and the professor didn’t cooperate, how was their anything to “investigate”?
Can’t there be a statute of limitations on such things being dredged up to get someone fired or have *reason* to fire a person? Esp should that be in cases such as this.
I hope he can be successful. Young people need to hear at least some Truth in these “higher ed” places that were meant to be places to hear new things and to learn to “think”.
gravenimage says
Princeton President Conspires to Fire Tenured Prof Who Defended Free Speech
…………….
Just disgusting. I can remember when universities as least pretended to support freedom of speech.
“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
Yes, indeed–this is a from the horrifying Lavrentiy Beria, who was the notorious head of Joseph Stalin’s secret police.
I was just thinking how this is ‘worthy’ of Soviet policy.
Wellington says
What a wuss. But then what passes for higher education in America today, well even any education in America today from pre-school onward, has been so corrupted by Leftism and cowardice, even perversion (e.g., instructing 1st-graders about bisexuality, lesbianism, homosexuality and transgenderism, et al.), that nothing surprises me any longer.
Virtually all education in America (there are a few exceptions but not enough to “make up the difference”) has now reached a level of a cruel joke, and demonstrative once again that civilizational collapse ordinarily occurs from within far more than it does from without.
Leftism is a mental disorder and Islam is evil. Start from these premises and Western Civilization still has the capacity to be saved from itself. Don’t start from these premises and the chances that Western Civilization can survive will remain very slim. Count on it.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
Agree 100%.
Pervasive leftism / islam is incompatible with Western civilization.
somehistory says
He has been fired.