Princeton Board Fires Tenured Professor Joshua Katz, Backing President’s Recommendation
Categories: US Education News
Princeton University’s board of trustees voted Monday to fire longtime classics professor Joshua Katz, adopting the president’s recommendation and finding that the faculty member failed to cooperate fully in a sexual-misconduct investigation.The board based its vote on the recommendations of Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber and Gene Jarrett, the dean of faculty, as well as “a review of the extensive record by an ad hoc committee of the Board appointed to consider the matter,” according to a university statement. The dismissal of a tenured professor at Princeton is rare but not unprecedented. The professor’s allies slammed the president’s recommendation last week to fire Dr. Katz, characterizing it as a politically motivated effort to silence the academic after he criticized the school’s antiracism initiatives. They said Dr. Katz’s comments in a 2020 essay didn’t align with what they described as Princeton’s libera.University administrators have said there was ample reason to dismiss the professor and that politics played no role in the decision. Samantha Harris, Dr. Katz’s lawyer, said the board’s decision didn’t come as a surprise. Earlier this month, after Mr. Eisgruber had recommended Dr. Katz’s dismissal but before the board voted, the professor tried to negotiate his resignation, Ms. Harris said. The school insisted the president retain the right to say that he had recommended the dismissal.The former student didn’t participate in that investigation, after which Dr. Katz was suspended without pay for one year. In July 2020, the academic became a cause célèbre among conservative academics and free speech advocates. But he was lambasted by many faculty and students after writing an essay in the online publication Quillette that criticized faculty recommendations to address Princeton’s racist history. In the piece, he said the proposals—including creating a faculty committee to investigate and punish “racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication”—would curtail free speech on campus if adopted.