The Patriot Post® · Woke Princeton Cancels Tenured Professor

Pathos and unbridled emotional responses, being the religious conviction of the wokesters, has led the harpies at Princeton University to oust tenured professor Joshua Katz. His crime? Disagreeing with the open letter that faculty and staff wrote to the Princeton administration in response to the death of George Floyd.

In July 2020, Professor Katz wrote an op-ed wherein he defended his opposition to signing the letter. He stated that while there are several demands in the letter with which he agreed, there are others that he adamantly opposed. His fear, should all these demands be met, is that it “would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate.”

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber was so distraught that one of his faculty would dare to defy the “anti-racist” narrative that he later published another article in the university’s paper, The Princetonian, denouncing Katz. This same article caught the attention of the country when Eisgruber declared that Princeton University was systemically racist.

Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education’s former secretary, launched an investigation into the university as a result of Eisgruber’s letter. After all, Princeton had been receiving Title IV federal money with the understanding that it was complying with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Interesting how this “systemic racism” was getting lost in the shuffle of the daily news churn. Perhaps with the Biden administration in office, Eisgruber feels free to espouse how racist Princeton is without fear of consequences because he is “doing something.”

Eisgruber began a witch hunt on Katz in 2020, which has now resulted in Katz being removed from his tenured position.

Primarily, of course, Katz’s situation is an example of his exercising his First Amendment rights and the powers that be silencing him. That is how cancel culture in the highest levels of academia works. But Princeton needed it to look like that wasn’t the real reason for ousting Katz.

In 2021, The Princetonian raked up Katz’s past consensual relationship with an undergraduate for which he had already been punished. The article alleged that details of the affair “remain uninvestigated and unaddressed.” This prompted another inquisition, making it a blatant case of double jeopardy and a violation of due process. Activists on campus were soon calling for Katz’s removal from the classroom to keep students out of harm’s way. Katz was found not guilty, but the dean of faculty, Gene Jarrett, eventually called for his firing. As one Spectator writer puts it, “The left rejects due process when it suits their needs and goals.” This shows students and faculty alike that the autocrats who lead the university will have no qualms about digging up dirt on anyone who gets in their way.

It’s also a travesty from an educational standpoint because of the important work this distinguished classics professor will no longer be able to do. Katz’s specialty was ancient languages. According to his wife: “Joshua was the only member of his department qualified to teach multiple such languages: Egyptian, Sanskrit, Tocharian, Syriac, Akkadian, Old Norse, Old Irish, etc. Indeed, Joshua’s earliest academic publications concerned Native American languages. His work was the least Eurocentric in the department.” In other words, Princeton has silenced a distinguished scholar whose work encompassed studying ancient languages beyond the standard Latin and Greek. No other professor is currently qualified to take over this position. It’s yet another example of woke ideology destroying scholarship.

Katz is not the first professor to fall victim to the woke mob, and he certainly won’t be the last. His story is that of a grave miscarriage of justice, another example of free speech being silenced, and a loss of a good teacher.

Princeton is still considered a prestigious Ivy League school. It counts former presidents among its alumni. It has now fallen victim to the “anti-racist” ideology that pollutes everything it touches. The university has sacrificed this well-loved professor on its woke altar. How far the great have fallen.