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Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber is demanding that a tenured professor be fired following woke student outrage after the professor opposed giving black colleagues more sabbatical time and higher salaries than white employees.
The dismissal request, sent last week by Eisgruber to the school’s board of directors, accuses professor Joshua Katz of not cooperating with a 2018 investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, according to a report by Daily Mail.
Princeton Campus (Kah-Wai Lin/Flickr)
The 2018 investigation examined a relationship the professor had with a student in 2006, and was later resolved with the professor being suspended without pay for one year.
Students, however, considered the matter unresolved, and launched a second probe via the school newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, which suggested the professor did not fully cooperate with the investigation.
The student-led probe reportedly came after Katz said he was “embarrassed” by several policies implemented by Princeton in response to the 2020 death of George Floyd, which included a campaign to address the school’s “racist” history, and requests to give black professors more sabbatical time and higher salaries than white professors.
Eisgruber’s demand to see Katz fired is being viewed as a political move by many, who point out that the university president previously condemned the professor over a column that Katz published in Quillette criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement on campus.
Katz, who started teaching at Princeton in 1998, penned a column detailing the extreme efforts that social justice student protesters have made, and referred to one leftist student group as a “local terrorist organization.”
Eisgruber reacted at the time by issuing a statement arguing that Katz had failed to use his “free speech” in a responsible manner and that he inappropriately “disparaged” students that have participated in protests.
“While free speech permits students and faculty to make arguments that are bold, provocative, or even offensive, we all have an obligation to exercise that right responsibly,” Eisgruber said in a statement. “Katz has failed to do so, and I object personally and strongly to his false description of a Princeton student group as a ‘local terrorist organization.’”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
