Princeton president recommends tenured professor be fired for railing against woke students

Princeton University’s president is demanding one of the school’s most distinguished professors be fired, following student uproar over the educator’s criticism of woke school policies and racial politics that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.

The recommended dismissal, sent by University President Christopher Eisgruber to the school’s board of directors last week, accuses classics professor Joshua Katz of not cooperating with a 2018 investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.

The investigation looked into a relationship Katz, 51, had with a student in 2006. It saw the tenured professor briefly suspended, after being resolved internally. 

However, more than a year later, a second probe led by students at the school newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, aired claims that the professor didn’t fully cooperate and misled investigators during the 2018 inquiry.

The probe came shortly after Katz said he was ’embarrassed’ by a slew of questionable policies passed by the New Jersey university after the May 2020 killing of Minneapolis man Floyd.

Some of the programs Katz found fault with was a campaign to address the school’s ‘racist’ history and requests to give black professors more sabbatical time and higher salaries than their white counterparts.

The move by Eisgruber, 60, is being viewed by many as a politically motivated one, with many accusing the university of targeting Katz for his outspoken criticism of the school’s liberal staff and policies and not for the settled misconduct claims.

The recommended dismissal accuses classics professor Joshua Katz of not cooperating with a 2018 investigation into a relationship he had with a student in 2006.

The move by University President Christopher Eisgruber has many accusing the university of targeting Katz for his criticism of the school’s liberal staff and racial politics

Katz slammed the school-made proposals in an essay published to online magazine Quillette in July 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests and other woke movements quickly spread across the country.

In the op-ed, titled A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor, Katz said the ‘proposals, if implemented, would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate.’

He also said of the proposals, aired in a 4,100-word Princeton Faculty letter signed by students, staff, and alumni, that he was ’embarrassed’ for his colleagues that signed it. 

‘I am friends with many people who signed the Princeton letter, which requests and in some places demands a dizzying array of changes, and I support their right to speak as they see fit,’ Katz wrote.  

‘But I am embarrassed for them,’ he wen on. ‘To judge from conversations with friends and all too much online scouting, there are two camps: those cheering them on and those who wouldn’t dream of being associated with such a document. No one is in the middle.’

He then urged onlookers to read the letter, which was addressed to President Eisgruber and other senior administrators at the university, citing how the policies broke students and school staffers’ first amendment rights and limited free speech.

The investigation, which looked into a relationship Katz had with a student in 2006, saw the tenured professor suspended, and was subsequently resolved internally. However, more than a year later, a second student-led probe aired claims that the professor didn’t fully cooperate and misled investigators during the 2018 inquiry

The essay also saw Katz denounce the extremist student group that pushed for the policies, the Black Justice League, as ‘a small local terrorist organization’ after it successfully lobbied to have former President Woodrow Wilson’s name removed from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs, due to his racist beliefs and policies.