"We’ve run plenty of stories about people who have been the target of mobs... What we’ve rarely heard—here or anywhere else—is what it’s like for the person who loves the mob’s target."

"What it’s like to watch someone you love being torn to pieces. Solveig Gold is one of those people." 

Writes Bari Weiss, at Common Sense, introducing "What Princeton Did to My Husband/My alma mater is not the school I once loved. But Joshua Katz is exactly the man I knew I married."

ADDED: Gold is now 27, or so I read recently in the NYT, and her essay says she entered Princeton as a student in 2013. So, it seems she met Katz when she was 18 and he was 44. There was a huge age and power difference between them. They began living together in 2019, when she was perhaps 24 and he was 50. She is currently a PhD candidate in Classics, his discipline. 

When Gold met Katz: "He was a balding nerd with a belly, and I adored him, but not like that. I adored him because he saw and brought out the best in me as a student and scholar.... Everyone at Princeton adored Joshua, male and female alike."

She continues:

"Princeton University’s board of trustees voted Monday to fire Joshua Katz, a tenured professor in the classics department..."

"... for failing to fully cooperate with a sexual-misconduct investigation that his supporters say is retaliation for his viewpoints.... [Samantha] Harris, Katz’s attorney, said the university’s actions could have a chilling effect on free speech on college campuses. 'The message to other people who might want to speak out is the price is having your personal life turned inside-out looking for information to destroy you,' Harris said. This is 'someone who was previously an award-winning, highly-respected professor, but from the moment he published that article onward he became a relentless target until he was fired.' [Gene A.] Jarrett, the faculty dean, pushed back against the assertion that Katz’s views were the catalyst for the investigation in a November report on the probe, saying 'the current political climate of the university, whether perceived or real, is not germane to the case.'" 

WaPo reports.

Here's my earlier post on this case.

The top-rated comment at the new article is: "I work at a university and it is a pretty clear policy and clearly understood that engaging in a relationship with a student will get you fired no matter what your politics or rank."

Okay, but then it had better be the case that every single one of these having-sex-with-students professors has been fired. No mercy. Zero tolerance. Yet, Katz's case itself shows that's not the policy, because the University looked into this very relationship in 2018: "He was suspended without pay for a year for violating school policy banning sexual relationships between faculty and students, and placed on three years’ probation."

"In July 2020, as social justice protests roiled the nation, Joshua Katz, a Princeton classics professor, wrote... that some faculty proposals to combat racism at Princeton would foment 'civil war on campus'..."

"... and denounced a student group, the Black Justice League, as 'a small local terrorist organization' because of its tactics in pushing for institutional changes. The remarks [were]... reviled by some... and lionized by others.... And they sent up a flare that led to scrutiny of other aspects of his life, including his conduct with female students. In the latest fallout from that debate, Princeton’s president has recommended dismissing Dr. Katz... for what a university report says was his failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago.... Princeton already knew about her. The university had started an investigation after it learned of the relationship in late 2017, about ten years after it happened, and Dr. Katz confessed to a consensual affair. He was quietly suspended without pay for a year.... The woman in the sexual relationship did not cooperate with the original Princeton investigation. But after [a student newspaper report on Dr. Katz], she filed a formal complaint that led the administration to open a new investigation, which it said was looking at new issues rather than revisiting old violations.... Dr. Katz’s wife, Solveig Gold, said he had lost many friends over the controversy.... Ms. Gold, 27, who is finishing her Ph.D. in classics at the University of Cambridge, graduated from Princeton in 2017. She said that she had been his student, but that there was no romantic relationship between them at the time. They married in July 2021."

From "After Campus Uproar, Princeton Proposes to Fire Tenured Professor/Joshua Katz says he was targeted because of his criticism of a campus protest group. A university report says the concerns are related to his inappropriate conduct with a female student" (NYT).

Obviously, it is terribly wrong to fire him for his writings, and it seems that the sexual material is being used as a cover. Sexual harassment is an important matter, but that's all the more reason not to use it dishonestly. There may be some new information about the 15-year-old case, but the matter was dealt with at the time. Would the University going back to other old cases and fire tenured professors? The answer can't be — only when it hates what they are writing.