Princeton Betrays Its Principles

How does tenure end?

The question is not simply theoretical, nor does it have a single answer. But one answer has been supplied by the conduct of Princeton University in its recent firing of Joshua Katz, a classics professor. Tenure ends when the president of the university “personally” finds you not to have exercised your right to free speech “responsibly.”

The basic story is now well known, and may be summarized quickly. On July 8, 2020, Katz published a critical reply to a public “Faculty Letter” that had been issued four days earlier and addressed to Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber. Katz’s positions were, in the moment, contrarian. His language in one crucial sentence excited outrage from colleagues and students but also, importantly, officers and administrators of the institution.

I do not seek to debate again either the politics or the substance of Katz’s essay. Instead, I want to discuss the implications of Princeton University’s conduct for the safeguarding of free expression at academic institutions. One can be agnostic — given the dearth of information in the public sphere, one probably should be agnostic — on many questions regarding the case of Katz himself. By contrast, we know a great deal about the principles by which Princeton claims to regulate itself, and the institutional mechanisms that were corrupted to bring the case to a close.

To begin with, Princeton’s faculty voted in April 2015 to adopt verbatim the University of Chicago’s statement on free expression, which is now included in Princeton’s “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities,” Section 1.1.3. (Only the name of Princeton University was substituted for that of Chicago in the text.) Among other things, the statement urges:

Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the University, Princeton University fully respects and supports the freedom of all members of the University community “to discuss any problem that presents itself.”

In a word, Princeton’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most people at the university to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrongheaded. It is for the individual members of the university community, not for Princeton as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.

In clear violation of this rule, Princeton and its officers repeatedly and publicly announced their loathing of Katz’s speech. But this is not the reason for which he was ostensibly fired. Instead, Princeton allowed its mechanisms of adjudication to be mobilized and remobilized on grounds that appear pretextual — and which disregarded any respect for the principle of finality. It is this disregard for fundamental principles of procedure on which defenders of academic freedom should focus their attention.

Princeton maintains it dismissed Katz for violations of university policy in connection with a relationship he had with an undergraduate in 2006-7. The university has investigated the relationship twice — in 2017-2018, resulting in a year’s suspension without pay, and again in 2021-2022. The student in question did not participate in the earlier investigation. That inquiry resulted from information supplied by a third party, apparently someone who had been a fellow student at the time. In 2020, back at Princeton, Katz published his essay and aroused the condemnation of his president. Two events followed. First, his relationship with the student was investigated again. The new proceeding was conducted by the University’s Title IX office and it included a written statement from the student. It found no violation. Simultaneous with the second investigation of the relationship itself, another party, the dean of the faculty, also conducted a review of Katz’s cooperation with the 2018 investigation, and it was on the basis of this review — of Katz’s cooperation with an investigation into a relationship that had been found by the University itself to be without Title IX implications — that Katz was fired.

The principle of finality in law urges that adjudicative procedures should do their best under conditions of imperfect knowledge and human fallibility, but that once rulings are made, they should not be revisited. Legal and administrative institutions rightly allow limited exceptions to this rule. The question in this case is whether the information urging the reopening of a closed matter justified the exception, or whether the most plausible motive for revisiting the case was Katz’s controversial expression.

Here I must admit that my knowledge is imperfect. Princeton professes to adhere to a policy of confidentiality in personnel matters. It has therefore withheld most of the facts and even the procedures that it applied. But while much is unknown, a few explanations for this series of events can be ruled out.

To begin with, Princeton is not particularly interested in violations of policy in respect to sex between professors and undergraduates. For example, so far as I can tell, no effort has been made to survey students (or professors) as to whether any other professor, in classics or any other department, had sex with students — in that era or earlier or more recently. (I graduated from the department in 1990, and have consulted with a cross-section of alumni and alumnae of my own and other generations.) It is worth remembering that the first investigation of Katz was conducted and concluded without comment from the student in the relationship. On the contrary, the first investigation appears to have been motivated by, and satisfied with, the testimony, on the complainant side, only of a student (or more than one) from the period of the relationship. On that standard, the university could and should survey all students as to whether they know of any relationship that they deem inappropriate, even one that is consensual and not in violation of Title IX. But Princeton is not interested in protecting students from inappropriate conduct by professors, if its choice not to know is any indication. The invocation of policy and imposition of punishment in this case appears to have had another cause.

Nor is the university worried about the release and publication of personnel records, so long as it is done anonymously — albeit, it seems, by members of Katz’s own department. In covering the Katz business, The Daily Princetonian had the aid of “two faculty members” in preparing an article based on “archived web pages, internal classics department and University documents, financial records, University press releases, and Katz’s public statements.” Does Princeton feel that principles of confidentiality regulating personnel matters should permeate institutional culture, or that they should be honored or may be breached by employees so long as the ends meet the stated objectives of the officers of the institution?

What Princeton appears to care about is the content of one’s speech. Eisgruber may have averred that he was speaking “personally” in his objection to Katz, but Ben Chang, a university spokesperson, said the administration “will be looking into the matter further.” Both Eisgruber and Chang had to walk back their comments over the next two weeks — as did Katz’s own department, which had also condemned his writings — but the university was not done.

Princeton subsequently prepared a presentation for first-year students, in which it listed Katz’s published statement among a series of racist speech acts by representatives of the university stretching back to the 19th century. (Even worse, the website quoted not a verbatim but a tendentiously edited snippet of Katz’s text.) Faculty at Princeton objected but were overruled first by the vice provost for institutional equity and diversity and then by the dean of the faculty (both appointed by Eisgruber). Both rejected the claim that a web page produced by Princeton’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office is an official university website; and both declared the selective omission of words from Katz’s statement to be irrelevant.

Faculty at Princeton then appealed to the university’s Committee on Conference and Faculty Appeal, a board of nine professors elected by the faculty. The faculty board rejected each step in the reasoning of the vice provost and dean of the faculty. Among other things, the committee held that the editing of Katz’s words did matter; and that the website was an official publication of the university.

Despite the faculty committee’s ruling regarding the misconstruals and misconduct of his administration, Eisgruber rejected calls to remove the condemnation of a sitting faculty member from the university’s website. The material had been prepared by faculty, he asserted; to edit it would amount to an assault on academic freedom. It would remain available “for educational purposes.”

In sum, the firing of Joshua Katz was not motivated by any desire to discourage or punish sexual relations between professors of classics and undergraduates. Princeton has no regard for the confidentiality of personnel records. Nor does it respect the judgment of faculty committees, nor honor the Chicago principles, which it adopted as its own and quotes verbatim.

Instead, the firing of Joshua Katz had as its proximate mechanism a system of adjudication seemingly without statute of limitations or finality. In 2018, a judgment was made and a punishment imposed. The same case was then reconsidered a few years later, on a different legal theory; and simultaneously a new charge was initiated, connected to this reconsideration of the earlier process.

This disregard for any principle of finality has at least two important consequences. For one thing, it allows third parties to instrumentalize university procedures to pursue private forms of vengeance in reaction to political speech. It also serves the interest of the university as a business, or a brand. Whenever some matter arises that risks causing the university reputational harm, it is free to start an investigation, or repeat an investigation — no matter how long ago the events occurred, or how little parties in power had cared at the time, or even that it had already ruled in the matter.

But a system of adjudication so organized cannot sustain or support the university as an academic community devoted to freedom of expression, because it maximizes the professional risk to which any faculty member who speaks controversially can be subjected.

Some light is shed on this situation by consideration of the history of free expression at the University of Chicago before the writing of the Chicago Principles. In November 1967, a committee at Chicago chaired by Harry Kalven Jr., issued a report “on the University’s role in political and social action,” prompted by activists in the community who wanted the university to take positions and adopt policies in response to the Vietnam War. The report states: “The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” In order, therefore, to allow the fullest possible space for freedom of expression by individuals, the university “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.” It continues:

The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest.

Academic freedom at Princeton was thus doubly corrupted. This occurred first when Eisgruber expressed “personal” disgust with one of his own faculty — and again when he allowed that the institutions of the university should be used pretextually by individuals who claimed to share that disgust. By firing Katz for his misconduct in 2018, Princeton can continue publicly to genuflect before the Chicago principles and the sanctity of tenure, but its conduct is not worthy of the name of university.