Reception brunch, 10:00am - 12:00 pm Click here to register
Princeton University, Bobst Hall, 83 Prospect Ave--hosted by the James Madison Program and Princetonians for Free Speech
Panel discussion, 1:30 - 3:00 pm
Betts Auditorium – Architecture Building N101 -- hosted by the James Madison Program
The Fight for Free Speech at Princeton and Beyond: A Discussion Led by Professor Robert P. George
This podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
In this episode of the Princeton Tory Podcast, Billy Wade '23 discusses the state of free speech on Princeton's campus with three of the University's professors: Sergiu Klainerman, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics; John Benedict Londregan '88, Professor of Politics and International Affairs; and Elizabeth Bogan, Senior Lecturer in Economics. Delving into faculty experiences with the landscape of free speech at Princeton, Wade and our guests examine the role of educational institutions as havens for free expression, the impact of cancel culture on the speech of academics, and proper limitations on the ability of universities to suppress opinion.
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Princeton University is planning to fire one of the most distinguished classics professors in the country, Joshua Katz, after his criticism of the school’s racial politics made him the target of student protests and the subject of two separate university investigations. University president Christopher Eisgruber—who in 2020 alleged that Katz had failed to exercise his free speech "responsibly"—passed his recommendation that Katz be stripped of tenure and fired to the university’s board of trustees last week, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge of the situation.
It is rare for a university to fire a tenured professor, and even rarer for a university to fire a professor with Katz’s record: By the university’s own admission, he did not commit fraud or sexual misconduct, two of the most common grounds for revoking tenure. Rather, the university is citing as grounds for dismissal a consensual relationship Katz engaged in with a student more than a decade ago, and for which he was already disciplined by the school in 2018.
The board is all but guaranteed to accept Eisgruber’s recommendation when it meets on Wednesday, the sources said. Board members include Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken, who has presided over several high-profile free speech-related scandals on her campus, including the intimidation of a second-year law student by university administrators. Princeton University did not respond to a request for comment. Katz is perhaps the campus’s most outspoken critic of the school’s backbreaking political correctness, including calls from faculty members to award their minority colleagues extra sabbatical time, "course relief," and "summer salary." His criticism has been frank and unsparing.
April 11 - Eisgruber’s Effort to Portray Princeton’s Attack on Free Speech as a Defense of It
April 7 - Exposing the Attempt to Whitewash what happened
April 6 - Princeton’s Free Speech Rule Deception
View a comprehensive timeline of how free speech is dying at Princeton.
