Princeton Fires Tenured Professor, For Daring to Object to Scheme to Give Extra Sabbatical Months to "Faculty of Color" Just for Being Black

Sexton wrote about this last week.

In the wake of George Floyd's death, black students began demanding that they shouldn't have to take exams, and black faculty-- led by the "Black Justice League," a radical racial agitation group -- got on to the George Floyd Memorial Gravy Train too, demanding that they should get special perks just for being black.

The most privileged people on the face of the earth, and people who have already been well-compensated by race-based educational admissions and then hiring preferences, are demanding reparations.

And of course they attacked anyone who opposed their Race-Based Privileges.

Joshua Katz was a tenured professor at Princeton. He believed that he was an American and that Americans had the right to free speech.

He also believed that, having tenure, he had a special, inviolable right to explore the truth as it seemed to him and that the University could not punish him for doing so.

He was wrong on both counts.

He objected to the insane and racist demands of the very privileged Princeton race hustlers in an essay in Quillette-- and that choice of venue counted against him, a it was, at that time, a magazine for free-thinkers.

Although he said he agreed with some of their political points about racism, and agreed with some of their demands, some of their demands he could not abide.

But then there are dozens of proposals that, if implemented, would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate. Some examples: "Reward the invisible work done by faculty of color with course relief and summer salary" and "Faculty of color hired at the junior level should be guaranteed one additional semester of sabbatical" and "Provide additional human resources for the support of junior faculty of color." Let's leave aside who qualifies as "of color," though this is not a trivial point. It boggles my mind that anyone would advocate giving people--extraordinarily privileged people already, let me point out: Princeton professors-- extra perks for no reason other than their pigmentation.

The "faculty of color" demanded "course relief" -- meaning, they didn't want to teach as much as other teachers were required to and "summer salary," which I assume means they were demanding to be paid during the summer even though they were not in fact working during the summer.

This, they claimed, had to be done to pay them for the "invisible work" they were doing, which was uncompensated.

Note about "invisible work:" One of the most amazing claims made by the left -- and this is a very widespread idea -- is the idea that minorities, especially minority women, should be compensated -- paid money! -- for "emotional labor," by which they mean "the emotional labor of having to explain to you why you are wrong, which you already should have educated yourself about on your own, instead of impressing them against their will into involuntary servitude of forcing them to explain to you why you are wrong."

I'm not making that up; that is real. That is probably what is meant by "invisible work" here; they are probably just using a different term for the concept. They should be paid for for Pulling Racial Rank on you and telling you you are wrong and should defer to them because of their race. Because it exhausts them to have to pull racial rank like that, and they should be paid cash money for that service which they are providing to you, by educating you.

Not only do they get to shout "SHUT UP AND DEFER TO ME BASED ON MY SUPERIOR RACE!," but they demand you pay them for this dubious "service" you're "forcing them" to provide. Like slaves.

You colonizing slaver bigot.

It's truly incredible. Jaw-dropping, really.

...

That, plus they were to be given extra free time. Sabbatical time, time that academics are given off to think and write.

Paid vacation, in other words.

Katz objected. As he should.

The problem was: Because so many people were cowed by the mob, he was just about the only person who objected, and so was an easy target for the mob.

He was also targeted for calling "The Black Justice League" a little Maoist "terrorist group," which may have been a bit undiplomatic, but which has been proven to be perfectly accurate.

Tenured professors can only be fired for dishonesty or misconduct in their work, and Katz wasn't guilty of either of those.

So instead, the leftist professors and "Black Justice League" attempted to get him fired by re-litigating a fifteen year old case he had already been punished for -- he'd had a sexual affair with a 21 year old student and had already been suspended for one year without pay, and been on probation (which he'd served) for three years.

He'd already done his time for this crime. (And it's not much of a crime. A 21 year old is an adult.)

And now Princeton has fired him for that 15 year old offense. But everyone acknowledges, unofficially, that he's not being fired for that -- he's being fired for having opposed the demands of the "Black Justice League" at Princeton, and having caused one professor "harm," as she claimed, by opposing her demands.

Officially, they claim this is about seeking justice for a 15 year old consensual affair with a 21-year-old adult woman; unofficially, they admit, we punished him because he opposed our Racial Justice Schemes.

There is no free speech in America, and there is no tenure at the university.

His lawyer sums it up:

As Katz's lawyer Samantha Harris put it, his abysmal treatment "will have a powerful chilling effect on free speech, because anyone who might wish to express a controversial opinion knows that they must first ask themselves if their personal life can stand up to the kind of relentless scrutiny that Dr. Katz's life was subject to."

Yes, well that is the point: Submit or die.

Update:

A sabbatical is something that is usually earned by teaching for several semesters or even years in a row. Tenured professors get a certain number of sabbatical semesters, and new faculty often get a semester off after they have passed the 3rd-year review or after being promoted to associate professor and receiving tenure.

"Summer salary" -- well, faculty receive 12 checks a year, but their salary is annualized. They are really only paid for 9 months of the year. "Summer salary" usually refers to an extra payment, usually a one-time payment in June or July. In the departments where I've worked, the amount is not trivial: $5K up to $12K depending on their seniority (and negotiating skills, I guess).
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius

Ah right, entire semesters off for sabbaticals. I think I knew that at one time.

And they're demanding that new hires immediately get entire semesters off?! Preposterous!

Megyn Kelly discussed this with Jonathan Haidt. I recommend watching it. I've cued it up to the part where she begins asking, "Is it time to start cancelling the cancellers?"

I don't want to give anything away but her answer is "F*** YES." I mean, she's bloodthirsty. She sounds like one of us. And this pussy Jonathan Haidt is just sitting there whining "But two wrongs don't make a right...!" He transforms in front of your eyes from a man into David French.

So I thought I'd let you watch it before mentioning this: She says she's not just in favor of doing a deep journalistic dive on the Princeton University president who fired Joshua Katz to see if he has any affairs in his past that he can be #MeToo'd out of a job with -- I mean, we all say that kind of thing -- but she even says that she herself is considering if she personally wants to do her own reporting and research into the Princeton University president, digging up dirt on him, just to teach him the lesson that if you play the Cancellation game, then you are a participant in the game, and you get Cancelled next.

I mean, it's righteous. I hope she does it.

Update: Now having rewatched it -- I watched it when I was out on errands before -- her threat is really off-the-cuff and not seriously intended. Just a spontaneous "Here's something I should do, maybe." So unfortunately, she's not serious about investigating the university president herself.

I oversold that based on a flawed memory of it.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

| Access Comments