There is No Free Speech "Crisis" on Campus: A Princeton Inquisition (Ep. 2 of 3)

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Come along with us to some of the most prestigious colleges in America. We’ve come to campus to bury forever a popular culture warrior talking point: there is no college free speech “crisis.” Crisis requires conflict. It requires warring parties. And on campus today, the war is... over. The dissidents lost, and the mono-culture is the new normal.

In this second episode, we revisit the infamous case of Joshua Katz.

In the summer of 2020, at the peak of our national racial reckoning, hundreds of professors at Princeton University co-signed an “anti-racism” manifesto that, if implemented, would have turned their school into a woke indoctrination center. The manifesto called for: mandatory anti-racism training; expansive race-based hiring and promotion quotas; the elimination of standardized testing; and extra salary and sabbaticals for black professors.

The only Princeton professor willing to publicly criticize these obscene demands was an otherwise anonymous, self-described “library rat” named Joshua Katz, a long-time professor of classics and widely beloved undergraduate instructor boasting some of the most popular classes on campus.

Everyone already knows how Katz’s story ends: he was fired. The news prompted international headlines. The official pretext was that Katz had had an inappropriate relationship with an undergraduates. That always felt like cynical spin: Katz had long ago admitted to his indiscretion and had been formally punished for it. This re-investigation would have been barred by double jeopardy protections in a normal criminal court. Most outsiders rightly saw Katz’s firing as an obvious act of ideological retaliation.

But there’s always been a mystery at the heart of Katz’s case: Who set off that second investigation? Who was the prime mover?

We think we found out.

This episode features interviews with free speech lawyer Samantha Harris and Princeton professors Sergiu Klannerman and Bernard Haykl.

Episode three dropping soon.