Joshua Katz (classicist)

Joshua Katz
Born	Joshua Timothy Katz (1969-09-12) September 12, 1969 New York, U.S.
Occupation	Former Cotsen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University
Spouse(s)	Solveig Lucia Gold
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (2010) Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford (2010)
Academic background
Education	Dalton School
Alma mater	Yale University (BA) University of Oxford (MPhil) Harvard University (PhD)
Thesis title	Topics in Indo-European Personal Pronouns
Thesis url	https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Topics-in-Indo-European-personal-pronouns-Katz/63e19f7a70aeb77af85242e77ec7730b9e1973f5
Thesis year	1998
Doctoral advisor	Calvert Watkins
Academic work
Discipline	Historical linguistics, Comparative linguistics, Classics
Institutions	Princeton University (1998–2022) Institute for Advanced Study (2002–2003) École pratique des Hautes Études (2011) University of Berlin (2015)

Joshua Timothy Katz (born September 12, 1969) is an American linguist and classicist who was the Cotsen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University until May 2022. He is a scholar on the languages, literatures, and cultures of ancient and medieval history. Currently, he is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In 2020, Katz became a source of political controversy about "cancel culture" when his essay in Quillette calling the Black Justice League, a former Princeton student group, a "small local terrorist organization" led to the withdrawal of his delegate status by the American Council of Learned Societies. In response, Katz unsuccessfully sued the society, alleging "viewpoint discrimination", and wrote in various publications condemning "political correctness". In 2021, The Daily Princetonian reported that Katz had engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with a former student in violation of university policy in the mid-2000s and had been suspended in 2018 as a result. On May 23, 2022, Princeton made the controversial decision to fire him, after a second investigation found Katz had allegedly lied during the original 2018 investigation into sexual misconduct.

Early life and education

Katz was born in New York in 1969, the son of chemist Thomas J. Katz. He attended the Dalton School in New York City before attending Yale University for his bachelor's degree in linguistics, graduating summa cum laude. After graduating from Yale, Katz attended the University of Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship and earned a master's degree in general linguistics and comparative philology in 1993. He completed a PhD in linguistics at Harvard University in 1998.

Academic career

Katz joined the faculty of Princeton University as a classics lecturer in 1998 and, by 2006, had received tenure as an associate professor. From September 2002 to August 2003, Katz was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2008, he became full professor at Princeton. He has since held visiting professorships at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Université Paris Diderot, and the University of Berlin.

Katz became a popular undergraduate teacher at Princeton and was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2003, the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award in 2008, and the Sophie and L. Edward Cotsen Faculty Fellowship. He was praised by the university for “the care he takes with students in and out of the classroom” and was recognized as one of four faculty members for outstanding teaching in 2003, with a class of his making The Daily Beast's list of "hottest college courses" in 2011. Katz was president of Princeton's Phi Beta Kappa society for two terms, department representative for the classics from 2003–2005, a member of the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline, and director of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows, which he founded in 2009.

He chairs the selection committee of the Barry Scholarship at the University of Oxford.

Political controversy and sexual misconduct investigations

Katz was investigated by Princeton twice, stemming from a relationship he had with a student around 2005. Before the second investigation, he wrote a controversial opinion pieces about race, near the peak of the 2020 George Floyd protests. The second investigation over his student relationship, which led to his termination, created its own controversy over possible free speech suppression, since it came on the heels of Katz's essay on race.

First investigation

A Princeton University investigation in 2018 found that during the mid-2000s, Katz had engaged in a multi-year consensual relationship with a female undergraduate student in the classics department in violation of university policy on faculty-student relationships. The investigation resulted in Katz taking a year of unpaid leave as a suspension. It was not made public until 2021.

Throughout 2020–2021, Katz wrote essays in The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Quillette, and National Review, among others, criticizing political correctness. His July 2020 essay in the online magazine Quillette criticized a former Princeton student group, the Black Justice League, describing it as "a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands" and "baying for blood." Katz received backlash from colleagues, including the Princeton Department of Classics chair Michael Flower, but was praised by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal and columnist Rod Dreher for speaking out against cancel culture once the story reached national attention. A university spokesperson initially said it would look into the controversy, but it opted not to investigate. In July 2020, Katz wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "I Survived Cancellation at Princeton." After the American Council of Learned Societies revoked his delegate status to a conference in Paris, Katz sued the group in 2021 for viewpoint discrimination, but a judge dismissed the lawsuit.

Second investigation and firing

In February 2021, The Daily Princetonian reported the university's 2018 misconduct investigation that had led to Katz's suspension. Katz acknowledged breaking the university's rules. Princeton began a second investigation, which concluded in November 2021 that Katz had "misrepresented facts" in the 2018 inquiry and had discouraged the former student in the relationship from cooperating with it. Supporters of Katz, including the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, criticized the university, alleging the investigation sought to suppress Katz' free speech rights.

Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber called for Katz's removal from the university on May 10, 2022, based on the new evidence from the second investigation. Katz was dismissed from the faculty, entirely, after a vote by the university's board of trustees on May 23, 2022. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by Katz soon after, in which he alleged that the university had fired him for political reasons and had misrepresented his positions to provoke dissent.

Other activities

When plans for the University of Austin were announced in 2021, Katz joined its board of advisors.

Personal life

In July 2021, Katz married Solveig Gold, a doctoral candidate in classics at University of Cambridge, who graduated from Princeton in 2017 and was a former student of his.

External links

• His page at Princeton University
• His page at the Guggenheim Foundation
• Transcript of his Interview with Shilo Brooks at the University of Colorado, Boulder