If anything, Hobbes concludes, the incident shows “the lack of seriousness with which elite institutions still treat claims of sexual harassment.”
Well, let’s see. For one, the two former students who accused Katz of inappropriate conduct (more than a decade ago) never alleged that he had made advances and never claimed sexual harassment. Rather, they claimed that Katz, who has openly prided himself on being close to the students he mentors, blurred and eventually crossed the lines between the professional and the intimate in their interactions. These “repeated boundary violations” included one-on-one dinners, gifts such as “chocolates and tea from his travels abroad,” overly personal conversations, sharing of faculty gossip, etc. One of the women mentioned a dinner invitation that “felt like a date,” but acknowledged that Katz never made any actual romantic or sexual overtures.
(One of the women mentioned her discomfort with Katz’s behavior to another professor after she had graduated; the professor encouraged her to speak to an administrator, and she was eventually told that “a note had been placed in Katz’s file.” In his statement after the Daily Princetonian piece, Katz said that the university found no policy violation in that case but counseled him on “the appropriate boundaries of faculty-student friendships.”)
Hobbes’s objection to Applebaum’s claim that the issue of Katz’s sexual relationship with an undergraduate in the mid-2000s had been previously “adjudicated” is basically semantic nitpicking. The decision was made by administrators, not by a campus “court”; but the point is that the case had already been handled through appropriate official channels and Katz had already been disciplined (he was suspended without pay for a year and required to undergo counseling).
It’s entirely possible to argue that Katz should have been punished more severely. But Hobbes’s “debunking” really fails the laugh test when he asserts that there is “no evidence” that the Princetonian investigation into Katz’s past was related to his broadside against the faculty letter.
As the group Princetonians for Free Speech has pointed out, The Daily Princetonian extensively covered the backlash against Katz’s Quillette piece in July 2020; then, on November 8, it targeted Katz in an editorial titled “To create a more inclusive campus, Princeton must act against racist speech.” The editorial assailed Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber for standing by the school’s “hardline free-speech policy” and failing to treat racist speech as prohibited harassment. Such policies, the editors asserted, amounted to subjecting black students to constant trauma “in the name of an abstract principle that is prioritized over the well-being of our community members.” One of the editorial’s two specific examples of “racist speech” that should have been sanctioned was Katz’s article. (The main focus of the controversy was Katz’s admittedly inflammatory language describing a defunct student activist group, the Black Justice League, as a “local terrorist organization”—a comment that he felt was justified by the group’s bullying tactics, including toward black students who did not agree with its agenda.)
It’s not clear when the Princetonian began its investigation of Katz, leading to the story published on February 4 of this year. But given its scope—18 alumni and faculty members were interviewed while 38 more were contacted and did not respond; extensive materials were reviewed to corroborate the details—it seems likely that it went on for months. If Hobbes believes it was a mere coincidence that during the same time period, the same newspaper was attacking Katz for his “racist” speech and taking the administration to task for failing to punish him, I’m sure there’s a bridge I can sell him somewhere in New Jersey.
As for who is “misrepresenting the facts” here, you be the judge.