College and university presidents have in recent years often made spectacles of themselves by choosing to side with the leftist campus mobs rather than doing justice. Currying favor with the “woke” forces is evidently far more important.

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Richard Vedder ruminates about two such instances, namely the travesty at Duke over the accusations made against members of the lacrosse team and the treatment of Princeton’s Professor Joshua Katz over his criticisms of the BLM movement.

Back in 2006, Duke’s president, Richard Brodhead, went ballistic against the entire lacrosse team and its coach when the campus mob demanded vengeance. It turned out later that the accusations were false, but Brodhead didn’t have the guts to withhold judgment until the facts were known.

And just recently, Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, has similarly covered himself in shame for demanding that Professor Joshua Katz, a tenured and highly esteemed member of the faculty, be terminated.

Vedder writes, “For those unfamiliar with the case, Prof. Katz was fired over alleged improprieties related to an offense—having consensual sexual relations with a 21-year-old girl—that took place over 15 years ago (!). Only after Katz started saying things that the Princeton administration did not like did it punish him for that incident. Fully a dozen years after the 2006 transgression, it suspended Katz without pay for one year. Then, in 2020, Katz expressed his disapproval of so-called anti-racist demands made by some members of the Princeton community after the George Floyd killing. That led to a story in The Daily Princetonian about the 2006 incident, prompting the school to reopen the case, accuse Katz of new improprieties related to the incident, and fire him.”

So, a professor has been fired because his views upset a vocal part of the campus community. Freedom of speech? Not if you say “offensive” things.

Vedder proceeds to explain in detail what is so revolting about Princeton’s action against Katz. He also observes that Princeton has adopted the “Chicago Principles” for free speech — but chose to ignore them when faced with a controversy.

He concludes, “Because of government subsidies, the potency of market forces is weakened in the case of universities, but it still exists. Ignoring widely accepted values like free expression and due process has consequences that will weaken the public support that is critical to colleges’ success.”