"As far as I can tell, he’s a moderate leftist who was victimized by the far left. His plight has not inspired him to rethink his overall political philosophy."
They are all basically useless.
In general, they don't know why things ended up this way, don't know how to fix it, wouldn't have the courage to fix it if they knew, and more or less are just hoping that something, they are not sure what, will allow them *personally* to go back to the way things were.
I think you need to regard this kind of liberal as hopeless. This is true even if they were say nominally Republican or whatever. If Woke gets defeated, these people won't contribute much to its defeat.
1. With respect to #4, that was a significant part of a famous novel you enjoyed as a youth.
2. With respect to #14, maybe the students would be more tolerant of the Katz-Gold relationship if they were told Katz suffers from transchronologicalism, he feels like a young man trapped in an older man's body, and that Gold realizes that she must see him as he sees himself as a matter of justice and tolerance.
3. I believe you have a bet to the effect you won't be personally harmed by wokeness at your university because of your outspoken views (expressed in this very blog post.) Yet students presumably self-selected to favor limited government seem not the sort to defend you if anyone complained you are "SHUDDER" opposed to affirmative action AND STUDENT/TEACHER ROMANCE. And Katz himself shows many academic victims have no interest in going anywhere near as far as you in speaking out. Are you at all concerned, since you made this bet, that you may lose?
That would make a lot of sense. Young inexperienced women attracted to much older powerful men is often a dynamic that doesn't work out well. A few years of perspective and experience would help her make a better decision.
"I had to provocatively respond"
You did, huh?
"I couldn’t tell if I’d stumped my students, or if they just thought I was crazy."
In the movie Frozen Elsa points out to Anna that maybe she's a dumb confused teenager that shouldn't marry like the first guy she ever met after one song. Even children can understand this logic.
"While they’re ultra-tolerant of unconventional sexual orientations and gender identities, a twenty-year age gap grossed them out."
Because all of that weird stuff happens to other people that would never be them, and it's all just thoughtless posturing. A straight relationship between a student and a professor is a lot more real.
---
Look, I don't think any of this had to do with his firing and would find most of the people that treated him this way repugnant, but can't we just say that without trying to be an edge lord about professors trying to make it with young women.
1) So Katz has a consensual - repeat: consensual - affair with a student 15 years ago. SO WHAT?
And then he is punished 10 years later by the university? Affairs are not illegal, and universities are not soviet gulags (or perhaps they are). Nobody finds this strange? 10 years later? What is this, the Soviet Union?
2) Eisgruber is the ultimate idiot. He publicly said that in Princeton there was and is "systemic racism". When (still under the Trump Admin) he was called out by the US Dept of Education, he ducked. He cowered. If in Princeton there is really systematic racism, then Eisgruber should give up his multi-million dollar salary and Princeton should sell its 22 billion dollar endowment and give it to the oppressed minorities. But Eisgruber and Princeton will not do it, of course, because they are idiots.
3) Nobody points out this: are you all an army of saints without fault? Can all and everybody of you, including all in Princeton students, faculty, staff, throw the first stone, because you are all free of sin? Yes, you are all free of sin?
If yes, how do you do it? Because certainly I am not free of sin, and I cannot throw the first stone.
As stated in the essay, it may well be that Josh Katz does not deserve the same objective assessment as Cleon, and it may well be his professional situation is unrelated to his morality. I address only this conflict between what is to be done when you view someone as a moral reprobate. If you assessment of their morality is wrong that is a different concern.
Certainly, the people Bryan is talking to believe this moral view, and I'm not sure trying to convince them that professor/student relations are "true love" is fruitful here. Bryan would be better off admitting that they are frought and dangerous things that maybe even ought to disbarred by the university. Having said that, that was not the rules when this took place, and we don't try a man twice, and really its all just an excuse for a different cause.
The desire to unperson moral reprobates has some purpose. It's necessary. It is in fact a substitute for formal institutional and ultimately forceful imposition of social norms. Such imposition ought best be understand as a failure of informal social pressure to do what it needs to do.
Telling people that think they are doing justice shouldn't do justice or making nonsensical gotcha side arugements is a non starter.
***When they earnestly observed, “There’s a power imbalance here,” I replied, “Maybe some people like a power imbalance.”***
I wonder why they (and Bryan?) apparently assumed the power imbalance put Katz above the student instead of vice-versa. Would they make the same assumption if the professor were a woman and the student a man? Or if they were both women or both men?
What happens after "waiting a few years"? The age gap's going to disappear? - "Waiting" with what, exactly? Dating, kissing, parking? - Any power "imbalance" is MUCH reduced by marriage. (Even the considerable power of the younger partner - to just get a lover much younger than their "elderly" spouse). When Madonna or Liz Taylor do it, I guess it's "liberating".
Re 11: "Other than the government itself, it is hard to think of any other large organization where profit-and-loss matter less than elite universities."
I've come to think "corporate" is quite accurate. Think of universities as defense contractors. Defense contractors get paid by the federal government (indirectly, because congress funds it and DoD gets it) to produce products that are, fortunately, of an almost wholly unknown quantity (we don't use most of this stuff to actually wage war with, so we don't have a very good idea of whether it works or not).
Even for elite universities, the business is likewise "selling" education which is directly or indirectly (through subsidy and regulation) required to be purchased by the government. They produce an intangible good of almost wholly unknown quantity, just like "defense".
In both cases, profit maximization for the corporation has a requirement that the suppliers create demand for their products. Defense contractors lobby ceaselessly for more defense spending. Educators lobby ceaselessly for more subsidies for education, and at heart HR and DEI stuff is theoretically advancing more "educational requirements" upon people. The folks doing the educating will be making a profit by doing this.
Now, does some DEI mandarin at Princeton think in these terms? No. But the "Security Experts" that are always telling us to spend heavily to prepare for the next war... they often truly believe the next war is around the corner too. They're still pushing what can be rightly called their corporate agenda.
I knew Solveig Gold (not well). She can look after herself. She thinks there is a power imbalance between her and Professor Katz in her favor — see the link in #9 above. I can think of a couple good scholarly marriages with age disparities (Will and Ariel Durant; Russell and Annette Kirk); I have a friend with a much younger wife and a toddler; they seem happy. On the bad side the Causubons in Middlemarch and Chip and Melissa in The Corrections come to mind. But those are both fiction and in neither is there a power imbalance in favor of the older man IMO. I’m mildly surprised people are so bothered by Katz and Gold.
Many people are shocked when liberals and centrists are radicalized by run-ins with the woke. Like Bryan, I’m more surprised when they aren’t radicalized.
I'd have also been interested to know their feelings if the genders had been reversed. If the objection were to do with the power dynamic was this purely because the professor was older (and that he was a man was irrelevant), or was him being a man the issue? What about if it had been a gay relationship with a 20 year gap?
Many university policies are too sweeping for sure (at Texas A&M it is a officially a fireable offense for a physics grad student to hook up with an agriculture senior if they meet at a bar). But I don’t understand where you and your Twitter followers get the idea that 20% of faculty have multiple affairs with undergrads in their classes.
Thanks for the links - I'm very sorry to hear what Dr. Katz did, and what happened to him, but glad that he seems to have found faith, and a good wife.
I do wonder what it would take for more Bret Weinsteins to emerge, though.
"As far as I can tell, he’s a moderate leftist who was victimized by the far left. His plight has not inspired him to rethink his overall political philosophy."
They are all basically useless.
In general, they don't know why things ended up this way, don't know how to fix it, wouldn't have the courage to fix it if they knew, and more or less are just hoping that something, they are not sure what, will allow them *personally* to go back to the way things were.
I think you need to regard this kind of liberal as hopeless. This is true even if they were say nominally Republican or whatever. If Woke gets defeated, these people won't contribute much to its defeat.
Maybe Dr. Katz can get hired at University of Austin or Ralston College, two places where his freedom of speech would certainly be honored.
Thank you, Bryan for exposing this corruption. Sadly, it is not surprising.
Add this the the list of points you make in The Case Against Education.
Bryan,
1. With respect to #4, that was a significant part of a famous novel you enjoyed as a youth.
2. With respect to #14, maybe the students would be more tolerant of the Katz-Gold relationship if they were told Katz suffers from transchronologicalism, he feels like a young man trapped in an older man's body, and that Gold realizes that she must see him as he sees himself as a matter of justice and tolerance.
3. I believe you have a bet to the effect you won't be personally harmed by wokeness at your university because of your outspoken views (expressed in this very blog post.) Yet students presumably self-selected to favor limited government seem not the sort to defend you if anyone complained you are "SHUDDER" opposed to affirmative action AND STUDENT/TEACHER ROMANCE. And Katz himself shows many academic victims have no interest in going anywhere near as far as you in speaking out. Are you at all concerned, since you made this bet, that you may lose?
"I had fun challenging these attitudes."
Why?
“Maybe some people like a power imbalance.”
Sure, that's why they can be really dangerous.
“What if it’s true love?”
It probably isn't.
“Well, they can just wait a few years.”
That would make a lot of sense. Young inexperienced women attracted to much older powerful men is often a dynamic that doesn't work out well. A few years of perspective and experience would help her make a better decision.
"I had to provocatively respond"
You did, huh?
"I couldn’t tell if I’d stumped my students, or if they just thought I was crazy."
In the movie Frozen Elsa points out to Anna that maybe she's a dumb confused teenager that shouldn't marry like the first guy she ever met after one song. Even children can understand this logic.
"While they’re ultra-tolerant of unconventional sexual orientations and gender identities, a twenty-year age gap grossed them out."
Because all of that weird stuff happens to other people that would never be them, and it's all just thoughtless posturing. A straight relationship between a student and a professor is a lot more real.
---
Look, I don't think any of this had to do with his firing and would find most of the people that treated him this way repugnant, but can't we just say that without trying to be an edge lord about professors trying to make it with young women.
1) So Katz has a consensual - repeat: consensual - affair with a student 15 years ago. SO WHAT?
And then he is punished 10 years later by the university? Affairs are not illegal, and universities are not soviet gulags (or perhaps they are). Nobody finds this strange? 10 years later? What is this, the Soviet Union?
2) Eisgruber is the ultimate idiot. He publicly said that in Princeton there was and is "systemic racism". When (still under the Trump Admin) he was called out by the US Dept of Education, he ducked. He cowered. If in Princeton there is really systematic racism, then Eisgruber should give up his multi-million dollar salary and Princeton should sell its 22 billion dollar endowment and give it to the oppressed minorities. But Eisgruber and Princeton will not do it, of course, because they are idiots.
3) Nobody points out this: are you all an army of saints without fault? Can all and everybody of you, including all in Princeton students, faculty, staff, throw the first stone, because you are all free of sin? Yes, you are all free of sin?
If yes, how do you do it? Because certainly I am not free of sin, and I cannot throw the first stone.
I felt the following could best explain my case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI9PJrQsZq4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vdnBD_e_BXCPg6VJ90AQcbabmy79GCVx/view
As stated in the essay, it may well be that Josh Katz does not deserve the same objective assessment as Cleon, and it may well be his professional situation is unrelated to his morality. I address only this conflict between what is to be done when you view someone as a moral reprobate. If you assessment of their morality is wrong that is a different concern.
Certainly, the people Bryan is talking to believe this moral view, and I'm not sure trying to convince them that professor/student relations are "true love" is fruitful here. Bryan would be better off admitting that they are frought and dangerous things that maybe even ought to disbarred by the university. Having said that, that was not the rules when this took place, and we don't try a man twice, and really its all just an excuse for a different cause.
The desire to unperson moral reprobates has some purpose. It's necessary. It is in fact a substitute for formal institutional and ultimately forceful imposition of social norms. Such imposition ought best be understand as a failure of informal social pressure to do what it needs to do.
Telling people that think they are doing justice shouldn't do justice or making nonsensical gotcha side arugements is a non starter.
***When they earnestly observed, “There’s a power imbalance here,” I replied, “Maybe some people like a power imbalance.”***
I wonder why they (and Bryan?) apparently assumed the power imbalance put Katz above the student instead of vice-versa. Would they make the same assumption if the professor were a woman and the student a man? Or if they were both women or both men?
What happens after "waiting a few years"? The age gap's going to disappear? - "Waiting" with what, exactly? Dating, kissing, parking? - Any power "imbalance" is MUCH reduced by marriage. (Even the considerable power of the younger partner - to just get a lover much younger than their "elderly" spouse). When Madonna or Liz Taylor do it, I guess it's "liberating".
Frank and fascinating. Thank you.
Are they upset that such injustices happen? Or just incensed that it happened to them?
Re 11: "Other than the government itself, it is hard to think of any other large organization where profit-and-loss matter less than elite universities."
I've come to think "corporate" is quite accurate. Think of universities as defense contractors. Defense contractors get paid by the federal government (indirectly, because congress funds it and DoD gets it) to produce products that are, fortunately, of an almost wholly unknown quantity (we don't use most of this stuff to actually wage war with, so we don't have a very good idea of whether it works or not).
Even for elite universities, the business is likewise "selling" education which is directly or indirectly (through subsidy and regulation) required to be purchased by the government. They produce an intangible good of almost wholly unknown quantity, just like "defense".
In both cases, profit maximization for the corporation has a requirement that the suppliers create demand for their products. Defense contractors lobby ceaselessly for more defense spending. Educators lobby ceaselessly for more subsidies for education, and at heart HR and DEI stuff is theoretically advancing more "educational requirements" upon people. The folks doing the educating will be making a profit by doing this.
Now, does some DEI mandarin at Princeton think in these terms? No. But the "Security Experts" that are always telling us to spend heavily to prepare for the next war... they often truly believe the next war is around the corner too. They're still pushing what can be rightly called their corporate agenda.
I knew Solveig Gold (not well). She can look after herself. She thinks there is a power imbalance between her and Professor Katz in her favor — see the link in #9 above. I can think of a couple good scholarly marriages with age disparities (Will and Ariel Durant; Russell and Annette Kirk); I have a friend with a much younger wife and a toddler; they seem happy. On the bad side the Causubons in Middlemarch and Chip and Melissa in The Corrections come to mind. But those are both fiction and in neither is there a power imbalance in favor of the older man IMO. I’m mildly surprised people are so bothered by Katz and Gold.
Many people are shocked when liberals and centrists are radicalized by run-ins with the woke. Like Bryan, I’m more surprised when they aren’t radicalized.
I'd have also been interested to know their feelings if the genders had been reversed. If the objection were to do with the power dynamic was this purely because the professor was older (and that he was a man was irrelevant), or was him being a man the issue? What about if it had been a gay relationship with a 20 year gap?
Many university policies are too sweeping for sure (at Texas A&M it is a officially a fireable offense for a physics grad student to hook up with an agriculture senior if they meet at a bar). But I don’t understand where you and your Twitter followers get the idea that 20% of faculty have multiple affairs with undergrads in their classes.
Thanks for the links - I'm very sorry to hear what Dr. Katz did, and what happened to him, but glad that he seems to have found faith, and a good wife.
I do wonder what it would take for more Bret Weinsteins to emerge, though.