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<h5>East Pyne Hall, home to Princeton’s classics department, at dusk.</h5>
<h6>Jonathan Ort / The Daily Princetonian</h6>
East Pyne Hall, home to Princeton’s classics department, at dusk.
Jonathan Ort / The Daily Princetonian

Alumni allege history of inappropriate conduct with female students by Princeton professor Joshua Katz

For more than two decades at Princeton, classics professor Joshua Katz has stood out as a charismatic teacher who goes out of his way to mentor undergraduate students.

Katz has won awards for his teaching, designed academic programs that foster close relationships between faculty and students, and positioned himself as a gatekeeper for prestigious postgraduate fellowships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

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But an investigation by The Daily Princetonian has uncovered allegations that Katz crossed professional boundaries with three of his female students.

In the first instance, eight alumni said that Katz engaged in a romantic relationship with their friend, an undergraduate advisee of his in the mid-2000s, and three of the eight said the student told them Katz had sex with her. Such a relationship, if confirmed, would violate both current University policies and those in place at the time.

In the other two, the former students did not say that Katz engaged in any sexual behavior with them, but assert that he behaved inappropriately.

Princeton has long boasted of a culture of close mentorship between faculty and undergraduate students. As early as first-year orientation, students are encouraged to bond with professors during office hours, invite faculty to meals, and develop rapport with advisors. While many view this culture as fundamental to learning, the women interviewed for this story believe Katz exploited it to blur — and ultimately cross — professional lines with students.

The ‘Prince’ gave the mid-2000s advisee, referred to in this story as Jane, a first-name pseudonym due to privacy concerns. Jane declined to be interviewed for this story, but eight alumni whom she confided in at the time shared details of Jane’s account. The two other alumnae, given the pseudonyms Clara and Bella, expressed fears of professional consequences for speaking out and agreed to speak to the ‘Prince’ on the condition that their names and class years not be disclosed.

Clara, who attended Princeton after Jane graduated, told the ‘Prince’ that Katz pursued her while she was a student. For over a year, she alleges, he brought her gifts, commented on her appearance, and paid for expensive off-campus dinners.

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“I would say that in my own experience, ‘repeated boundary violations’ characterizes the relationship I had with him,” Clara said.

The third student, Bella, said that Katz asked her on what she understood to be a date while she was a student in his class, and paid for their dinner and wine at an upscale restaurant in Princeton during that semester’s exam period.

The University was provided a detailed summary of the allegations in this story and declined to comment on specific claims. University Spokesperson Ben Chang said in a written statement that “we will not comment on personnel matters.”

“Nonetheless, we want to emphasize that we take very seriously any situation that could cause harm to a student,” Chang added, “and the University has rigorous policies in place regarding inappropriate relationships between students and faculty members.”

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Katz did not respond to six emails and five voicemails, all seeking an interview, since Jan. 25. He was first presented with a detailed summary of the allegations in a Jan. 28 email. 

Samantha Harris ’99, a former student of Katz’s and his attorney, responded to an inquiry from the ‘Prince’ by calling this story a “planned smear” of Katz and “clearly yet another attempt to punish him for dissenting from the prevailing campus orthodoxy.”

Harris told the ‘Prince’ she has been acting as Katz’s lawyer since last July, after he denounced a letter of anti-racist demands signed by over 350 faculty members and referred to a disbanded student-activist group, the Black Justice League (BJL), as a “local terrorist organization.”

Harris declined, however, to address the specific allegations against Katz, and referred the paper’s inquiries to him.

The ‘Prince’ reviewed several documents corroborating aspects of the women’s accounts, including emails from Katz to former students and two decades of course catalogs showing he taught the classes the women say they took with him. The ‘Prince’ also examined archived web pages, internal classics department and University documents, financial records, University press releases, and Katz’s public statements to confirm the story’s timeline and certain key details.

In addition to the 18 alumni and faculty members who agreed to comment for this story, the ‘Prince’ contacted 38 individuals connected to Katz or the women involved in this story — including former students, classics alumnae who attended Princeton during his tenure, longtime acquaintances of Katz outside the University, and current and former faculty colleagues — all of whom declined or did not respond to requests for interviews.

In both Jane’s and Clara’s cases, the ‘Prince’ was told that at least one administrator was made aware of concerns. During Jane’s sophomore year, a friend of hers told his residential college dean about what he saw as an “inappropriate relationship” between Jane and Katz, the friend told the ‘Prince.’ And at least three of Katz’s faculty colleagues knew of Clara’s allegations against him, with one professor helping her disclose her experience to an administrator, according to correspondence seen by the ‘Prince.’

The ‘Prince’ could not confirm whether the report to the residential college dean or Clara’s complaint yielded any action, and the dean and the three professors declined or did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Years after these alleged events, Katz took a leave of absence from the University in the academic year 2018–19, according to records obtained by the ‘Prince.’

The absence was Katz’s second consecutive leave after a sabbatical in the 2017–18 academic year — back-to-back leaves that two faculty members described as highly unusual. The ‘Prince’ was unable to confirm the basis for Katz’s extended leave of absence.

The University declined to comment on the reasons for Katz’s second leave. Chang said, speaking generally and not in connection to specific allegations, that any complaint of inappropriate conduct by a faculty member “is investigated thoroughly and, if appropriate, discipline is imposed — regardless of the amount of time that may have passed before a complaint was made.”

Katz has wielded greater influence over students’ academic futures than most faculty, in part because of his leadership roles on fellowship and award committees. Elizabeth Butterworth ’12, a classics alumna who as a student knew of fellow students’ concerns about Katz’s alleged conduct toward women, said the role the University played in elevating him to positions of authority was “really troubling.”

“The University put him forward so intensely as one of their great undergraduate teachers and nothing has been done to retract that,” said Butterworth, a Rhodes Scholar and salutatorian who previously criticized Katz for his description of the BJL. “You feel like you’re being gaslit by the University because you come in being told that this person is so great and cares so much about mentoring young students.”

The stories of Katz’s alleged behavior took place before the #MeToo era. Amid a movement that encourages speaking out about abuses of power, some women have now chosen to come forward.

A reputation for mentorship and charisma

Last July, Katz drew national attention for his piece in Quillette that denounced an open letter of anti-racist demands. As his rhetoric toward the BJL ignited backlash from some colleagues and alumni but won support from prominent figures outside the University, Katz defended his characterization as “blunt speech.

Since the July incident, Katz has repeatedly spoken out about “surviving cancellation” at Princeton. He gave talks at the Benson Center and Buckley Program, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “I Survived Cancellation at Princeton,” and received an award from a nonprofit dedicated to “promoting academic freedom.” Last week, John McWhorter, a Columbia linguist and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, called on schools to “resist destructive anti-racist demands” and cited Katz as “a model for the future.”

Still, even now, Katz describes himself as a “library rat.” Before last year’s controversy, he limited his public persona to that of a quiet classics and linguistics professor who could name where a student was from by listening to their accent.

Katz, 51, was born and raised in New York and attended the nation’s most prestigious institutions. After graduating from The Dalton School in Manhattan, he attended Yale for his bachelor’s degree in linguistics, Oxford for his master’s as a Marshall Scholar, and Harvard for his doctorate. Immediately afterward, in 1998, he joined the Princeton faculty as a classicist. By 2006, he had received tenure.

Katz served as a trustee at the ‘Prince’ from 2014 to early 2020, and before that, as a faculty columnist from 2006 to 2013.

Shortly after he arrived at Princeton, Katz emerged as a star in undergraduate teaching — winning 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 for “outstanding teachers of undergraduates” for 2013–16. The University praised “the care he takes with students in and out of the classroom,” and one of his classes made The Daily Beast’s 2011 list of the “hottest college courses.”

“He was the type of inspired professor we all imagine we will have when we go to college, but who is far more rare than TV and movies would lead us to believe,” Harris, Katz’s former student and current attorney, said last July.

Like Harris, several alumni who spoke with the ‘Prince’ remember Katz as a brilliant teacher.

“I remember being very, like, excited in his presence,” recalled Sarah Dabby ’07, who took a class with Katz her first year. “I thought he was so charismatic, as a classicist and for the work that he did.”

Katz seemed to take pride in his close rapport with students.

“I don’t know whether it thrills any students at Princeton to call me Joshua, but if you have taken two or three courses with me, done really well and hung out with me over meals at Forbes… then chances are that you should stop calling me Professor Katz,” he wrote in a 2010 column for the ‘Prince.’ “Because it amuses me to see how people react, I tend to make the move toward intimacy obliquely, in the first place by signing off on emails as J. rather than my usual JTK.”

Among other roles, Katz served as advisor for graduate fellowships, president of Princeton’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for two terms, department representative for classics from 2003–2005, member of the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline, and director of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows, a selective mentorship group for talented humanities students that he founded in 2009.

For many years, Katz was the faculty chair of the University committee that endorses Rhodes and Marshall scholarship candidates. He now chairs the selection committee of the Barry Scholarship at Oxford.

Allegation of a sexual relationship

In the mid-2000s, Katz engaged in a multi-year relationship with Jane, a female undergraduate student in the classics department, according to eight alumni with direct knowledge of the relationship.

“Joshua Katz was in what I would call a relationship with a friend of mine that was exploitative,” said Maryam Khan ’08, a close friend who Jane confided in about the relationship while they were students.

At the time, University policy on faculty-student relationships stated, “[w]hen a sexual or romantic relationship involves individuals in a teacher-student relationship (e.g. being directly or indirectly taught, supervised or evaluated) or involves any element of coercion, harassment, bargaining for educational favors, or the like, it is a clear and most serious violation of both University and professional standards.”

In early 2016, the University expanded the policy to unconditionally state: “Faculty members shall not initiate or engage in romantic or sexual behavior with undergraduate or graduate students.”

When Jane and Katz first met, she was 19 and he was in his mid-30s. She took her first class with Katz in the spring of her first year, according to two friends in the same class.

“I remember things getting weird by like, midterms,” said Dabby, one of the two friends. She remembered feeling uncomfortable one night in particular: Jane grew upset while the pair studied in a campus library after dinner, and Katz “rushed in” to comfort her.

During Jane’s sophomore year, a third alumnus, who was also in the classics department, recalled growing concerned about the relationship.

“[Jane] said at the time that she felt like she was getting very emotionally attached to him … it seemed it was really weighing on her,” he recalled. “I remember being like, ‘This seems beyond a typical mentor relationship.’”

As an RCA at the time, the alumnus was unsure if he was obligated to report the situation, but ultimately chose to bring the concerns to his residential college dean. The alumnus did not recall if the dean ever followed up with him.

The dean did not respond to a request for comment.

By Jane’s junior year, Katz had taught her in multiple courses and was advising her on a junior paper, according to a fourth and fifth alumni who were Jane’s friends. He later became her thesis advisor and taught her in a custom one-on-one course during her senior year, according to a course catalog that mentions the class and a University document that discloses the student’s enrollment.

Students close to Jane believed that Katz was exerting increasing influence over her life.

“It seemed her academic and personal life were very wrapped up in what Katz suggested,” a sixth alumna said. “[It was] like, ‘Joshua said I should do this, Joshua said I should do that.”

By the summer after Jane’s junior year, Khan and two other alumni recalled, Jane confided in them that the relationship had become sexual. Throughout her senior year, the pair were seen dining together at Jane’s eating club and in residential college dining halls.

A seventh alumnus, who belonged to Jane’s eating club, remembered that she would often “go through the line to get a plate of food” to bring to Katz’s office. “She felt that he wasn’t going to eat if she didn’t bring food to him,” the alumnus said, an account five others confirmed.

Khan described the relationship as “unequal in terms of power” and “emotionally abusive,” a characterization three others also used.

“I would absolutely, 100 percent say that there was a certain amount of manipulation and serious taking-advantage-of that was happening in this relationship,” Khan said.

Six alumni described witnessing Jane performing tasks for Katz to a degree that struck them as strange.

“My friend was deeply unhappy most of the time,” Khan said. “I cannot speak to what happened behind closed doors, but I do know she was always working for this person. She was always carrying his library books back and forth, doing all kinds of tasks that I don’t believe a thesis advisor would ask a student to do.”

Khan and two alumni asserted that Katz would often ask Jane to come to his office after dinner — “at very strange times, including quite late at night,” Khan said.

“I can’t help but think it was a small department, that there was an awareness about it that was deeper than just students,” a friend and classics alumna said, speaking about Katz’s alleged relationship with Jane.

Michael Flower, the current classics department chair, did not respond to questions about whether the department was aware of the nature of Katz and Jane’s relationship at the time. Denis Feeney, the chair at the time, declined to comment, citing federal privacy laws and University policy.

Jane hoped to pursue a graduate degree in a field close to Katz’s and ultimately received a graduate school recommendation letter from him, per Khan and two others.

“I remember [Jane] often saying that he could, and I’m summarizing here, that [Katz] could make or break someone in the field, because it was so small,” one alumnus said.

Katz’s alleged relationship with Jane helped deter one of her friends, a high-achieving classics student, from seeking a fellowship. The alumna saw Katz as a “gatekeeper” and felt uncomfortable approaching him about these opportunities.

“I ended up not pursuing those for various reasons,” she acknowledged. “The relationship he had with [Jane] made me very wary of him, so I wasn’t super interested in pursuing that route. But it did feel at the time like if you want one of these things, [he’s] the person to talk to.”

The same alumna said she felt that as time went on, Katz attempted to “ingratiate” himself with her so she would remain silent about his relationship with Jane.

It felt, she said, like “maybe if he made it clear to me how interested he was in my succeeding, that I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Repeated boundary violations” reported by student

Clara, who attended Princeton after Jane, told the ‘Prince’ that Katz pursued her over multiple years when she was a student. One friend she confided in a year after graduating and another she told of the alleged behavior while it was ongoing confirmed key details of her account.

Before Clara, a talented student, had ever taken a class with him, Katz attempted to befriend her and offer his mentorship, she said. Clara claimed that Katz brought her gifts, such as chocolates and tea from his travels abroad, commented on the way she dressed, and invited her to one-on-one dinners at upscale restaurants in Princeton, where he always paid.

The behavior, Clara said, caused her “considerable distress and anxiety.” While the relationship was never sexual, she felt that Katz blurred the lines between professor and peer, putting her in “a very difficult position.”

“He would look for opportunities to sort of get her alone and talk to her in a more intimate way,” the first friend recalled of what Clara told her.

When Clara tried to confront Katz about how his actions made her feel uncomfortable, he called her “uptight,” Clara recalled. She noted that Katz told her such closeness between students and professors was the norm during his undergraduate years at Yale.

Katz’s “gaslighting,” Clara said, made her feel “mental and emotional whiplash.”

“He was certainly treating her in a way that he was not, or at least one should not, be treating other students,” the second friend said.

Clara asserted that Katz regularly shared faculty gossip, sometimes forwarding her private emails he had received from colleagues in his department. (She told the ‘Prince’ she was no longer in possession of these emails.)

His comments extended to the professors who had taught Clara. Katz “would get visibly annoyed” when she mentioned a specific faculty colleague’s name, she said. “It would make him angry that he wasn’t the most important person to me.”

At other times, Katz “openly opined” on her classmates, questioned students’ abilities, and in at least one instance, told Clara about giving a specific student a low grade.

Due to Katz’s perceived status as a gatekeeper, Clara said she found him difficult to avoid. “It was not possible for me to get away from him,” she said, pointing to his roles in the Behrman Society, fellowship advising, and endorsement committees. “These were all things I was interested in applying for.”

Clara said she looks back on Katz’s behavior toward her as “repulsively unprofessional.” But because “there was no quid pro quo, no attempt to proposition me, and no physical assault,” she said, as a student she felt “unsure” about what could be done.

“He had deeply warped my perception of acceptable behavior,” Clara said. “This was all well before #MeToo.”

The second friend said that at the time, the University lacked “institutional support” for students to handle situations where a professor crossed the line.

For “boundary violations or harassment” apart from sexual assaults, she said, “I don’t think we [knew] where to go for help.”

But after graduating, Clara did seek help: She confided in another professor about her experiences with Katz.

According to an email seen by the ‘Prince,’ the professor consulted with two other faculty members and passed on their concerns to an administrator in the Provost’s office. The professor then encouraged Clara to contact the same administrator.

All three professors declined or did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Clara recalled that she sat for two interviews with the administrator — one by phone and one at Nassau Hall. She gave them copies of her emails with Katz, which in her view showed that he had crossed professional boundaries. Though Clara characterized the administrator she spoke with as “extremely sympathetic,” she said she received no follow-up communications.

Clara declined to share the administrator’s name with the ‘Prince.’

While her complaint was pending, Clara continued to receive emails from Katz. She shared some of them with the ‘Prince.’ In the emails, Katz struck an informal tone, signed off with endearments, and repeatedly inquired about when he and Clara, then a recent alumna, could meet in person. When she did not make plans to meet him, Katz seemed to grow frustrated in the emails. He also attempted to contact her through her peers, Clara said.

Nine months after her interviews, Clara contacted the University administrator, who informed her the case was “closed.” A note had been put in Katz’s file, she recalled being told. 

The University declined to comment on this account of the administrator’s response.

“Collecting students”

Last year, the University’s Fellowships Advising office provided students applying for prestigious graduate fellowships with a handout to share with recommenders who do not typically write such letters. At the top of the sheet, the University lauded four administrators and professors “who have each received A+s in fellowship recommendation writing.” One of the four: Joshua Katz.

“If you’re wondering how you can win a Rhodes next year,” Katz wrote in a ‘Prince’ column in 2007, “Solicit letters from [Professors] John Fleming GS ’63, Simone Marchesi and, well, me.”

In the same column, Katz cited examples of the exhaustive support he provided as a fellowship advisor, from “mock interviews” to “free therapy.” And in a recent public appearance, Katz said that many high-achieving humanities students “owe some of their success” to his advising and recommendation letters. Some scholarship recipients have publicly thanked him for his work.

One classics alumna and fellowship winner said Katz made his offers of mentorship and support “feel like an exclusive situation.” She added that Katz had a way of “seeking out students, or collecting students.”

Bella was one such student, a prestigious fellowship applicant from the past decade.

Katz and Bella met through the Behrman Society, the mentorship group Katz helped create, and developed a “friendly relationship” as he advised her on fellowship applications.

While enrolled in his seminar during her senior spring, Bella exchanged emails with Katz, in which he asked her out on what she said felt like a date.

“My recollection is him saying something like, ‘Obviously this would be inappropriate now while you’re still my student, but when the semester is over, I would love to take you out to dinner,’” Bella said. “At the time, I did interpret this as sort of a date.”

Bella accepted Katz’s invitation, and during exam period, she said the two had dinner and wine at Mediterra, an upscale restaurant in Princeton, where Katz picked up the tab.

The ‘Prince’ reviewed portions of the email exchange leading up to the dinner, but Bella requested the emails not be quoted directly due to their personal nature. The emails show her and Katz considering restaurant options for dinner while planning when Bella could drop by his office to take her exam.

Bella did not report the incident to any administrators or faculty, and the ‘Prince’ is not aware of any formal complaint regarding Katz’s alleged conduct with Bella being filed with the University.

The ‘Prince’ learned of additional instances in which alumni alleged Katz engaged in behavior that they felt was inappropriate.

One alumna who took a class with Katz as a sophomore over a decade ago said he would single her out “before and after classes” and make what she believed were inappropriate comments.

“You were looking at me very judgmentally, folding your arms,” the alumna recalled Katz telling her. “You must be very intimidating to men when you do that.”

Several years later, Katz approached Bella about a student who he said made him “very worried,” she claimed, and asked her to “keep an eye out” for the student on campus.

“She seems to be entering into a lot of sexual relationships with much older people,” Bella recalled Katz saying. “It seems like a dangerous pattern of behavior.”

“I did ask myself, ‘why does Katz know this?’” Bella said.

The ‘Prince’ contacted the four professors who served as classics department chair during Katz’s time at the University to ask whether any allegations of inappropriate conduct by Katz toward female students had ever been brought to their attention.

Flower, who has been chair since July 2019, wrote in a statement that during his time in the position, “no students have brought allegations of misconduct to me, either about Prof. Katz or anyone else.”

“If someone had brought a complaint, I would immediately have notified the relevant administrative offices, as required by law,” Flower added. “I cannot answer on behalf of previous chairs, who would have kept such matters confidential, as required by Federal Privacy Laws and University guidelines.”

Andrew Feldherr ’85, the department’s current director of equity and inclusion and previous department chair, said in an email to the ‘Prince’ that he “cannot comment on personnel matters.”

“Any sexual misconduct by any member of the department was reported to the appropriate authorities,” Feldherr wrote. He did not respond to a follow-up email seeking clarification on whether he had in fact reported any sexual misconduct by a member of the department during his time as chair.

Edward Champlin, who preceded Feldherr as chair, did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and Feeney, the chair before him, declined to comment.

A “highly unusual” leave of absence

In the 2018–19 academic year, Katz took a leave of absence with what appears to be reduced pay following a formal sabbatical in 2017–18. The ‘Prince’ was unable to determine whether the leave had any connection to any allegation of misconduct.

The University faculty handbook, last updated Dec. 2020, enumerates two types of leaves — sabbatical leaves and leaves without pay. For the former, “at least five consecutive semesters of active service must precede the leave,” and for the latter, “at least two consecutive semesters of active service must precede the leave.” Katz’s 2018–19 leave, under those criteria, appears to qualify as neither.

The dean of the faculty at the time, Sanjeev Kulkarni, who according to the handbook would have been primarily responsible for adjudicating leaves, said in an email that his office “doesn’t comment on personnel matters,” and deferred comments to the University spokesperson.

A previous version of Katz’s departmental page disclosed that he was on leave in 2018–19. Two faculty members characterized his second absence as highly unusual.

Taking more time off directly after a year-long sabbatical “never happens,” one of the professors told the ‘Prince.’

“Princeton is really stingy about letting faculty off for more than a year,” the second professor said. “It is unheard of for someone who’s not, like, a research scientist with a MacArthur to take more than a year off.” The professor, a classics faculty member, added that no reason for the leave was provided to department faculty at the time.

Both professors insisted on anonymity in light of strict faculty norms on speaking publicly about colleagues.

In the 2018 academic year, Katz saw a roughly 40 percent reduction in his compensation over the prior year from Princeton and related organizations, according to comparisons of recent tax disclosures of the Princeton University Press (PUP), where he has served as trustee for several years.

The 2018 academic year tax forms referred to Katz as “on leave, 9/18–6/19,” and in a statement to the ‘Prince,’ Julia Haav, a PUP spokesperson, confirmed that their records show “Professor Katz was on leave from the Board during the 2018–2019 academic year.” The spokesperson declined to offer further insight into “individual Board member’s university salaries.”

After his first sabbatical, documents reviewed by the ‘Prince’ suggest that Katz planned to be active on campus in the 2018–19 academic year. But in early summer 2018, those plans changed. A fall freshman seminar on “Wordplay” he planned to teach was entered into the registrar but canceled before the semester began.

In spring 2018, Katz had been elected to the powerful faculty committee on appointments and advancements, known informally as the “Committee of Three” or “C/3,” according to a memo to all faculty members on March 26, 2018 announcing faculty members elected to various committees.

“C/3 is probably the most important committee on campus,” the first professor, a longtime faculty member, said. “They’re in charge of deciding who gets tenure, among other things. It’s a serious commitment that every professor would take seriously.”

But by the fall term, Katz’s name had disappeared from the committee roster, replaced by Claudia Johnson of the English department, who had not been named in the spring document.

Johnson did not respond to requests for comment on the circumstances under which she joined the committee.

During fall 2018, Katz was not listed as “on leave” in an internal classics faculty memo, unlike his colleagues on planned sabbaticals, but his name was absent from any classics faculty committees. Professors are required to serve on at least one such committee, according to the second professor, who is a classics faculty member.

In the past decade, Katz has continued to hold personal advising roles and teach undergraduates in everything from freshman seminars to advanced classics courses. He is currently a residential college faculty fellow, a trustee for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, and a visiting scholar at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he teaches high school students.

This semester, Katz is teaching two of the three 100-level Classical Greek courses offered — both prerequisites to concentrating in certain classics tracks.

Asked why Katz has often taught such introductory courses, which some alumni have described as gateways to the discipline, Flower, the classics chair, said it was “for the simple reason that he is a teacher of unparalleled abilities and students flock to his courses.”

And addressing allegations that the department fostered Katz’s “gatekeeping” roles outside of classics, Flower said in his email that membership in fellowship nominating committees and the assigning of freshman seminars “is handled outside of the Department.” He added that Katz has never served as the chair of the department or as the director of graduate studies.

Although not addressing the Katz allegations, Chang, the University spokesperson, noted in an email that the University offers “many on and off-campus resources for those who have experienced sexual misconduct.” He said individuals who have experienced misconduct are encouraged to consult with the University’s confidential resources.

But for some former students, the University’s and the classics department’s response to the allegations about Katz — even as some administrators and professors knew of the claims — remains unacceptable.

“I think the department has failed to do its job to keep students safe,” Butterworth said.


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