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Im a scholar of the culture wars in the US. I used to believe that universities could provide a kind of solvent for these conflicts, by clarifying different positions and suggesting compromises between them.

I dont believe that anymore. Universities have embraced the same polarised, winner-take-all spirit as the rest of American politics. And thats very bad news for anyone who cares about the future of the American academy.

Witness recent events at Princeton University, where president Christopher Eisgruber recommended that the board of trustees dismiss classics professor JoshuaKatz.In lockstep fashion, faculty divided quickly into Team Eisgruber by far the bigger group and Team Katz. And neither squad acknowledged the validity or even the humanity of the other one.

The university fired Katz on Monday, citing hisbehaviour during a sexual relationship with an undergraduate student 15 years ago.Princeton officials already knew about that affair and had punished Katz by suspending him without pay for a year.But they said that the student had come forth with new information, including claims that Katz had discouraged her from seeking mental health treatment for fear that she would disclose their affair and that he pressured her not to cooperate with an earlierinvestigation.

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To Katz defenders, all of that was window dressing to disguise the real reason he was sacked: his remarks on race.In 2020, a few weeks after the police murder of George Floyd, Katz published an online essay blasting an open letter about racism at Princeton. Signed by more than 300 faculty, staff members and students, the letter called on the university to dismantle systemic racism, incentivize anti-racist student activism and apologise to members of a student group known as the Black Justice League for repeatedly rebuffing their demand to remove President Woodrow Wilsons name from the universitys School of Public and International Affairs (three years ago, Princeton agreed to remove Wilsons name).

Katzs essay endorsed parts of the open letter, including its support for summer move-in allowances for new assistant professors. But he rejected its demand that junior faculty of colour receive an additional semester of sabbatical. He also charged that the Black Justice League had bullied dissenting students including African Americans in a struggle session, which Katz called one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed.

Most controversially, hedescribed the group as a small local terrorist organization. When that quote went viral, Katz became a campus pariah. Colleagues in the classics department posted a message calling Katz choice of words abhorrent at this moment of national reckoning. Eisgruber denounced Katzs false description of the Black Justice League. And the university featured Katz in a rogues gallery of racist Princetonians presented at the universitys first-year student orientation last August.

The presentation did not mention the handful of professors and students who have defended Katz. Instead, in bold font, it quoted two African American faculty critics. One said that Katz had engaged in race-baiting, disguised as free speech; the other said Katz seems to not regard people like me as essential features, or persons, of Princeton.

So far as I know, Katz did not receive a chance to respond to these highly derogatory charges. And I havent heard of any other university denouncing a standing faculty member in such a public venue. Absurdly, Eisgruber defended the comments about Katz as teaching material for the incoming students. But if the university was truly interested in teaching about this controversy, it would have presented supporters of Katz alongside critics of him. Anything less isnt teaching; its indoctrination.

Surely there are many faculty, at Princeton and elsewhere, who believe that flaying Katz at the first-year orientation was wrong, but theyre mostly biting their tongues because saying so would seem to place them in Katz corner. Why aid and abet the other team?

Likewise, Katz defenders have generally refrained from condemning his newly reported misbehaviour towards his ex-lover. Princeton clearly had a duty to investigate herclaims, which she detailed in a formal complaint. And if Katz indeed told her not to cooperate with the investigation or not to seek mental health treatment of course he should be held accountable for that. But you wont hear that from the people on Katz side. If they mention the new allegations at all, it is simply to dismiss the charges as a mean-spirited retaliation against an outspoken colleague.

Its all or nothing, kill or be killed, my way or the highway, heads I win and tails you lose. In other words, its a war.

We frequently cite Princeton dropout F. Scott Fitzgeralds observation that the mark of intelligence is holding two opposing ideas in mind at the same time. If we truly believed that, we could denounce both the universitys mistreatment of Katz and also his alleged mistreatment of his student. But our faith in that principle is hugely frayed, not just outside universities but within them. Indeed, theres not much of a difference between the two any longer. And that just makes me incredibly sad.

Jonathan Zimmerman is Judy and Howard Berkowitz professor in education and professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools, which will be published in a revised 20th-anniversary edition by the University of Chicago Press this autumn.

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Katz case is another culture wars skirmish - Times Higher Education