…from a supporter and faculty colleague, Professor Robert George (Politics).  George lays great emphasis on the "double jeopardy" aspect of the proceedings, although I don't find that wholly compelling.  If I understand Professor George's account correctly, the second investigation concerned Katz's discouraging the woman with whom he had the affair from seeking mental health counseling lest the affair become known; he was previously sanctioned only for the affair itself.  That being said, I am hard pressed to see how this different misconduct could be grounds for termination, rather than some other sanction.  (Note that Professor George gives reasons for skepticism that this second bit of misconduct actually occurred.)  I suspect in court that Katz's attorneys will argue that the real explanation for this severe punishment for the other infraction is that the university was under pressure to find some pretext for punishing him for his lawful, but controversial, views on unrelated matters.

(Thanks to Zena Hitz for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Correspondence with a reader leads me to think I did not explain clearly why I was skeptical about the double jeopardy argument, so let me say a bit more.

Based on Professor George's account, if I have understood it correctly, there seem to have been two different wrongful acts:  the affair itself (for which Katz was previously punished), and then discouraging the student involved in the affair from seeking mental health counseling, a wrongful act not known about at the time of the first proceeding.  It’s not “double jeopardy” if Joe is punished first for robbing a bank and then also punished for extorting someone afterwards not to alert the police to Joe’s participation in the robbery:  there are two wrongful acts, each of which can be tried and punished.