One year ago, Princeton University fired me. This was one of the worst things ever to happen to me, but also one of the best. It’s sad to watch a once-great institution destroy itself, but a heck of a lot more pleasant to do so from outside. Especially with company.

The very best things that have happened: While Princeton was gearing up to do its dirty work, I got married; and not long after it was all over, my wife became pregnant. Our daughter was born earlier this month. We have no idea where she will go to college—or whether she will go to college—but we hope she will become friends with the new babies of other friends who have flourished and multiplied since standing up to the mob.

Meanwhile, my wife and I find ourselves in the excellent adult company of friends—many of them newish friends—in New York, where we both grew up, and in Princeton, where we still live. My wife is tough, but I would have had a much harder time making it through hell without their smiles, banter, and regular appearances at our door with bouncy dogs and tasty pastries.

Thanks to my position at the American Enterprise Institute, we have now had the chance to experience day-to-day existence in Washington, D.C.—and what wonderful new friends we have there, too. Some, though by no means all, are friends from work. How nice it is to have work friends!

Long ago, I used to love being in the office at Princeton. I was often the first to arrive in the morning; I was not infrequently one of the last to leave at night. This wasn’t entirely healthy, something I didn’t properly understand at the time, but I hung out there because I enjoyed it. The more disenchanted I became with academia, however, the less time I spent on campus. Then, in mid-March 2020, the world shut down because of Covid. And almost four months later, I was canceled, hard, and since most of my colleagues stopped speaking to me overnight, I didn’t go into work even when it was again possible to do so. In my last twenty-six months on the faculty, I taught only one student in person and had nearly no contact of any kind with anyone from my department; in my last sixteen months, I never once entered my office.