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        Princetonians for Free Speech
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        A comprehensive summary of the free speech culture at Princeton University from the eyes of students.

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        • Read Our Student Poll Results

        • A comprehensive summary of the free speech culture at Princeton University from the eyes of students.

          Read Here

        • PARTNERS
          • American Council of Trustees & Alumni
          • The James Madison Program
          • Princeton Free Speech Union
          • The Princeton Open Campus Coalition
          • The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
        • CAREERS & MORE
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        Watch: Free Speech Rights of Students with Keith Whittington and Myles McKnight

        James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions hosted Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Myles McKnight '23, Public Discourse Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute

        Watch

        August 9, 2023

        Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry

        A Project of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

        Read

        July 17, 2023

        The Unsocial Network: How Administrators Hijack the College Experience

        An ACTA's panel featuring Princeton gradtuate Francesca Block '22

        Watch Now

        June 21, 2023

        PFS Reunion Panel

        Hear from PFS founders, students and staff about our effort to restore academic freedom at Princeton

        Watch Now

        Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

        Letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian

        September 20, 2023 1 min read

        Matthew Wilson and Alba Bajri
        Daily Princetonian

        Excerpt: To the Editor:

        On Sept. 17, The Daily Princetonian published an article by Aidan Gouley ’27 entitled “Princetonians must invest in the marketplace of ideas.” The author calls on students to “situat[e] free expression in a liberal context,” claiming that “the debate on free expression at Princeton has been co-opted by campus conservatives” while slandering principled and nonpartisan free speech advocacy as “toxic and polarizing.”

        Gouley’s allegation that conservative students have “co-opted” the free speech debate is an oft-regurgitated and thoroughly debunked trope. Articles leveling the same meritless argument have a lengthy history of appearing in the pages of this publication — and have been amply refuted. Gouley calls on students “to create an environment of learning for all in the natural exchange of individual ideas and experiences that both includes and simultaneously transcends the political.” But absentminded complaining about the co-option of the free speech issue by conservative students — the so-called “ideologues” making “overbroad claims about the ideological slant of the University” — does not help “bridge the political divide,” nor does it promote the free exchange of ideas.

        Gouley’s assertion that “Princeton hardly feels like an institution where free speech is directly under attack” betrays a painful lack of awareness of the real problems facing our University.
        Read More

        Alumni Free Speech Alliance Press Release

        September 19, 2023 1 min read

        Alumni Free Speech Alliance

        Excerpt: Washington, D.C. (September 19, 2023) – The Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) and alumni groups from nine colleges and universities [including Princetonians for Free Speech] submitted a brief amicus curiae to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday urging the court to hear a case brought by Speech First over the issue of bias reporting practices and procedures at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The brief can be found here.
        Read More

        Commentary: Princetonians must invest in the marketplace of ideas

        September 17, 2023 1 min read

        Aidan Gouley
        Daily Princetonian

        Excerpt: This year’s Pre-read, “How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future,” by Maria Ressa ’86, argues that defending democracy requires no less than a transformation in how liberal societies engage in discourse — not simply specific policy prescriptions or direct action-based activism. Ressa’s call for open discourse should be resonant on a campus where free speech is considered core. Each of us must work to build such an environment. As Ressa says, effective activism can only be preserved in environments that catalyze rigorous discussion and critical thought.

        Should free exchange erode, the University community does not merely risk losing the educational value of speech, but also threatens to concede a critical pillar of free society altogether. We have to reclaim the mantle of free speech from right-leaning groups and ensure that free speech isn’t harmed by either institutional overreach or communal neglect.
        Read More
        Click Here For More Princeton News

        National Free Speech News & Commentary

        The Free Speech Wars on Campus

        September 21, 2023 1 min read

        Audie Cornish
        The Assignment With Audie Cornish Podcast

        Excerpt: Between student protests, controversial speakers, and debates over “safe spaces,” complaints about free speech on campus are louder than ever. How do school leaders respond to these gripes? And how do they balance freedom of expression – and the idea that speech can be violence?

        We have two college presidents from the front lines of this debate: Roslyn Clark Artis of Benedict College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University. Both schools are part of the so-called “Campus Call for Free Expression.”
        Read More

        Book Bans Are Rising Sharply in Public Libraries

        September 21, 2023 1 min read

        Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter
        New York Times

        Excerpt: More than two years into a sharp rise in book challenges across the United States, restrictions are increasingly targeting public libraries, where they could affect not only the children’s section but also the books available to everyone in a community.

        The shift comes amid a dramatic increase in efforts to remove books from libraries, according to a pair of new reports released this week from the American Library Association and PEN America, a free speech organization.
        Read More

        Betraying Anne Frank

        September 20, 2023 1 min read

        Abigail Anthony
        National Review

        Excerpt: A Texas public school fired an eighth-grade English teacher who assigned the reading Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, a graphic version of Anne’s unforgettable diary. The adaptation is particularly contentious because it depicts passages in which Anne describes her genitalia, expresses curiosity about the female body, and talks about menstruation.

        Perhaps most egregiously, it’s a simplification that dishonors the care that Anne devoted to her writing. The issue is not whether teenagers are prompted to engage with her explicit passages; it’s whether they’re prompted to engage with her writing at all.
        Read More
        Click Here For More National News

        Newsletter Archive

        August 2023 Newsletter

        August 2023 Newsletter

        September 05, 2023 8 min read

        Welcome to the third PFS Monthly Newsletter.  August may be quiet on campus, but a great deal has happened this month in the movement to restore free speech and academic freedom on Princeton’s campus and throughout the country.  Here we give you our most important updates, events and top news, articles you don’t want to miss, and more.
        July 2023 Newsletter

        July 2023 Newsletter

        July 28, 2023 8 min read

        July 27, 2023 

        To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,

        Welcome to the second PFS Monthly Newsletter.  Below you will find our most important updates and top news for the month, articles you don’t want to miss, and other news and links of special note. 


        Princeton FIRE Rankings
        Princeton Flops in FIRE Free Speech Rankings

        187 out of 248. A “red light” institution has at least one red light policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.

        GET FULL REPORT

        Words of Wisdom:

        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

        “We read of tortures in jails with electric devices, suicides among prisoners, forced confessions, while in the outside community ruthless persecution of editors, religious leaders, and political opponents suppress free speech—and a free press…

        Words of Wisdom:

        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        George Washington

        “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

        Words of Wisdom:

        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Nadine Strossen, former ACLU president

        “In the long run, an open airing of discriminatory ideas, and an ensuing debate about them, may well be more effective in curbing them than censorship would be.”

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Ira Glasser

        “[A]fter [a] panel discussion [at a prestigious law school], person after person got up, including some of the younger professors, to assert that their goals of social justice for blacks, for women, for minorities of all kinds were incompatible with free speech and that free speech was an antagonist. . . . [W]hen I came to the ACLU, my major passion was social justice, particularly racial justice. But my experience was that free speech wasn't an antagonist. It was an ally. It was a critical ally. – 2020 interview (Photo Courtesy of "Mighty Ira")

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Hannah Arendt

        “If someone wants to see and experience the world as it ‘really’ is, he can do so only by understanding it as something that is shared by many people, lies between them, separates them, showing itself differently to each and comprehensible only to the extent that many people can talk about it and exchange their opinions and perspectives with one another, over against one another. Only in the freedom of our speaking with one another does the world, as that about which we speak, emerge in its objectivity and visibility from all sides.” - The Promise of Politics, written in latter half of 1950s

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Justice Louis Brandeis

        “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." – concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 1927

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Henry Steele Commager

        “The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.” – 1954

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Benjamin Franklin

        “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Barack Obama

        “The purpose of college is not just... to transmit skills. It’s also to widen your horizons, to make you a better citizen, to help you to evaluate information, to help you make your way through the world, to help you be more creative. The way to do that is to create a space where a lot of ideas are presented and collide, and people are having arguments, and people are testing each others’ theories... and over time, people learn from each other because they’re getting out of their own narrow point of view and having a broader point of view... When I went to college, suddenly there were some folks who didn’t think at all like me... And sometimes their views would be infuriating to me. But it was because there was this space where you could interact with people who didn’t agree with you, and had different backgrounds than you, that I then started testing my own assumptions. And sometimes I changed my mind...

        Words of Wisdom:

        Great thinkers on why free speech is vital:

        Barack Obama

        " ...Sometimes I realized, you know what, maybe I’ve been too narrow minded. Maybe I didn’t take this into account. Maybe I should see this person’s perspective... I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who, you know, is too conservative, or they don’t want to read a book that has language that is offensive to African-Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. And you know, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.” - September, 2015

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Salman Rushdie

        “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” – 1990

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        United States Constitution

        “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – first amendment

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Justice William Brennan

        “[A]cademic freedom... is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom... The classroom is peculiarly the marketplace of ideas. The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.” – Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967)

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Václav Havel

        "Courage in the public sphere means that one is to go against majority opinion (at the same time risking losing one's position) in the name of the truth." – 2000

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        John Lewis

        “Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent,
        the civil rights movement would have
        been a bird without wings.” – 2017

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        John Stuart Mill

        “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error... [E]very age [has] held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and... many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages.” – On Freedom, 1859

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Jonathan Rauch

        “History shows that the more open the intellectual environment, the better minorities will do.... [G]ay people know we owe our progress to freedom of speech and freedom of thought.... The best society for minorities is not the society that protects minorities from speech but
        the one that protects speech from minorities
        (and from majorities, too).” – 2013

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Margaret Chase Smith

        "The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in." – 1950 speech against McCarthyism

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

        "A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.” – 2012 interview

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Jonathan Rauch

        “The greatest idea in the history of human civilization is the idea that we are better off, personally and as a society, if we not only tolerate but actively protect speech and thought that is wrong-headed, offensive, bigoted, seditious, blasphemous, critical of the authorities, or just in dissent.” –2016

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Donald Downs

        “Punishing evil or bad thoughts amounts to thought control, which is the quintessential First Amendment sin and a hallmark of an authoritarian or totalitarian state. It is no accident that polities that coerce their vision of a new and perfect form of human nature end up erecting their own versions of gulags.” – 2020

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Frederick Douglass

        "Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thought and opinions has ceased to exist." – 1860

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        George Orwell

        “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
        to tell people what they do not want
        to hear.” – 1945; Preface to Animal Farm

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Frederick Douglass

        “No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. . . the great moral renovator of society and government. . . . Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thought and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.” – 1860 speech

        Words of Wisdom:
        Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        James Madison

        “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." – 1788 speech

        Words of Wisdom: Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech is Vital

        Thurgood Marshall

        “The First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas,
        its subject matter, or its content.”
        – Police Dept. of City of Chicago v. Mosley (1972)

        See All Words of Wisdom

        Princetonians for Free Speech

        PFS fights for free speech alongside Princeton alumni, staff and students. Princetonians for Free Speech is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 85-3710034. Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowable under the law.

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