Princetonians for Free Speech

Is speaking up in class an act of courage? The students I spoke with say "yes". 

“Terms of Respect,” the 2025 book by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, claims in its subtitle that “colleges get free speech right.” And, in a required orientation event on Aug. 25, he attempted to convince the Class of 2030 that Princeton does too. 

In a panel discussion with Summer Lopez GS ’08, a co-CEO of PEN America, Eisgruber outlined Princeton’s "time, place, and manner" restrictions, which dictate the context of expression at Princeton, not the content. However, looking around Richardson, where some of the Class of 2030 watched the discussion on a livestream, I noticed that many of my peers were exercising their own freedom to not pay attention.

Princeton University’s Board of Trustees is now advising the Council of the Princeton University Community’s Resources Committee to “quickly dispose of petitions” when the potential for consensus is low, and to “avoid becoming a tool for intensifying division,” according to a public statement released by the board on Wednesday. The Resources Committee is a group of faculty, students, and staff that considers proposals for dissociation. 

“If dissociation submissions clearly fail the consensus criterion, there is no need to thoroughly examine whether other criteria are met, to burden disputants with establishing a lack of consensus, or to otherwise extend consideration of the petition,” the statement read. Dissociation refers to severing financial relationships with an entity, including refraining from soliciting or accepting gifts or grants and purchasing products from the entity.

The American Association of University Professors has endorsed 11 more Democrats running in U.S. House and Senate races this November, further cementing its evolving role as a political organization.

The association made its first-ever political endorsement in July, throwing its weight behind Abdul El-Sayed during Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary. The endorsement—an opening gambit from the AAUP, which resolved in June to get more aggressive in its defense of higher ed—drew backlash from some members and critics who say the association should maintain political neutrality. But Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, has said for months that getting more politically involved is necessary to protect higher education from an onslaught of federal and state attacks.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said Sunday that Harvard’s legal fees are “mind-boggling,” calling them the “price” of defending the University against a barrage of federal investigations and lawsuits.

At a Harvard Hillel event to celebrate the launch of YARID, a new journal of Jewish thought, Garber said that while he does not “speak publicly about this,” the fees are the “the price of defending yourself against all kinds of investigations, lawsuits, congressional investigations, other investigations from the current administration.”

Sara Spurgeon, an English professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has been teaching literature for 20 years. But preparing for the spring 2026 semester was the first time she was forced to submit her course materials through a portal to be evaluated by an artificial-intelligence program. It flags anything that might violate new rules laid out by the university chancellor, including a prohibition on the “advocacy/promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” and a requirement—now Texas state law—that “only two sexes, male and female, are recognized.”