Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) today announced a landmark achievement: its email subscriber list has officially surpassed 26,000 verified subscribers, approximately 80% of which are alumni, representing one of the most significant milestones in the organization's history since its founding in late 2020. This high number represents a highly engaged network of supporters committed to preserving the fundamental value of free speech at Princeton.
All in-person examinations at Princeton will be proctored starting July 1, representing the most significant change to the honor system since it was established in 1893. The faculty passed a proposal requiring instructor supervision at Monday’s faculty meeting, with one opposing vote.
The historic vote was the culmination of months of deliberation within the administration and student governing bodies about how to address increasing concerns over academic integrity violations, including the proliferation of AI usage. The proposal cleared a full faculty vote as the final of three required rounds of approval, having already been passed unanimously by the Committee on Examinations and Standing and the Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy.
Princeton will not have to pay any net investment income tax on returns from its $36.4 billion endowment, a University investment official said at a private event in January, after a recent expansion of its undergraduate financial aid program left the University below a 3,000 tuition-paying student threshold to qualify for taxation.
Experts had projected that the new tax on wealthy university endowments — enacted under H.R. 1, the omnibus tax and spending bill passed by congressional Republicans in July 2025 — would have cost Princeton roughly $180 million annually.
University commencement ceremonies occupy a distinctive place in academic life. At once celebratory, ceremonial, aspirational, and institutional, they mark the culmination of years of study and the transition of students to the next stage of citizenship and professional life. At institutional events — organized, sponsored, and symbolically endorsed by schools and universities — speakers chosen to address graduates at commencements should respect the purpose of these events by not politicizing them.
College students want to debate but are afraid to do it, according to a recent report from Banjo, an online platform “dedicated to the civil, peaceful exchange of ideas.”
The survey of 1,019 students across more than 600 institutions found that 92 percent of students were “slightly” to “extremely” interested in engaging in debates with their peers. Yet 66 percent of the students surveyed reported avoiding debates to prevent conflict in the past two weeks, and 64 percent reported feeling anxious when discussing controversial topics during that time period.
Today, the teachers I’m talking about tend to feel like dissidents within the academy, like they are doing something countercultural. That’s because at most schools, humanistic education has been pushed into the remote corners of academic life. It’s not that people woke up one morning and decided to renounce the humanistic ideal, it’s just that other goals popped up. It was easier to fundraise for them, easier to sell them to tuition-paying parents. The idea of forming students into the best version of themselves sort of got left behind.
The good news is that things are changing. There is an interesting pattern in the history of higher education: Universities reform after confrontations with barbarism.
PFS’s featured editorial this month is Yale Issues clarion call for change, joining other leading universities. Where is Princeton? We put Yale’s report in the context of the growing consensus amongst a widening circle of University Presidents that President Maurie McGinnis is correct. University leaders must take responsibility for their role in reaching this critical point. President Eisgruber is not among this list of reformers.
If you want to know more about why Princeton is not leading this movement to restore trust in higher education,link here to a comprehensive Five-Part Review of President Eisgruber’s book, Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, written for PFS by Tal Fortgang ‘17.
Can universities be reformed? Princeton’s Professor of Mathematics Sergiu Klainerman is a pessimist. In the absence of powerful external pressures, reform from within is “very close to zero” due to what he sees as the deep corruption of the universities’ core mission.
Klainerman was born in Romania and graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1974. He earned his PhD in Mathematics at NYU in 1978 and has taught at Princeton since 1987. A MacAurther Fellow (1991) and Guggenheim Fellow (1997) he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1999 "for his contributions to nonlinear hyperbolic equations."
Klainerman presented his bleak perspective on the state of higher education in an address at the recent opening of the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom, a new institution dedicated to the study of civics.
160 out of 257. Princeton moves up—but still "fails" (earning a grade of "F")—in FIRE's 2026 College Free Speech rankings.