The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech: Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities

For many years now, conservative and centrist critics have claimed that elite American universities suffer from a lack of “viewpoint diversity.” Even as these institutions made recruiting women and underrepresented minorities a priority, the charge goes, their faculties remained almost exclusively liberal and progressive.

Nearly all these critics reflexively dismiss “woke” scholarship as political claptrap. They don’t read seriously the people they are criticizing, and they don’t look seriously into the question of why the humanities and social sciences have developed such a strong left-wing political profile. I find most of their arguments weak and unpersuasive. But this doesn’t mean that there are not some better arguments to be offered.

The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.

However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.

Speaking at the American Whig-Cliosophic Society on Feb. 5, J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami acknowledged that many people who come to his events are already “his people” — they agree with him and are excited to hear their position reaffirmed. J Street is a nonprofit and lobby that self-describes as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy.” Although Ben-Ami took questions from students who, in turn, considered his positions too supportive of Israel or not supportive enough, Ben-Ami is correct that, in general, political speakers preach to their own choirs.

This phenomenon does not stop at FitzRandolph Gate, and it undermines the value of inviting acclaimed speakers to Princeton.

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 presented his annual State of the University letter and answered questions about various student concerns at the first 2026 meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC). 

Eisgruber spent the majority of his presentation reviewing the University’s strategic shift in endowment spending priorities amid diminishing long-term endowment return projections. This includes a 10-year estimated $11.3 billion deficit in endowment growth relative to previous growth projections, according to the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO).

In his 2026 “State of the University” letter sent to students on Monday, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 previewed major upcoming changes to University finances. The letter, titled “From Growth to Focus,” described a move away from expansion, citing long-term economic factors.

The changes will come in addition to the 5–7 percent departmental budget cuts over the last year, alongside the hiring freeze instituted last March. “The long-term endowment trends described in this memorandum are likely to require more targeted, and in some cases deeper, reductions over a multiyear period,” Eisgruber wrote. “The change that I am describing … goes beyond the pace of construction. It will affect everyone on campus.”

Ten years ago, Princeton University’s Board of Trustees published a strategic framework to guide the institution into the future. As I prepared this annual letter to the community—the tenth in a series that began in 2017—I reread the framework and the mission statement included in it.

The strategic framework and the values expressed in it have shaped a period of remarkable, mission-driven growth. As I describe in the paragraphs that follow, those values will be equally crucial in the months and years to come, when changed political and economic circumstances require that we transition from a period of exceptional growth to one defined by steadfast focus on core priorities.