Since 2020: campus and national free speech coverage, plus original commentary, to keep alumni in the know.
By Simon Riley, The Daily Princetonian
By Suheyla Akman '28
By Abigail Readlinger '27
This call for near unanimity is inconsistent both with the University’s previous divestment decisions and the University’s role as a liberal arts institution. To be a liberal arts institution, as then-President Harold Shapiro GS ’64 wrote in a 1999 article to the Princeton Alumni Weekly, the University “needs to prepare us for an independent and responsible life of choice,” give us “a capacity to make moral and political choices,” and provide us a moral education. Equating consensus with near unanimity and disposing of politically contentious petitions abandons the University’s commitment to this moral education.
The University must resolve this contradiction: Either turn away from moral education and cease to divest at all, or make divestment a component of that moral education, letting go of the notion of complete consensus.
“T-R-U-M-P.”
Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf was answering a student’s question when she nearly used the word “trump” as a regular English verb, meaning “override” or “overcome” — but she couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence. She collapsed into her armchair, citing her inability to say “his name” out loud, and instead spelled it out, letter by letter. At the Princeton Pre-read assembly, in front of the entire Class of 2030. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, sitting across from her, smiled and said nothing.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill agreed not to use or analyze racial data in its admissions process and to adopt race-blind policies for scholarships as part of a settlement with the Trump administration announced Monday.
The agreement with the Education and Justice Departments also requires UNC to hire a coordinator to respond to complaints of antisemitism and provide mandatory antisemitism training to all students, faculty and staff. In addition, UNC can’t partner with any bridge or pipeline program that takes into account a student’s race or ethnicity. In exchange, the Education Department will close its 18 investigations into UNC, and the Justice Department will end a compliance review that began April 18, 2025. UNC is not required to pay anything, as some universities have.
Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who has become the symbol of the Trump administration’s crusade against pro-Palestinian speech, have petitioned the US Supreme Court to review his case – the final chapter in a months-long legal saga that could determine countless foreign citizens’ ability to challenge their detention by US immigration authorities in federal court.
I have two boys in college, and their university experiences are very different from the one I had in the 1990s. While many of those changes are for the better, some are for the worse. And on the whole, I would be reluctant to trade my experience for theirs.
But fixing something requires having a good handle on the problem. If you don’t know why a system broke down, it will be difficult to bring it back online. Neil Gross, a sociology professor at Colby College, has an answer: universities have been caught in the crosshairs of political polarization.
