Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Clio Hall protesters set for April trial after second plea deal collapses

January 17, 2025 1 min read

Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.

All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.

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Free speech is not a laughing matter

January 15, 2025 3 min read 2 Comments

By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
    
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.  

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‘Grasping at straws’: Inside Princeton’s disciplinary process for pro-Palestine students

January 09, 2025 1 min read

Olivia Sanchez and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: In interviews with the ‘Prince,’ six students subject to University disciplinary proceedings described a tangled process that appeared fixated on searching for protest leaders to blame and employed tactics they described as invasive. The students were all investigated for supposed participation in pro-Palestine disruptions last spring. 

Their accounts, corroborated by dozens of documents reviewed by the ‘Prince,’ including emails and investigation records, provide a rare glance behind the scenes of the University’s investigative apparatus.

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Inclusion Requires Free Speech

January 09, 2025 4 min read 1 Comment

James (Jimmy) Lane ’92
Princetonians for Free Speech Original Content

I am a HUGE fan of the “I” in DEI. I will leave the “D” and “E” for others to opine. This essay is mostly a story of how multiple-perspectives critical thinking training by a compassionate classmate at Princeton University helped a first-generation college student become included in middle class America and why a university culture of free speech and open inquiry is so vital to upward mobility.

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Against the Policy Mindset

January 08, 2025 3 min read

Khoa Sands
Princetonians for Free Speech Original Content

National attention on campus free-speech issues tends to focus on only the most sensational threats. Incidents like speaker shout-downs,disruptive protests,physical attacks,major petitions, orunjust firings garner the most attention from alumni and the general public. And rightly so – there is no shortage of incidents that ought to cause outrage from those who believe in academic freedom and free expression. However, there are subtler threats to free speech in the university that fly under the radar, ignored by the press, alumni, and students, but are no less insidious. They can be as subtle as a state of mind.

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Why Political Life at Princeton is Relatively Placid

January 02, 2025 3 min read

Khoa Sands ‘26


Elite academia has been dominated by the question of free speech and free expression over the past year. 2024 has seen the explosion of pro-Palestine campus protests, throwing institutions into disarray. At Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, and other universities, administrators struggled to respond as activists occupied campus and harassed other students. Scenes of chaotic fighting at UCLA were played on televisions across the country. 

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