A Harvard Dean's Assault on Faculty Speech

Megan Cameron
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: With Election Day just over a month away, Princeton’s politically active student groups are gearing up for a surge of campus engagement. Both the Princeton College Republicans and Princeton College Democrats are planning a series of events aimed at mobilizing students ahead of the Nov. 5 election. These groups are finding ways to encourage political engagement despite University restrictions on political activities, which are enforced by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS), the office under which these groups are registered.

Robert P. George
New York Times

Excerpt: As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.

My advice to students who fear that they will be subjected to discrimination and double standards is this: Don’t hide and don’t be silent. Exercise and, if necessary, defend your right to think for yourself and to dissent from campus orthodoxies. But even as you push back against ideological bias and discrimination, remember that as a university student you are one of the luckiest — most privileged — people on the planet. So do not think of yourself as a victim.

Alex Norbrook and Alan Plotz
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton rolled out a new protest website two weeks ago, expanding their “time, place, and manner” restrictions to more times, more places, and more manners. By placing explicit bans on some of the most common forms of political demonstration, tightening language on obscure and inconsistently-applied existing restrictions, and departing from a constructive approach of speaking with protestors, the policies intend to stoke fear and chill protest.

We, the undersigned member organizations of the Princeton Progressive Coalition, oppose these tightened restrictions, reject the University’s hostile approach to protest, and call on all who support free speech and free expression to challenge these protest bans.