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April 2, 2025 Roundtable
Should Universities Engage in Politics? A Roundtable Discussion on Academic Freedom and Institutional Neutrality
Anton Ford, Randall Kennedy, and Keith Whittington
Princeton Council on Academic Freedom
Excerpt: Please join us for a wide-ranging conversation about the philosophical and political stakes of academic neutrality, academic activism, and academic freedom - and the ways in which they intersect. Numerous peer institutions have recently adopted neutrality policies, which prohibit universities from adopting positions on political and social matters not directly tied to the mission of the university. Yet the merits of neutrality, as well as its feasibility, remain highly contested.
This event brings together three leading scholars who hold a range of differing positions on these questions in order to discuss whether, when, and how universities should take institutional stances on social and political issues, and the implications of such stances for academic freedom.
Elisabeth Stewart and Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) announced on Wednesday that a proposal for the University to cut financial ties with entities implicated in “Israel’s illegal occupations, apartheid practices, and plausible acts of genocide” will not move forward, citing a lack of campus consensus.
Student advocates across campus reacted to the decision with frustration, disappointment, and support. But one sentiment they did not express was consensus — about the issue, about the Committee’s decision, or even about the process behind it.
John T. Groves
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Nine months ago in The Daily Princetonian, I described how the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community, which I chair, would take up a divestment and dissociation request related to the State of Israel.
I outlined our approach, promising it would include careful consideration of input from the broad University community, and cautioning that it might be a lengthy process. That process has concluded, and the Committee has decided against forwarding a dissociation recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
Hugh E. Brennan
October 12, 2023
It is amusing how our best and brightest are willing to subvert the law in the interest of their ideology. I might say in service of their religion. Princeton undergraduate admissions are a limited and valuable commodity virtually guaranteeing entry to the elite of American society. The idea that immutable characteristics of race or ethnicity enter into the equation is subversive of republican citizenship. Justice Harlan’s courageous statement “our constitution is color-blind” in his famous Plessy v Ferguson dissent is, now in our increasingly diverse population, more important as the lodestar of our jurisprudence than ever. That American children of East and South Asian descent should be forced through an increasingly narrowed gate is as atrocious as when there were “too many” Jews. Somehow, a Korean grocer’s kid is tasked with making up for slavery and Jim Crow.
That the public has caught on to this vicious racial gerrymandering scheme is evident in the rapid increase in college applicants claiming indigenous or Hispanic identities. Should DNA tests be required along with essays?
Reflect that our great universities join the antebellum South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa in their obsession with race. Not very good company to keep.