Your Cart is Empty
By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
On April 24th, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens spoke about free speech, journalism, and Israel to approximately one hundred attendees gathered in Guyot Hall. The event, entitled “Writing About Israel as a Columnist and as a Jew,” was co-sponsored by a variety of campus organizations, including B’Artzeinu and the Center for Jewish Life. I attended in my capacity as a Writing Fellow for Princetonians for Free Speech, a contributor to the event.
Stephens began by outlining how Western media gets the Israel narrative wrong, framing Israel as the more powerful adversary in a two-sided conflict. “Most of the media treats the Israel story as a Goliath versus David story in which Israel is Goliath because the Palestinians loom smaller. Expand the frame and what you see is a country that is surrounded by current enemies and historic enemies and very hostile populations.”
The pro-Palestine movement on college campuses was a focal point of the event. Stephens called out what he sees as the liberal hypocrisy of the movement. “If your values are progressive, but you are objectively siding with the most fundamentalist, totalitarian, misogynistic and homophobic movement in the world, something is the matter with your thinking.”
Stephens also advised that protestors be wary of the backlash their actions might elicit, drawing a historical comparison to student politics in the Weimar Republic. “When the left in Germany trashed universities in the 1920s, it paved the way for the most extreme right. Be careful that through radicalism, you don’t invite a form of reaction that will be much more terrifying.” He cautioned that the movement for Palestinian freedom could lead to “handing all of our enemies a golden political opportunity.”
Already in response to pro-Palestine protests, the Trump administration has frozen upwards of $11 billion in university federal funding. Stephens took a strong stance against these funding cuts, seeing them as “bald attacks on university life” rather than genuine attempts to curb anti-semitism. “I think that many universities are broken institutions, but the place to fix them is within the university, not with the heavy hammer of withholding federal funds.”
During the Q&A section of the event, an audience member asked Stephens to define the boundaries of appropriate speech about Israel. Stephens responded that, except for pre-established First Amendment restrictions, “all speech about Israel is permissible.” He shared that he has no problem with chants which paint Israel as a genocidal state, as long as he is able to respond. “I have a right to call it anti-semitic,” Stephens said. “It doesn’t mean I’m censoring that speech. I am making an effort to describe that speech as I see it.”
The columnist expressed that it is acceptable to find fault with Israel on the basis of policy, but he voiced his concern about more extreme beliefs. “What I’m worried about is that there is a strain on the left that no longer sees Israel as mistaken on policy [but] sees Israel as fundamentally illegitimate as a state.”
Despite his criticisms of leftist activism, Stephens noted that his speaking engagements have more often been cancelled by far-right groups that reject his support of a two-state solution than far-left ones.
Marisa Hirschfield ’27 studies History and Creative Writing and is a PFS Writing Fellow.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, top colleges and universities have faced an onslaught of federal attacks: slashing grant money for research, pressuring schools to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, cracking down on visas for international students, and ending graduate program sponsorship for active duty military at top schools. However, some Ivy League universities — the center of many of Trump’s ongoing attacks — have decreased messaging on the potential consequences of these federal directives.
“One thing that’s been clear is that a lot of universities have felt that publicity would bring no advantage or do them no good,” history professor David Bell GS ’91, who has been outspoken about federal actions against universities, said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.
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.
They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities. To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen.
Universities may be tempted to treat these capabilities as inevitable improvements in education. Students will be able to consume vast amounts of information, more than ever before. But like AI writing itself, such consumption would be vast but shallow. The more interesting possibility, then, is that AI will force universities to rediscover the value of intellectual work that cannot be outsourced.
