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Douglas Schleicher
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In thinking about the complex problem of academic freedom, the Princeton community must take care to avoid false dichotomies that could be harmful and restrict free speech. One such dichotomy is the idea that we can have either controversial academic inquiry or allow those impacted by that inquiry to speak up and be heard — but not both.
In a guest contribution published on Thursday in The Daily Princetonian, Joan Scott falls into this precise trap. While defending the right to host this past Friday’s conference, entitled “The Anti-Zionist Idea: History, Theory, and Politics,” she simultaneously seeks to delegitimize and silence Rabbi Gil Steinlauf ’91 for expressing concern about its framing and impact, suggesting that his advocacy on behalf of Jewish students is somehow a threat to academic freedom rather than an exercise of it.
Princeton recently hosted the New Jersey General Assembly for a special session in the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the independent legislature’s first meeting in August 1776. At the time of that inaugural session, Nassau Hall was still unravaged by the horrors of war.
Closing the doors to such historic buildings repeats the mistake made by too many universities: conflating the institution with its administration. While the University could not function without the work of its leaders and trustees, neither could it live without the flesh, blood, and spirit of its students and faculty.
Over the past year, President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted international students in a series of restrictions, citing concerns about national security. Fear has spread among international students at Princeton, where 13% of undergraduates — and 45% of grad students — come from abroad. “This is not the safe haven that it was supposed to be,” B. ’27, a Princeton student from Latin America, told PAW.
The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.
However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.
