By Matthew Wilson
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: On Tuesday, I had the privilege of watching several of my close friends in the Class of 2023 don their caps and gowns and take part in Princeton’s annual Commencement. It was an idyllic day for the occasion — the weather could not have been better, and a joyful, festive feeling filled the air as the ceremony began. All around me, parents, grandparents, relatives, and friends beamed with pride for their graduates and eagerly awaited inspiring and uplifting remarks from the individuals slated to speak at the ceremony.
Then came University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83. While Eisgruber began his remarks by proposing to offer graduates “a few words about your time here,” what followed was an invective tirade delivered with the fervor of a preacher’s sermon, excoriating the sins of those who would dare to disagree with his views on a wide array of highly contestable topics.
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Jeffrey M. Jones
Gallup
Excerpt: Americans’ confidence in higher education has increased, with 42% saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it, up from 36% in each of the past two years. At the same time, the share with little or no confidence has declined from 32% a year ago to 23% today.
This represents the first time Gallup has measured an increase in confidence in its decadelong trend. Confidence in higher education remains well below where it was in the initial Gallup measure in 2015, when a majority of 57% were confident.
David A. Bell
French Reflections, Substack
Excerpt: Five years ago, amidst the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, three hundred of my Princeton colleagues signed a remarkable letter, addressed to the university’s top officials. It decried the university administration’s “indifference to the effects of racism on this campus,” and “the mechanisms that have allowed systemic racism to work, visibly and invisibly, in Princeton’s operations.”
Five years later, the charge has again been made that “Princeton has, in fact, entrenched a system of racial discrimination and segregation.” But this time it comes not from progressive faculty, but in an essay by the right-wing activist Christopher Rufo.
Jay Greene
The Daily Signal
Excerpt: While the Trump administration tries to rein in the political excesses that foster civil rights violations and undermine the reasons for publicly subsidizing higher education, Princeton President Chris Eisgruber has doubled down on universities’ political activism.
As a leader of the “Resistance” opposing President Donald Trump’s efforts, Eisgruber believes that universities should have the autonomy to operate as they please, including by using their endowments to advance whatever political agendas they favor.