By Danielle Shapiro
Excerpt: Watching the Class of 2023’s Commencement, I felt grateful, nostalgic, and pensive. Liminal periods implore us to consider our place within the world and the decisions we’ve made at each stage. Speaking before the graduating class, President Eisgruber offered his own commentary, praising the work of political activists for their commitment to Princeton’s motto, “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.”
But Eisgruber’s departing message was misguided for its substantial focus on political activism and its departure from the core purpose of Princeton and universities like it: truth-seeking and the production and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, though he extolled freedom of speech, he crucially neglected how freedom of speech ought to operate within the University’s mission.
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By Edward L. Yingling, Cofounder of Princetonians for Free Speech
INTRODUCTION:
It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.
All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.
By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.