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by George F. Will
Excerpt: Squalls of indignation gust across campuses so frequently that they seem merely performative — synthetic, perfunctory, uninteresting. Princeton’s current contretemps, however, fascinatingly illustrates how wokeness, which lacks limiting principles, limits opposition to itself. Since 2001, a statue of John Witherspoon (1723-1794), the Presbyterian minister recruited from Scotland to be the then-college’s president, has adorned a plaza adjacent to Firestone Library.
Now the woke, who subordinate everything to “social justice” as they imagine it, demand its removal because he owned two slaves and did not advocate immediate abolition. As Princeton’s president, this “animated son of liberty” (John Adams’s description of the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence) assured the precarious institution’s survival. His students included future congressmen, senators, Supreme Court justices and a president — James Madison stayed an extra year to study with Witherspoon. . . . Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), an alumni organization much more devoted than the university’s administration and trustees are to viewpoint diversity, notes that “the atmosphere on campus greatly inhibits students, faculty, and others from stating their true views” on “highly politicized issues,” which nowadays most issues become.
By Tal Fortgang ‘17
What is an Ivy League university? The simplicity of the question is deceiving. Everyone knows what Harvard is. Except increasingly, no one does – not the students who attend, and certainly not the administrators who shape the institution, thereby answering that question every day.
Isaac Barsoum
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: On Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, Sunrise Princeton, alongside the Princeton Progressive Coalition, organized a rally of more than 100 demonstrators. We called on the University to act as a leader by defending life-or-death climate research, divesting from weapons manufacturers to end the genocide in Palestine, protecting immigrants and international students, and safeguarding academic freedom in a time when rising authoritarianism threatens progress across the world.
As a lead organizer for this rally, I learned an important lesson: Princeton students care a lot about progressive change, and are willing to publicly display their support because they’re optimistic that their actions can make a difference on a policy level. They just feel like they’re too damn busy.
Annabel Green
Princetonians for Free Speech
Excerpt: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise, follows protagonist Amory Blaine, who enjoys a particularly affluent life as an undergraduate at Princeton. Fitzgerald writes of Princeton:
