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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.
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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.
