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By Ethan Hicks ‘26
On Tuesday, March 21, Professor Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, and Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, sat down to discuss the history and modern state of free speech in America in their joint talk “Civil Liberties: On Campus and Beyond.” An engaged audience of students, faculty, and community members filled Lewis Auditorium to join George and Strossen for their fireside style chat hosted by Princetonians for Free Speech and Princeton Open Campus Coalition.
George offered a detailed and colorful history of Free Speech in America. He discussed why the Framers did not initially find a Bill of Rights necessary to the Constitution, because they believed the Constitution's limited enumerated powers protected citizens from encroachments upon their rights, and he suggested that the large size and extensive powers of the modern national government deviate from the Framers’ intentions. George further examined how the national government’s robust system of checks and balances protects freedom of speech, and the philosophical importance of diverse opinions in free democratic societies and institutions such as the United States and the Princeton academic community.
Strossen built upon many of George’s philosophical and historical arguments by drawing on her experience at the ACLU. Strossen focused on how the Fourteenth Amendment expanded the protections of the First Amendment to protect citizens from violations of their First Amendment rights by state and local governments. She further examined how legal action enforcing the First Amendment was not fully embraced until the 20th century despite its origin over 150 years earlier.
Strossen expanded the conversation about the modern state of free speech by claiming that meaningful free speech will not exist until private organizations such as social media platforms are no longer permitted to restrict speech. She claimed that at present, “you have no constitutional recourse against powerful social media platforms that are discriminating against or de-platforming certain ideas… you have no First Amendment recourse against so-called cancel culture.” Many audience members found her passionate rhetoric to be a call to action.
In the spirit of Strossen’s message, several of the questions posed by the audience asked George and Strossen about how freedom of expression can be improved in private and public institutions. The speakers suggested a variety of changes including the expansion of groups such as the Academic Freedom Alliance and stronger adherence to free speech ideals such as the Chicago Principles.
Ethan Hicks is a freshman at Princeton from Perry, Ohio
Isaac Bernstein and Justus Wilhoit
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ketanji Brown Jackson sat down for an hour-long conversation with Professor Deborah Pearlstein in front of a full house at Richardson Auditorium on Wednesday. Nominated to the Supreme Court in 2022, she discussed her historic path to the nation’s highest court, the challenges of public life, and the lessons that have guided her career.
Princetonians for Free Speech
Excerpt: Dear Princeton Class of ’29:
This letter comes to you from the alumni organization, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS). We have existed since you started high school four years ago. We were founded in response to a growing concern that Princeton has drifted from its core mission of the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and towards a narrow activism that threatens free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.
Paul Du Quenoy
Tablet Magazine
Excerpt: Endlessly self-congratulatory, insufferably pedantic, irritatingly repetitive, and self-referential nearly to the point of parody, Eisgruber argues that our system of higher education is, with rare and regrettable exceptions, successfully fulfilling its primary functions. In his opinion, his industry deserves “high marks” for protecting free speech rather than criticism for devaluing it. Academia’s travails indicate that our campuses are merely hapless victims of a larger “civic crisis” besetting American society, not a cause of it.
Endowed with a strong tradition of free expression, in Eisgruber’s strikingly ahistorical view, America has only recently succumbed to political divisions exacerbated by rampant partisanship and pernicious social media use.
