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David Montgomery ‘83
Princeton Alumni Weekly
Excerpt: For the first time in memory, Princeton is inviting alumni, faculty, students, and allies to lend their voices to a broad campaign of political advocacy and public affirmation in response to the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on research funding and academic freedom in American higher education. “To my knowledge, this is a new kind of initiative for the University,” President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 told PAW in an early May interview about the campaign, which is called “Stand Up for Princeton and Higher Education.”
When Princeton becomes viewpoint-inclusive and when not just departments but ADMINISTRATION is cut, then I will “Stand Up”.
But Princeton does discriminate. The admissions demographics have not changed. And Princeton swore in court for 14 years that its admissions demographics would change if it was prohibited from discriminating (which it now legally is prohibited because it was doing it so egregiously and destructively).
And Princeton is not an inclusive forum for the free exchange of ideas. Leftist had a riot protesting a prime minister just two months ago. And other incidents of massive intolerance every year for the last decade.
Princeton is not safe for conservatives now. Both my daughters have told me that they needed to self-censor and hide their politics in order not to be harrassed by other students and by some of their professors.
Princeton is not the bedrock of anything any more. At best it is a ship that has lost all its moorings. Realistically it is probably closer to a cancer infecting our society with division and more leftist hate, violence, and intolerance
Yes, now Princeton pays for its arrogance and Eisgruber’s hubris. This is the way reality works.
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We should stand up for free speech by demonstrating that Princeton doesn’t discriminate and is an open, safe, and inclusive forum for the free exchange of ideas. Thats the bedrock of our educational system. But they don’t want to talk???? Now we pay
The shooting at Brown is deeply tragic. But it is not the time for mere thoughts and prayers. It hasn’t been for decades. As another Ivy League university, this moment calls for Princeton to stand in solidarity with the victims of the Brown shooting by pushing for significant reform to fight violence. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 is uniquely equipped as the past chair and active board member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) — an organization with a precedent of condemning gun violence — to lobby for gun reform policies on the national and state level.
A discussion about Fizz and the role of social media in our discourse took place at Princeton University on December 3rd, 2025, hosted by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) and funded by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), While the discussion has been lauded as an example of what can come about through open and civil exchange of ideas, several questions remain worth considering. What is the place of anonymous speech in our society? Should someone take responsibility for the things they say? Or has our public discourse been hollowed out by social media to the point where online commentary should be considered performative?
Tal Fortgang ‘17
When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber spoke at Harvard on November 5, 2025, he expressed what to his detractors may have sounded like an epiphany. “There’s a genuine civic crisis in America,” he said, noting how polarization and social-media amplification have made civil discourse uniquely difficult. Amid that crisis, he concluded, colleges must retain “clear time, place, and manner rules” for protest, and when protesters violate those rules, the university must refuse to negotiate. As he warned: “If you cede ground to those who break the rules … you encourage more rule-breaking, and you betray the students and scholars who depend on this university to function.”
VANE LUCAS
May 20, 2025
I would love to stand up for Princeton and for higher education — when Princeton returns to it.