Matthew Wilson, Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: As I write this essay, the despicable poison of Jew-hatred has taken a firm hold at so many college campuses, Princeton included. Here at Princeton, activists proudly chant “Intifada” and demand the complete eradication of the world’s only Jewish state; elsewhere, from Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania to Ohio State and Cooper Union, frightening (and sometimes violent and illegal) exhibitions of anti-Jewish attitudes abound.
For the most part, university responses to these shameful displays have been tepid and restrained. These same universities, despite being so reticent to speak out now, have a prolonged public history of weighing in on a wide array of hotly contested and politically controversial topics. At Princeton, for instance, recent years have seen official statements issued deploring Supreme Court rulings on abortion and affirmative action, condemning a jury verdict, and attacking a professor for his political views. On Hamas’s terrorist attacks? No official statements.
Hayk Yengibaryan and Christopher Bao
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In his annual State of the University letter published on Jan. 29, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 defended the University’s endowment, its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and institutional restraint. Though his letter does not, according to him, address the recent orders and policies from the Trump administration targeting universities, much of what Eisgruber wrote addressed attacks on higher education in recent years.
Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: This spring, Princeton imposed the kind of penalties that Giberson escaped on students involved in the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Jordan Johnson ’24 was a bystander at a pro-Palestinian protest in the Richardson Auditorium that disrupted President Eisgruber’s Reunions address. Larry Giberson ’23 was an active participant in a violent insurrection intended to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Yet in a blatant perversion of justice, Johnson had his Princeton degree withheld for over a week, and Giberson was quietly granted his diploma on time even after he’d been charged with six violations of the U.S. code.
Frank Strasburger
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: As a former Princeton chaplain, I’m eager to respond to Sasha Malena Johnson’s thoughtful Opinion piece urging that Opening Exercises be made secular. While I’m sympathetic to much that she says, my own understanding of Princeton’s religious pluralism leads me to a different conclusion.