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Professors Robert P. George, Tom Ginsburg, Robert Post, David Rabban, Jeannie Suk Gersen, and Keith Whittington
Substack on Academic Freedom
Excerpt: We write as scholars of academic freedom to respond to the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. We are politically diverse and do not share common views about the wisdom of particular proposals contained in the Compact. Nor do we agree on the extent or substance of the reforms needed in American higher education today. We are, however, united in our concern about key features of the proposed Compact.
The power to punish extramural speech has been abused against both conservative and liberal speakers in the past. The requirement of the Compact that universities and colleges censor students and faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organization” imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.
In his new book Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber argues that all is well with America’s universities when it comes to free speech and academic freedom. He takes issue with the view that over the last few decades America’s colleges and universities have lost their way – chilling free speech and undermining viewpoint diversity and academic freedom – as they have drifted towards activism and political orthodoxy. Eisgruber’s view, which he has stated in numerous forums in recent months, stands in sharp contrast to the widespread critique of current college campus culture.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Princeton will require undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores beginning with the 2027–28 admission cycle, the University announced Thursday. The decision will end a seven-year stint of test-optional undergraduate admissions that began during the pandemic.
Several peer institutions including Harvard, Penn, and Brown, have announced in the past year and a half that they would require standardized tests, with changes set to take place in the application cycles during the 2024–25 or 2025–26 school years. Yale, meanwhile, has adopted a test-flexible policy allowing students to choose from SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to submit. Columbia has become permanently test-optional.
Shilo Brooks
The Free Press
Excerpt: Last year, our reporter Frannie Block told me about a lecturer at Princeton who was teaching a class on “greatness,” firmly rooted in the classic books of the Western canon. He would open his course by telling students that if “the greatest thing, the best thing, the noblest thing about you on your deathbed is that you got into Princeton, you didn’t do it right.”
His name is Shilo Brooks, and when I got to meet him myself, we spoke for hours about the problem of America’s lost boys, the dramatic decline in book-reading, and how those two things are connected. So I am thrilled to announce today that we are launching his brand-new podcast Old School, which is about books and how reading them can make us better.
