On December 5, leaders of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), including AFSA president and PFS co-founder Edward Yingling, participated in an important congressional roundtable on free speech on college campuses. AFSA participants also including John Craig, AFSA Treasurer; students from W&L and UVA who are very involved with AFSA members there; and Raj Kannappan of Young America’s Foundation (YAF) and a member of AFSA’s Cornell alumni group member. Other participants were from the Foundation on Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).
Republican House Members, including Rep. Greg Murphy, the organizer, Rep Virginia Foxx, the next chair of the Education and Labor Committee, and other free speech champions, led the discussion. This is the second of these annual free speech roundtables.
The link to the video of the Roundtable is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_AMvnjHq0I
Note: The Alumni Free Speech Alliance is a formal alliance of alumni free speech groups of which PFS was a co-founder. PFS co-founders Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor serve as president and vice-chair, respectively, of AFSA. AFSA has fifteen member alumni groups, including groups from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Stanford and UVA. It is growing rapidly as more and more alumni groups are forming for their universities.
By Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Princetonians for Free Speech Original Content
“Princeton Doubles Down on DEI Amid Nationwide Attacks,” the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported recently – and a few weeks later, the Trump Administration launched at warp speed a profusion of legal and rhetorical attacks on universities and their DEI programs for alleged sins against freedom of speech and for “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.” The Administration may make major cuts of outlays to universities, and Vice President J.D. Vance and others have spoken of taxing income on university endowments.
Trajan Hammonds
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: A couple of weeks ago, at 1 a.m., I found out the National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Fellowship I applied for was being canceled because it did not comply with Trump’s new executive order on federal funding for DEI initiatives. I did what anyone from my generation would do in a moment like this: I took to X to share my experience. It’s clear that the Trump administration’s assault against academia has begun — and ultimately students, researchers, and our country are on the losing end.
Christofer Robles
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: This Saturday, Princeton will confer the Woodrow Wilson Award, the University’s prestigious alumni prize for public service, to Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan ’81. The name of this annual honor is yet another reminder of the University’s predilection for praising its most polemic figures.
But there is no need to abandon uncomfortable history, nor is there any merit to overly defending the depraved. The University must commit to truth, representing its history and its icons more honestly. And as it does so, we need to flood the Princeton canon with more monuments to Princeton’s unsung heroes.