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.
City Journal
Excerpt:
Princeton University, like all Ivy League schools, has sunk more deeply into administrative activism over recent years. The school maintains a robust Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy, with more than six DEI employees per 1,000 students. The school also displays several other activist commitments that distract it from its educational mission—most notably, Princeton’s decision to intervene in the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court in favor of affirmative action.
Elizabeth Hu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 addressed conflicts between free speech and censorship on college campuses during a discussion at the Princeton Public Library on Monday. He was joined in conversation by Deborah Pearlstein, Director of Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Policy.
He also addressed the difference between censorship and controversy through a reference to Judge Kyle Duncan, who was invited to speak at Stanford Law School in 2023. Duncan’s talk was interrupted by student protesters throughout and was eventually cut short. “That’s real censorship,” Eisgruber said. “It made it impossible for a speaker that some people on campus wanted to hear to be heard, and that should be recognized.”
Rodrigo Menezes
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Recently, Princeton University announced a policy that would require members of eating clubs and co-ops living in University housing to buy a second meal plan, costing about $900 a year. I, along with all the other members of the Graduate Interclub Council (GICC), believe that this policy would be disastrous for Princeton’s undergraduate experience.