Your Cart is Empty
John Rose, associate director of the Arete Initiative at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, joined us on our latest podcast to discuss his recent Wall Street Journal column about how he nurtures true civil discourse in his classroom and what he has learned from the experience. While helping to coordinate Arete’s programming, Rose teaches courses in happiness and human flourishing, Christian ethics, conservatism, and political polarization. He was interviewed by Lawrence Haas, a board member of Princetonians for Free Speech.
Rose revealed that he learned – from speaking with students privately in one-on-one settings – that many of them wanted to engage in honest debate, to explore all sides of complicated issues, but were afraid to do so. When he surveyed 110 students anonymously this spring, 68 percent of them revealed that they censor themselves on certain political topics, even with good friends. Nevertheless, Rose found a way to nurture honest debate in his classroom. After establishing rules that, among other things, allowed for the airing of differing opinions and assumed good will on all sides, he watched his students “flourish,” as he put it. They discussed such hot-button issues as critical race theory and abortion. But, as he acknowledges, whether other teachers, at Duke and on other campuses, try to follow his lead remains very much an open question.
University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 presented his annual State of the University letter and answered questions about various student concerns at the first 2026 meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC).
Eisgruber spent the majority of his presentation reviewing the University’s strategic shift in endowment spending priorities amid diminishing long-term endowment return projections. This includes a 10-year estimated $11.3 billion deficit in endowment growth relative to previous growth projections, according to the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO).
In his 2026 “State of the University” letter sent to students on Monday, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 previewed major upcoming changes to University finances. The letter, titled “From Growth to Focus,” described a move away from expansion, citing long-term economic factors.
The changes will come in addition to the 5–7 percent departmental budget cuts over the last year, alongside the hiring freeze instituted last March. “The long-term endowment trends described in this memorandum are likely to require more targeted, and in some cases deeper, reductions over a multiyear period,” Eisgruber wrote. “The change that I am describing … goes beyond the pace of construction. It will affect everyone on campus.”
Ten years ago, Princeton University’s Board of Trustees published a strategic framework to guide the institution into the future. As I prepared this annual letter to the community—the tenth in a series that began in 2017—I reread the framework and the mission statement included in it.
The strategic framework and the values expressed in it have shaped a period of remarkable, mission-driven growth. As I describe in the paragraphs that follow, those values will be equally crucial in the months and years to come, when changed political and economic circumstances require that we transition from a period of exceptional growth to one defined by steadfast focus on core priorities.
