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Below is a link to our first podcast, a 52-minute interview of Jonathan Rauch, a Brookings scholar and journalist who is one of America’s sharpest and most original thinkers, by Stuart Taylor Jr., president of Princetonians for Free Speech. The subject is Jonathan’s highly acclaimed new book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. It is a deep dive into how Western thinkers have used evidence and logic since the enlightenment to determine what is true and what is false, making possible enormous progress in science, medicine, philosophy, politics, law, and other human affairs.
Most important for today’s world, Rauch explains the threats to all this progress, to the health of what he calls the reality-based community, and even to our way of life, from the Trumpist “firehose of falsehoods” on the far right and the totalitarian cancel culture that is coming to dominate academia, the news media, and other educated elites on the left. The book includes a muscular defense of free speech, which is vital to the constitution of knowledge.
The many glowing reviews include those of columnist George Will, who calls Rauch “a James Madison for this era,” and former American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen, who says: “Starting from first principles and applying them to headlines as recent as the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, The Constitution of Knowledge provides the map we've been waiting for.”
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.
