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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.”
John T. Groves
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Nine months ago in The Daily Princetonian, I described how the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community, which I chair, would take up a divestment and dissociation request related to the State of Israel.
I outlined our approach, promising it would include careful consideration of input from the broad University community, and cautioning that it might be a lengthy process. That process has concluded, and the Committee has decided against forwarding a dissociation recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
Sarah Mashiat and Caitlyn Tablada
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In the wake of slashed graduate admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and other colleges, the University has not directed departments to reduce the number of admissions officers, graduate school spokesperson Tracy Meyer told The Daily Princetonian.
Indeed, for many graduate students and professors, it is business as usual when it comes to admissions.
Irene Kim
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Department of African American Studies (AAS) held a Black History Month Forum called “What’s Behind the Attacks on DEI,” on Feb. 26, moderated by Professor Tera W. Hunter, chair of the department.
The four panelists — Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. GS ’97, Tera W. Hunter, Naomi Murakawa, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor — are all professors in the department.
