PFS urges alumni and other Princetonians to submit their own comments to Princeton on removal of the statue.

December 27, 2022 1 min read

EXCERPT: PFS will make the following points: 1. The process being followed by the Committee does not, and cannot, provide a true view of what Princetonians think on the issue in question because the atmosphere on campus greatly inhibits students, faculty, and others from stating their true views, especially where highly politicized issues are involved. 2. The debate over whether to remove the statue is not an isolated one, but rather has implications for other issues, most importantly, for free speech. 3. Removal of the statute would inevitably lead to petitions and demands to remove or rename other parts of Princeton’s history in a process that may never end. 4. Looked at more broadly, this continuing process of removing and renaming is an attempt to remove Princeton’s history, with all its complexity, in order to create a new university with a monolithic view that would make nonconforming views unwelcome.

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Clio Hall protesters set for April trial after second plea deal collapses

January 17, 2025 1 min read

Cynthia Torres
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Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.

All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.

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By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
    
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.  

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January 09, 2025 1 min read

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Excerpt: In interviews with the ‘Prince,’ six students subject to University disciplinary proceedings described a tangled process that appeared fixated on searching for protest leaders to blame and employed tactics they described as invasive. The students were all investigated for supposed participation in pro-Palestine disruptions last spring. 

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