Your Cart is Empty
Editor's note: Below is an excerpt of and link to an important statement issued by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, the student free speech group at Princeton University.
POCC Statement in Academic Freedom in Light of Campus News
Princeton Open Campus Coalition
Princeton University contributes to society through truth seeking, a pursuit necessitating academic freedom and institutional neutrality. Yet recent discussion of an upcoming Princeton course has prompted us, as leaders of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), to reiterate the truth-seeking mission and how it functions on Princeton’s campus.
This fall, the Department of Near Eastern Studies (NES) is offering a course from Assistant Professor Satyel Larson titled “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South.” Dr. Larson’s inclusion of one book—Jasbir Puar’s The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability—has stirred controversy for its claims about the Israeli Defense Forces. Earlier this month, Dr. Larson’s course began receiving critical attention from various news sites concerned about material in Puar’s book they deemed harmful and antisemitic.
Last week, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister wrote to Princeton’s President, Chistropher Eisgruber, requesting that the book be removed from the syllabus and that “discriminatory” materials be excluded from all future Princeton courses. On Monday, the Princeton Center for Jewish Life released a statement urging Dr. Larson and the NES Department to “reconsider the impact of [the] text and to explore alternative ways to teach” because The Right to Maim “could do real harm to Jewish students on our campus.” It is these objections that have raised critical questions concerning academic freedom and its place on Princeton’s campus.
Princeton University expects every professor to abide by the highest standards of scholarship in their discipline when conducting research and teaching students. Facts should be presented as facts, opinions as opinions, and all should be fair game for reasoned debate without viewpoint retaliation. We hope and assume this bar was met when Dr. Larson’s course was approved by the NES Department. Beyond this requirement, professors have complete freedom to construct their syllabi as they see fit.
Consequently, Dr. Larson is entitled to teach whatever books and topics she wants in her course, so long as students can form their own educated assessments of the material. This is true even if her choices are unpopular amongst students, governments, or other organizations. Academic freedom gives both students and professors the opportunity to contribute to the University’s mission of truth seeking, and that opportunity is extended to Dr. Larson. Princeton cannot justly compel changes in her syllabus based on objections to one book’s perspectives. Rather, the University exists to facilitate learning and discussion of controversial topics, which necessitates allowance of such texts in the context of honest academic exploration.
But this does not leave opponents of the course without alternatives. Organizations that see themselves as advocating for Jewish students and voices—or any other organization or individual, for that matter—are welcome to critique the content of Puar’s book, suggest alternative or additional readings that they believe would improve the course, and “counterprogram” by hosting speakers and reading groups. To be sure, Dr. Larson’s course and its opponents can function symbiotically to promote open debate in pursuit of truth on Princeton’s campus.
Signed,
Danielle Shapiro Rebecca Roth Marie Riddle Benjamin Woodard
President, POCC Vice-President, POCC Secretary, POCC Treasurer, POCC
Comments will be approved before showing up.
Prestigious universities and leading state schools across the nation have embraced viewpoint diversity by building new institutions—civic education centers and the like—which are simultaneously on yet apart from the campus. Harvard has quietly taken a different tack. Over the past several months, the university’s top brass have been asking major donors for $10 million gifts to endow new professorships under the banner of “viewpoint diversity.” Provost John Manning, a scholar often associated with the conservative legal movement, has led the effort, aiming to place between 20 and 30 new faculty across schools and departments rather than siloed in a standalone institute.
Why Harvard would need additional funding for this is an open question, but putting that partly aside, we ought to ask what to make of this unique initiative. It stands a chance of being either the most consequential reform attempt in elite higher education this decade, or a sophisticated piece of reputation management serving double duty as a clever fundraiser. Which one it turns out to be depends on whether Harvard has thought carefully about what viewpoint diversity means, and whether it intends to execute in line with a considered answer.
Are some schools better at fostering intellectual diversity than others? The study clearly reveals that the most elite universities are among those with the least ideological diversity. Princeton is ranked 13 out of the 55 in the study, with its faculty slightly more ideologically diverse than, for instance, UC Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth and Harvard, and slightly less diverse than Stanford, Cornell, UCLA or Georgetown.
There is little doubt that this study provides another opening for politicians and critics to attack higher education, perhaps in unfair ways. Princeton could help neutralize this by joining those reform-minded university leaders in the now burgeoning effort to regain the public’s trust in higher education.
A federal judge ruled last month that the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) termination of more than 1,400 grants in April 2025 had violated the Constitution on several counts. Princeton researchers await the effects of the verdict, which ordered that the NEH must rescind its termination notices.
