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Excerpt: The Constitution had a great week at the Supreme Court. In the span of 24 hours, the Court prohibited the violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA v. Harvard), reaffirmed the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, and upheld the separation of powers in Biden v. Nebraska.
University President Christopher Eisgruber released a statement reflecting his personal and – by virtue of his office – Princeton’s institutional opinions on the outcome. In it, he called the Court’s decision “unwelcome,” “disappointing,” and “regrettable.” Like many other reactions to the ruling, both in the mainstream media and on social media, President Eisgruber’s statement was fraught with inconsistencies.
Jeffrey M. Jones
Gallup
Excerpt: Americans’ confidence in higher education has increased, with 42% saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it, up from 36% in each of the past two years. At the same time, the share with little or no confidence has declined from 32% a year ago to 23% today.
This represents the first time Gallup has measured an increase in confidence in its decadelong trend. Confidence in higher education remains well below where it was in the initial Gallup measure in 2015, when a majority of 57% were confident.
David A. Bell
French Reflections, Substack
Excerpt: Five years ago, amidst the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, three hundred of my Princeton colleagues signed a remarkable letter, addressed to the university’s top officials. It decried the university administration’s “indifference to the effects of racism on this campus,” and “the mechanisms that have allowed systemic racism to work, visibly and invisibly, in Princeton’s operations.”
Five years later, the charge has again been made that “Princeton has, in fact, entrenched a system of racial discrimination and segregation.” But this time it comes not from progressive faculty, but in an essay by the right-wing activist Christopher Rufo.
Jay Greene
The Daily Signal
Excerpt: While the Trump administration tries to rein in the political excesses that foster civil rights violations and undermine the reasons for publicly subsidizing higher education, Princeton President Chris Eisgruber has doubled down on universities’ political activism.
As a leader of the “Resistance” opposing President Donald Trump’s efforts, Eisgruber believes that universities should have the autonomy to operate as they please, including by using their endowments to advance whatever political agendas they favor.
