Your Cart is Empty
In his new book Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber argues that all is well with America’s universities when it comes to free speech and academic freedom. He takes issue with the view that over the last few decades America’s colleges and universities have lost their way – chilling free speech and undermining viewpoint diversity and academic freedom – as they have drifted towards activism and political orthodoxy. Eisgruber’s view, which he has stated in numerous forums in recent months, stands in sharp contrast to the widespread critique of current college campus culture.
It is important to clarify that threats to free speech and academic freedom are just one symptom of a transformation that has taken place among elite universities, as their core mission has steadily drifted from knowledge and truth seeking toward social activism. This transformation now permeates admissions, faculty hiring and promotion, curriculum, and administrative priorities. In the process, campus culture has become divisive, illiberal and dogmatic. Free speech and academic freedom are casualties of this trend, despite the regular statements by campus administrators of their allegiance to free speech principles. This transformation spawned Princetonians for Free Speech and over 25 similar alumni groups throughout the country, as well as faculty groups such as the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom.
In his book, Eisgruber takes issue with critics of today’s campus culture, most notably the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression(FIRE) and its ranking of US colleges and universities based on their free speech climate. Princeton ranks 160 out of 257 this year. But FIRE, itself, says its rankings are often used for purposes for which they are not intended. FIRE is a widely respected advocate for free speech and academic freedom. It is demonstrably non-partisan, despite what Eisgruber says, as shown by its criticism of actions against universities by the Trump Administration. Why is Eisgruber gratuitously attacking FIRE? Apparently because it has dared to criticize aspects of campus culture and to suggest reforms that many other universities, but not Princeton, have now made.
PFS also very briefly comes under attack, and so we thought it best to clarify our purpose and mission:
We see current external pressures from the federal government as often containing threats to free speech and academic freedom, as well as institutional independence, and have said so. We regularly publish news and critiques of current government actions. But we also argue that recognizing the need for internal reform is the only lasting way to fix higher education.
On October 3 The Chronicle of Higher Education published a review of Eisgruber’s book: A Princeton President’s Evasions, Christopher L. Eisgruber’s new book misunderstands the past and fails to meet the present. It points out that critics of higher education are not confined to outside advocacy groups like FIRE and the network of alumni groups such as PFS, but also include a growing list of current university leaders advocating for change, whom Eisgruber has publicly rebuked for failing to stand with him, as reported in the recent Atlantic feature, The Elite University Presidents who Despise One Another.
PFS hopes that Eisgruber and Princeton’s Board of Trustees will recognize that solely defending the status quo, as President Eisgruber seems to be doing with this book, is not the way to preserve Pinceton’s historic leading role in education.
Professors Robert P. George, Tom Ginsburg, Robert Post, David Rabban, Jeannie Suk Gersen, and Keith Whittington
Substack on Academic Freedom
Excerpt: We write as scholars of academic freedom to respond to the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. We are politically diverse and do not share common views about the wisdom of particular proposals contained in the Compact. Nor do we agree on the extent or substance of the reforms needed in American higher education today. We are, however, united in our concern about key features of the proposed Compact.
The power to punish extramural speech has been abused against both conservative and liberal speakers in the past. The requirement of the Compact that universities and colleges censor students and faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organization” imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Princeton will require undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores beginning with the 2027–28 admission cycle, the University announced Thursday. The decision will end a seven-year stint of test-optional undergraduate admissions that began during the pandemic.
Several peer institutions including Harvard, Penn, and Brown, have announced in the past year and a half that they would require standardized tests, with changes set to take place in the application cycles during the 2024–25 or 2025–26 school years. Yale, meanwhile, has adopted a test-flexible policy allowing students to choose from SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to submit. Columbia has become permanently test-optional.
Shilo Brooks
The Free Press
Excerpt: Last year, our reporter Frannie Block told me about a lecturer at Princeton who was teaching a class on “greatness,” firmly rooted in the classic books of the Western canon. He would open his course by telling students that if “the greatest thing, the best thing, the noblest thing about you on your deathbed is that you got into Princeton, you didn’t do it right.”
His name is Shilo Brooks, and when I got to meet him myself, we spoke for hours about the problem of America’s lost boys, the dramatic decline in book-reading, and how those two things are connected. So I am thrilled to announce today that we are launching his brand-new podcast Old School, which is about books and how reading them can make us better.
Marta Richards '73 P04
October 17, 2025
I am glad Eisgruber is leaving and this only solidifies my positive reaction to his impending departure. I do not have much hope for a replacement given who will be making the choice. Since Tilghman the university has been on a course of destruction of the ideas that once guided it. I’ll never forget how much the change of the motto from “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” to “Princeton in the Service of all Nations” hit me—one world thinking is something that I as a child of the 1950’s/1960’s knew was a Communist concept. I am estranged from my university but remain ever hopeful that the pendulum will swing. In the meantime, Eisgruber is on the wrong track, as usual, and only his retirement is likely to correct the course.