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Ryne Weiss
FIRE
Excerpt: The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. In his new book Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber reports on FIRE’s data on free speech and First Amendment norms on campus while making no effort to understand it and misusing the data of others. In other words, he’s skipped that first step — and now Princeton is tumbling down the staircase.
IMHO, what is so striking is the alternative universe in which Eisgruber resides. It is one in which, for some time now, he fails to see the damage he is doing to Princeton’s and the university’s reputation, combined with the alienation of other university presidents. Seemingly, the environment in which Eisgruber resides contains an oxygen level similar to that at 15,000 feet. Eisgruber appears to be balancing himself at the top of a sharply pointed obelisk, alone and vulnerable to prevailing winds.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-princeton-presidents-evasions
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/princeton-president-melts-down-rejects-responsibility-for-campus-anti-semitism/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/trump-university-presidents/683803/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/the-disqualifying-hypocrisy-of-princetons-president/
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/08/11/the-university-presidents-who-want-to-fix-universities-before-they-get-fixed/
https://www.city-journal.org/article/princeton-university-president-christopher-eisgruber-anti-semitism-racial-discrimination
FIRE was founded by two of my Princeton ’64 classmates who went on to Harvard, where one received a law degree (Harvey Silverglate) and the other a history PhD (Alan Kors). I am proud to call them friends.
A few months ago, I heard from one of the greatest antitrust legal scholars of our time — Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — in an event hosted by the Princeton Program in Law and Public Policy.
The event turned out to be a “fireside chat” between Khan and Director of the Program in Law and Public Policy Deborah Pearlstein, an all-too-familiar manifestation of the “conversation” format that plagues Princeton events. Instead of letting visitors speak for themselves, we filter their thoughts and ideas through a moderator, who all too often serves to dilute whatever interesting points the speaker might have to share into a superficial overview of their career and accomplishments.
We now assess Eisgruber’s peculiar take on the relation of the university to the nation that has treated it with increasing hostility in recent decades. Critics may wail that the universities have to be brought to heel for producing fanatics, snowflakes, and crybullies, but Eisgruber turns their argument on its head: it’s actually the nation that could afford to learn from the campus, he argues; to the extent universities are struggling with civility norms, they are simply a dirty mirror for broken civil discourse. Otherwise they are a model for balancing speech and other values with a “more vigorous” culture of speech than “most sectors of society.”
This thesis has two component parts, which can be asked as distinct questions. Are critics wrong to identify a free-speech crisis on campus? And, to the extent such issues arise, are universities merely replicating national problems of polarization in microcosm?
Wokeness, campus protests, and the instruction of leftist ideas within universities do not erode civil discourse or violate free speech norms. Or so President Christopher Eisgruber argues in his new book, Terms of Respect. Overall, I agree with Eisgruber’s assessment, but there are some conceptual nuances that I will offer in order to refine his argument. This review will not provide a comprehensive summary of the book nor will it recount every minor personal agreement and disagreement I have. Rather, it will present Eisgruber’s most important arguments and my opinions on his larger takeaways.
Doug Hensler '69
November 05, 2025
Corrected:
IMHO, what is so striking is the alternative universe in which Eisgruber resides. It is one in which, for some time now, he fails to see the damage he is doing to Princeton and the university’s reputation, combined with the alienation of other university presidents. Seemingly, the environment in which Eisgruber resides contains an oxygen level similar to that at 15,000 feet. Eisgruber appears to be balancing himself at the top of a sharply pointed obelisk, alone and vulnerable to prevailing winds.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-princeton-presidents-evasions
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/princeton-president-melts-down-rejects-responsibility-for-campus-anti-semitism/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/trump-university-presidents/683803/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/the-disqualifying-hypocrisy-of-princetons-president/
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/08/11/the-university-presidents-who-want-to-fix-universities-before-they-get-fixed/
https://www.city-journal.org/article/princeton-university-president-christopher-eisgruber-anti-semitism-racial-discrimination