Response to Rep. Gottheimer about Academic Freedom and Course Materials

Graham Piro
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Earlier this month, Princeton professor Robert George’s appearance at Washington College provided yet another example of what’s known as the “heckler’s veto.” Protesters entered the event and drowned out George’s speech, eventually forcing him to leave — while security officers stood by and watched as the protesters shouted and played loud music to prevent George from speaking and those in attendance from hearing him. While the college publicly denounced the disruption, FIRE called on it to do more by educating its security officers on their responsibility to intervene and remove disruptive protesters.

In response to FIRE’s letter, Washington College President Michael J. Sosulski told us that part of the school’s post-incident analysis “will include ensuring that [its] Public Safety officers are prepared to engage in ways that will not permit events to be disrupted or abruptly canceled.”

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A conservative Princeton University professor tried to give a speech this month at Washington College centering on the need for campus free speech. Students disrupted his talk and succeeded in ending it.

It was another example of what are often called student shoutdowns or “heckler’s vetoes”—though the meaning of that phrase is contested—disrupting conservative speakers. Perhaps most prominently this year, in March, Stanford University students disrupted a talk by Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Ethan Hicks, ‘26
Princetonians for Free Speech Original Content

Excerpt: George F. Will, the legendary Washington Post columnist, delivered a lecture on September 13 that nearly filled Friend 101 to its 250-person capacity with a diverse audience of students, faculty, and community members. His most trenchant message was that “the magnificent legacy” of the great research universities can “be squandered in a generation, destroyed from within, not by outside forces.”