President’s Annual “State of the University” Letter 2024: Excellence, Inclusivity, and Free Speech

January 18, 2024 1 min read

Christopher Eisgruber ‘83
Princeton University

Excerpt: Some people, however, have seized upon public outrage about antisemitism as a stalking horse for other agendas, including, most notably, attacks upon the efforts that we and others make to ensure that colleges and universities are places where students, faculty, researchers, and staff from all backgrounds can thrive.

Some of these arguments are nakedly partisan jeremiads, but others come from centrist voices. These attacks are wrong. America’s leading universities are more dedicated to scholarly excellence today than at any previous point in their history, and our commitment to inclusivity is essential to that excellence.

Click here for link to full letter

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Also in Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Clio Hall protesters set for April trial after second plea deal collapses

January 17, 2025 1 min read

Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.

All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.

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Free speech is not a laughing matter

January 15, 2025 3 min read 2 Comments

By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
    
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.  

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‘Grasping at straws’: Inside Princeton’s disciplinary process for pro-Palestine students

January 09, 2025 1 min read

Olivia Sanchez and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: In interviews with the ‘Prince,’ six students subject to University disciplinary proceedings described a tangled process that appeared fixated on searching for protest leaders to blame and employed tactics they described as invasive. The students were all investigated for supposed participation in pro-Palestine disruptions last spring. 

Their accounts, corroborated by dozens of documents reviewed by the ‘Prince,’ including emails and investigation records, provide a rare glance behind the scenes of the University’s investigative apparatus.

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