Academic Freedom at Princeton

Zeke Douglas Rosenthal, Edward Yingling, and Wyatt Browne

Excerpt: On Wednesday, in response to a wave of national campus encampments in response to the war in Gaza, Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun wrote in an email to the student body that “any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus.”

Last week we held a screening of the new movie, The Coddling of the American Mind in partnership with Princeton Whig-Clio. To see a recap from the producers of the film click here.

Below is a copy of the letter our team sen to Vice President Calhoun in regards to her statement to the student body yesterday about the encampment protest happening today. This Daily Princetonian Article showcases what is taking place on campus.

Keith Whittington
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Shafik’s actions in New York City may have repercussions across the country as students elsewhere hold their own rallies in sympathy with the protesters at Columbia. College leaders should be thinking hard about what principles will guide their own response to such protests and whether Shafik’s example should be a model.

Every college needs a set of policies balancing the need to provide ample opportunity for free expression on campus with the need to preserve the efficient and effective functioning of the university.

Chronicle of Higher Education
David Bell (Professor of History, Princeton)

Excerpt: No matter what you think of American academe, you still should not want Elise Stefanik to run your campus. Unfortunately, over the past six months, this canny and effective five-term congresswoman from New York, chair of the House Republican Conference, and a zealously servile supporter of Donald Trump, has maneuvered herself into a position of dangerous influence over higher education.

Her goal has not been simply to humiliate these educators, but to force them to accept her diagnosis of what is happening at their institutions, and to push them to change their policies. The consequences of her bullying became crystal clear last week at Columbia University.

Anais Mobarak
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Last spring, my Arabic language instructor instituted a policy that non-Muslim students refrain from eating or drinking in class during Ramadan. When I objected to this rule, she told me that the problem with Americans is that we “care too much about our rights.” As such, I was very surprised to see her name appear on an open letter demanding that the administration “defend academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly” in the context of advocacy for “Palestinian liberation.”

Unfortunately, the recent controversy surrounding Charter Club has demonstrated that progressive voices on campus have failed to recognize the value of free speech beyond its usefulness as a political instrument. Thus, as a community, we must work to foster an ideologically-free understanding of free speech.