Academic Freedom

Annie Rupertus and Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: About 100 undergraduate and graduate students began a sit-in on McCosh Courtyard early Thursday morning, joining a wave of pro-Palestinian sit-ins across the country. After student organizers first began to erect tents, Princeton Public Safety (PSAFE) issued its first warning to protesters. At least two student arrests have been made. After the initial arrests, students folded them away.

Princeton Alumni Weekly
Brett Tomlinson, Elisabeth H. Daugherty, Julie Bonette

Excerpt: Protesters set up tents for a student-led pro-Palestine encampment in McCosh Courtyard at about 7 a.m. Thursday. After warnings from University officials, two Princeton students were arrested, and the remaining protesters packed away their camping gear and continued the demonstration as a sit-in.

Daily Princetonian Editorial Board

Excerpt: Early Thursday morning, the Department of Public Safety arrested two graduate students for taking initial steps to establish encampments in McCosh Courtyard. Princeton authorized arrests within six minutes of the first tents being set up.

Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton students are preparing to set up their own “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” according to documents first obtained by the National Review and independently verified by The Daily Princetonian, following high-profile encampments at Columbia University, Yale University, and other college campuses that have resulted in student arrests. No tents have been erected in the Nassau Hall area — a focal point for previous sit-ins on campus — at time of publication. The documents did not specify a timeline for when the encampment might begin.

In a leaked press release, organizers reiterated previous demands for the University to “divest and dissociate with Israel,” as well as a call for broad transparency in the University’s research and investments. University officials have warned undergraduates that participation in an encampment or occupation may result in disciplinary action, including suspension and expulsion.

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.