Alumni & Student Advocacy

Emma Pettit
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Over the past several years, Republican state lawmakers have filed bill after bill meant to restrict how certain topics can be discussed in public college classrooms. A common conservative complaint — that leftist academics promote flimsy ideology rather than teach hard facts — became more than rhetoric. In some states, it became law.

But what about the First Amendment? What about academic freedom? How much control can a state really impose over professors at public colleges?

Alexandra Orbuch
Tablet Magazine

Excerpt: As a current Princeton student, I believe that I am receiving an unparalleled education. While I will cherish my classroom experience for the rest of my life, my time outside the classroom has led to bitter disappointment.

I had to fight for months to remove an unjustly imposed university order, yet I have witnessed errant anti-Israel protesters who seem to violate university policy and the law being privileged with an expedited disciplinary process, often resulting in no discipline at all. The reality is that these universities, by validating this ethos of entitled thuggery, have abandoned their core mission and become shells of their former selves.

Bill Hewitt
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: About Kafka’s great story, “A Hunger Artist,” Richard A. Posner observed, “The hunger artist is tormented by his inability to convince an indifferent world of his artistic integrity.” So, too, Princeton’s recent hunger artists’ professed anguish that the University had not endorsed their cause.   

Princeton’s hunger artists have decamped their recent performance protest on Cannon Green, but their hunger strike created a void that lingers still. In hopes of bending the University to their will, 13 Princeton students had deployed a public hunger strike. Further, 70 or so of Princeton’s faculty signed an open letter of clarion support for these students’ self-flagellating efforts to impose their demands. Rather than urge these students not to harm themselves, the faculty letter histrionically condemned the unmoved University administration.

Mark F. Berstein ‘83
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: PAW Editor's Note: This article has been updated with new information.

Though the occupation of Clio Hall on April 29 lasted for only a few hours, it has set off weeks of accusations and recriminations. Eleven students — five undergraduates and six graduate students — as well as a postdoctoral researcher and a local seminarian taking a class at the University were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing, although the University has since indicated that, following a disciplinary investigation, the students are unlikely to face penalties from Princeton greater than probation.

Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: While Princeton’s pro-Palestinian protests have largely been student-led, some faculty members have played a key part in the movement. From releasing petitions and statements to requesting a special May 20 meeting of the faculty, the role of these professors has grown in recent weeks along with the urgency of the protests.

Solveig Lucia Gold
First Things

Excerpt: One thing is clear: Our universities are failing to unite political enemies and forge common identities now. The keffiyeh-clad students who run around campuses shouting “Intifada!” while celebrating the cancellation of in-person classes are activists first and students a very distant second.

Those of us who remember cheerfully spirited political debates around college dining tables in the not-so-distant past may find it hard to believe that our institutions have fallen so far, so fast. How did we get here?