Alumni & Student Advocacy

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?

Thomas Buckley
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: This year, 27 seniors declared their candidacy for Young Alumni Trustee (YAT). The high number of candidates is hardly a surprise: As members of the 40-person board of trustees, Young Alumni Trustees have significant influence over the University’s governance, budget, and $34 billion dollar endowment.

Disallowing the YAT candidates from campaigning on issues abridges their freedom of speech and stifles campus discourse, issues that President Christopher Eisgruber and the University care a lot about in every other context — just not this one.

Princetonians for Free Speech
Khoa Sands ‘26

Over the past months, the response to the Israel-Hamas war in academia has triggered a necessary rethinking of what the university is for, and its proper role in society. Many scholars have advocated for the longstanding model of liberal education as the pursuit of truth as the model for the telos of the university. In this view, which I share, the goal of academia is the pursuit of truth and the preservation of the life of learning, not civic engagement or social change. Certainly, positive social change and civic engagement can come from genuine liberal education, but to center those goals within academia is to distract and compromise from the central goal of the liberal university as an institution.

Bill Hewitt
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Too many of Princeton University’s leaders have sought to run and hide from their duties. In response, I have filed a three-part petition for the Feb. 19 public Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting. The purpose of this petition is to enlist the CPUC’s authority to bring an end to ongoing flights from responsibility by certain decision-makers at Princeton who have failed to sufficiently address my previous formal grievances.