Antisemitism and Free Speech on Campus

Judah Guggenheim
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD)’s 66-page proposal for divestment, there is not a single mention of Hamas, unless you count the titles of articles in the footnotes (which I don’t). The proposal references “Israel’s response,” but never explicitly mentions the horror of the Oct. 7 attacks that Israel is responding to or the fact that the terrorists who carried them out are deliberately hiding in places of worship, schools, and private homes. Israel is currently fighting a war against a terrorist organization that indiscriminately killed, raped, tortured, and kidnapped over 1400 people of many nationalities. That sentence should break your heart.

But the PIAD proposal gives no indication as to how boycotting or divesting from Israel will lead to a better future for Palestinians, because it never addresses what that future will actually look like.

Megan Cameron and Isabella Dail
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Dean Amaney Jamal of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) spoke about campus protests and the war in Gaza on a podcast with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on July 18. Jamal was in conversation with her friend and former colleague Keren Yarhi-Milo, the current Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

The pair, while expressing some wariness towards the protesters on their respective campuses, advocated for dialogue on campus's that looked to empathize with why students are protesting. Columbia University's “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which started in April, led the way for similar protests across the country in the spring, including on Princeton’s campus. Demands from protesters included divestment from Israeli-backed institutions and companies.

Bill Hewitt
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Complicity in the wrongful shedding of blood was the theme to the disruptions of President Eisgruber’s address at Alexander Hall and recent landmark vandalisms. This raises, with apology to Florence Reece and her 1930s protest song “Which Side Are You On,” the question, “Which ‘genocide’ are you on?”  

In their zeal to be pro-Palestinian and their efforts to depict Israel’s efforts of self-defense as “genocide,” PIAD and SJP brazenly ignore Hamas’ goal and actions to annihilate Israel. Symbolically raising their red hands of protest against Israel’s actions, these PIAD and SJP protesters stand morally submerged in the blood Hamas wrongfully sheds.

David Chmielewski
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In November 2023, I wrote a letter to the editor on the importance of remembering the radical side of Princeton’s activist history and the politics of how we remember campus activism. As I wrote that letter, I could never have imagined the incredible things that current Princeton student activists would achieve just six months later with the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment, also known as the Popular University for Gaza.

One of our moral imperatives now is to make the memory of the encampment useful, to understand what it represented and will represent for future generations of student activists.

Elisabeth H. Daugherty , Mark F. Bernstein ’83, Carlett Spike, Brett Tomlinson , Peter Barzilai s’97 , Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Pro-Palestinian groups escalated their protesting on Saturday by painting graffiti, dying Princeton’s Fountain of Freedom red, and interrupting President Christopher Eisgruber ’83’s annual Q&A with alumni by chanting, shouting, and holding up hands covered in red gloves and red paint. They also made their presence known at the P-rade Saturday afternoon, chanting and carrying signs.

Abigail Anthony
National Review

Excerpt: Princeton University faculty passed a non-binding resolution on Monday calling for disciplinary and legal amnesty for students arrested for the pro-Palestinian encampment and occupation of a university building. The resolution passed 154–136, with eight abstentions.