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A few months ago, I heard from one of the greatest antitrust legal scholars of our time — Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — in an event hosted by the Princeton Program in Law and Public Policy.
The event turned out to be a “fireside chat” between Khan and Director of the Program in Law and Public Policy Deborah Pearlstein, an all-too-familiar manifestation of the “conversation” format that plagues Princeton events. Instead of letting visitors speak for themselves, we filter their thoughts and ideas through a moderator, who all too often serves to dilute whatever interesting points the speaker might have to share into a superficial overview of their career and accomplishments.
On Feb. 28, U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint attacks on Iran, starting a war that has now lasted nearly four weeks.
Despite the 6,000-mile distance between New Jersey and Iran, many University community members have expressed concerns about the destruction happening in the Middle East, as well as confusion about American motivations for entering the war.
On Friday, January 23, 2026, several students from Princeton University marched to the top of Capitol Hill, joining tens of thousands of Americans in the National March for Life. Originating just months after the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), the National March for Life inaugurated the first major public conversation on the sanctity of life and a constitutional protection of the unborn. Today, four years after the overturn of Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the march still serves as a platform for individuals to express their hopes and visions for the future of the Pro-Life movement.
Having experienced the tangible and transformative power of free speech evident in the march, four Princeton students have graciously agreed to share thoughts both about their participation in the march and also about the overall experience with pro-life dialogue on campus.
On Friday, approximately 200 students and community members gathered at the Fountain of Freedom to protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. The protest was the first campus rally of the spring semester and was part of a “national shutdown” initially organized by protesters in Minneapolis.
Tal Fortgang ‘17
When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber spoke at Harvard on November 5, 2025, he expressed what to his detractors may have sounded like an epiphany. “There’s a genuine civic crisis in America,” he said, noting how polarization and social-media amplification have made civil discourse uniquely difficult. Amid that crisis, he concluded, colleges must retain “clear time, place, and manner rules” for protest, and when protesters violate those rules, the university must refuse to negotiate. As he warned: “If you cede ground to those who break the rules … you encourage more rule-breaking, and you betray the students and scholars who depend on this university to function.”
Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In a recent op-ed for Time Magazine, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 ostensibly affirms the value of student protest. But reading between the lines, his piece is at best an ambivalent defense of campus activism, vacillating between qualified praise and condescension.
The piece suggests that student protests are just manifestations of misguided youthful zeal, and that, as a vehicle for social change, they’re always inferior to his ideal of rational discussion. Eisgruber describes student movements and protesters, by turns, as “naive,” “ill-considered,” “oversimplified,” and “irritating” — never as courageous, virtuous, or necessary.
