Defending Academic Freedom at Universities

Bill Hewitt
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In her interview with Mother Jones, Ruha Benjamin, Princeton’s Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies and latest MacArthur Fellow, confirmed that the University is investigating her role in the April 29 Clio Hall protest. As someone who called upon the University to investigate faculty involvement in the Clio Hall takeover, I welcome this development.

Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: As first-years lined up outside Richardson Auditorium to hear President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and Vice President Rochelle Calhoun speak about the importance of maintaining open dialogue on campus, older students stood outside and handed them pieces of paper with QR codes that linked to a PDF of the “Princeton Disorientation Guide 2024.” This document explains that “protest theory” teaches us how to build moral authority in two ways: by “increasing the number of people and increasing the sacrifice of the participants.”

This short claim demonstrates well the extent of the wrongness and impropriety that self-proclaimed “leftists” associated with the Princeton Progressive Coalition bring not only to interactions with their peers, but with the University itself. After all, since when has morality been determined by crowd behavior? What ever happened to being right?

Keith E. Whittington
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason

Excerpt: My new book, You Can't Teach That! The Battle over University Classrooms, is now available in cloth, paper, and electronic formats. You can own a copy today!

The book reviews the history and principles of the academic freedom to teach in American universities and explains the value and limits of such a freedom to teach. It also explores how such principles of academic freedom might fit into First Amendment doctrine and the implications for the recent wave of state legislation represented most notably by Florida's Stop WOKE Act. If you are interested in free speech, higher education, or the First Amendment, I hope you will give it a read.

David Spector
New York Post

Excerpt: One Jewish student is leading the charge against campus antisemitism at Princeton University — and taking heat from anti-Israel students and faculty alike.

Maximillian Meyer, 19, has been shoved by a pro-terrorist student, targeted by an anti-Israel professor, and unable to concentrate on his school work as antisemitic chants and terrorist imagery flood his once idyllic Ivy League campus.

By Leslie Spencer ’79 

A group of Princeton faculty have come together to create The Princeton Council on Academic Freedom. It mirrors the new faculty groups at peer institutions, like the academic freedom councils at Harvard and Columbia, Faculty for Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Vision for a New Future. 

Zach Kessel
National Review

Excerpt: Just days after Hamas's brutal terror attack on Israeli civilians, the Princeton University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine used a school-wide email listserv to send a statement excusing the rape and murder of innocent people to the inbox of every student on campus, in apparent violation of university policy.

Under Princeton policy, “mass electronic mailings are permitted only as authorized by appropriate University offices." Those same rules include a prohibition on distributing “malicious, harassing, or defamatory content through university channels.” A Princeton spokesman would not say whether SJP received permission to send the email from any university authority.