Free Speech at Princeton University

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.

Francesca Block
The Free Press

Excerpt: Shilo Brooks is on a mission to teach Ivy League students how to read.

If the trend in academic life for the past few decades has been to skim hundreds of pages per day and then pick apart the past, Brooks wants to do something old-school that feels radical: he wants his students to absorb no more than fifty pages a week and see the big picture. And he’s doing it by bucking another trend: he’s embracing great men (and women).

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.

Christopher Bao and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Two seniors will have their degrees held in relation to the pro-Palestine walkout at Eisgruber’s annual Reunions address in Richardson Auditorium last Saturday, May 25. They will still be able to attend Commencement on Tuesday, May 28. At least one other student — an underclassman — is also under investigation in relation to the disruption of the address.

Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) posted on X at 6:32 p.m. on Monday, May 27 that “at least two Black seniors are having their degrees withheld” for participation in the walkout, and claimed that “they were not given any disciplinary warnings” throughout the protest.

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.