Still no department guidelines as debate over institutional neutrality rages

Coco Gong and Judy Gao December 04, 2023 1 min read

Coco Gong and Judy Gao
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The long-running debate about whether or not Universities should release statements on national and global events debate has been thrust into the limelight with recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and abortion, as well as international conflicts that impact members of the student body. The recent conflict in Israel and Gaza, for instance, has placed considerable pressure on universities across the nation regarding their official statements, and different University leaders have taken different stances on how to respond.
Read More

On institutional neutrality and double-standards

Matthew Wilson, Daily Princetonian November 21, 2023 1 min read

Matthew Wilson, Daily Princetonian

 Excerpt: As I write this essay, the despicable poison of Jew-hatred has taken a firm hold at so many college campuses, Princeton included. Here at Princeton, activists proudly chant “Intifada” and demand the complete eradication of the world’s only Jewish state; elsewhere, from CornellHarvard, and the University of Pennsylvania to Ohio State and Cooper Union, frightening (and sometimes violent and illegal) exhibitions of anti-Jewish attitudes abound.

For the most part, university responses to these shameful displays have been tepid and restrained. these same universities, despite being so reticent to speak out now, have a prolonged public history of weighing in on a wide array of hotly contested and politically controversial topics. At Princeton, for instance, recent years have seen official statements issued deploring Supreme Court rulings on abortion and affirmative actioncondemning a jury verdict, and attacking a professor for his political views. On Hamas’s terrorist attacks? No official statements.

Read More

Commentary: Students Deserve Institutional Neutrality from Universities | Opinion

Matthew Wilson Newsweek June 26, 2023 1 min read

Matthew Wilson
Newsweek

Excerpt: Imagine walking into your first day of class and finding out that your beliefs have been officially condemned by the academic department offering the course. Pick the hot-button topic: abortion, affirmative action, marriage and sexual morality, transgender identity, Israel—university authorities have publicly decreed that your particular viewpoint is incompatible with the department's values.

Read More

Harry Kalven, Institutional Neutrality, and the “Charisma” of the First Amendment

By Leslie Spencer November 18, 2022 11 min read

By Leslie Spencer

As concern mounts about the status of those principles that preserve and honor freedom of expression in American higher education, Princeton’s James Madison Program recently launched the Initiative on Freedom of Thought, Inquiry and Expression

Read More

Letter from Princeton Open Campus Coalition to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber

by Myles McKnight '23, President, Abigail Anthony, ’23, and 60 other members of the POCC, whose names were redacted as a condition for the public release of this letter November 24, 2021 6 min read

Dear President Eisgruber:

We, the undersigned students, write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), a group of undergraduates committed to the philosophy that a university cannot fulfill its mission without...

Read More