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Free speech is usually described as a right one either has or does not have, relative to the laws of one’s residence. But a right, like a muscle, is only as strong as its use. When my family flew to the United States in 2018, I naively thought that I had escaped the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) systematic suppression of free speech. I believed that I would access Google, YouTube, and Winnie the Pooh without any need for a VPN to circumvent the “Great Firewall of China,” a term used to describe the CCP’s firm control on online content. But I was clueless: I unknowingly carried a part of the repression within me.
Contributions by current Princeton faculty reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show 98% went to Democratic candidates or Democratic affiliated groups; 2% went to independent candidates or affiliated groups; and 0% went to Republicans or affiliated groups. This shows an alarming lack of viewpoint diversity as measured by donations to political candidates. Our findings are in line with similar studies of Yale and Harvard faculty.
Princeton fell to 176th out of 261 schools, earning an F for the second year running. The drop is despite strong marks from Princeton's own students. What's holding Princeton back is its written policies and its refusal to adopt institutional neutrality, both fixable without touching campus culture at all. The university could improve quickly if it acted on the PFS-provided recommendations already sitting with its administration.
Universities may be tempted to treat these capabilities as inevitable improvements in education. Students will be able to consume vast amounts of information, more than ever before. But like AI writing itself, such consumption would be vast but shallow. The more interesting possibility, then, is that AI will force universities to rediscover the value of intellectual work that cannot be outsourced.
The good news is that the percentage of colleges and universities earning FIRE's "red light" (bad) rating has reached a low of 13 percent — a 55 percent drop since the "Spotlight" report began in 2006, and a 1.5 percent drop from last year. The bad news is that Princeton is among that 13 percent. Princeton is still found to maintain policies that "clearly and substantially" restrict free expression.
