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A federal judge ruled last month that the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) termination of more than 1,400 grants in April 2025 had violated the Constitution on several counts. Princeton researchers await the effects of the verdict, which ordered that the NEH must rescind its termination notices.
The University has implemented rules prohibiting reporters from recording, photographing, or filming faculty meetings. The new rules went into effect from the May 11 faculty meeting, marking a departure from past practices in which reporters were able to record meetings for transcription and take photographs of the Faculty Room inside Nassau Hall.
The new rules also limit the number of reporters to two per campus publication and stipulate that reporters notify the Office of Communications of their attendance at least 24 hours in advance of meetings. Campus press must also obtain media credentials before each faculty meeting. Campus radio remains permitted to broadcast faculty meetings, though no campus radio station currently broadcasts the meetings.
The National Science Foundation has reversed its recent freeze on new grant funding for Duke, Harvard and Yale Universities, Nature reported. Limitations on new grants for Princeton University, however, remain in effect.
The reversal took place on May 28, one day after Nature published a story detailing a funding pause for all four institutions. An NSF database showed that on April 9 the accounts of the four universities had been marked with a note that said, “Future Awards to Organization on Hold,” Nature reported. As of Thursday, the note had been removed from every account except Princeton’s.
All in-person examinations at Princeton will be proctored starting July 1, representing the most significant change to the honor system since it was established in 1893. The faculty passed a proposal requiring instructor supervision at Monday’s faculty meeting, with one opposing vote.
The historic vote was the culmination of months of deliberation within the administration and student governing bodies about how to address increasing concerns over academic integrity violations, including the proliferation of AI usage. The proposal cleared a full faculty vote as the final of three required rounds of approval, having already been passed unanimously by the Committee on Examinations and Standing and the Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy.
Princeton will not have to pay any net investment income tax on returns from its $36.4 billion endowment, a University investment official said at a private event in January, after a recent expansion of its undergraduate financial aid program left the University below a 3,000 tuition-paying student threshold to qualify for taxation.
Experts had projected that the new tax on wealthy university endowments — enacted under H.R. 1, the omnibus tax and spending bill passed by congressional Republicans in July 2025 — would have cost Princeton roughly $180 million annually.
Thus far, Princeton has left decisions on AI use in the classroom to individual faculty members. It is currently weighing a proposal to require proctoring for in-person examinations, a good start if adopted. Should it commit to a broad set of solutions and generate the institutional energy required to implement them, the University would model positive change for educational institutions at all levels.
The fixes are obvious. Yet obvious fixes are often not made thanks to apathy and inertia, resistance to change, torpidity, investment in the status quo, lack of imagination, and defeatism. Meaningful change requires energy and commitment for the long haul, on the part of a sufficiently large number of people.
