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Christopher L. Eisgruber
The Atlantic
Excerpt: A few weeks ago, I welcomed Princeton’s newly arrived undergraduates to campus with what has become an annual tradition: a presidential lecture on the importance of free speech and civil discussion. This semester, I will host small seminars with first-year and transfer students to impress upon them my view that free speech is essential to the research and teaching mission of American universities.
Princeton recently hosted the New Jersey General Assembly for a special session in the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the independent legislature’s first meeting in August 1776. At the time of that inaugural session, Nassau Hall was still unravaged by the horrors of war.
Closing the doors to such historic buildings repeats the mistake made by too many universities: conflating the institution with its administration. While the University could not function without the work of its leaders and trustees, neither could it live without the flesh, blood, and spirit of its students and faculty.
Over the past year, President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted international students in a series of restrictions, citing concerns about national security. Fear has spread among international students at Princeton, where 13% of undergraduates — and 45% of grad students — come from abroad. “This is not the safe haven that it was supposed to be,” B. ’27, a Princeton student from Latin America, told PAW.
The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.
However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.
