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Editor's note: Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) held a well-attended breakfast and panel discussion at the Nassau Inn on May 28, the Sunday of Reunions. The discussion was moderated by PFS co-founder Ed Yingling and the panelists were co-founder Stuart Taylor, Treasurer Todd Rulon-Miller, Director of Outreach and Communications Kaleigh Cunningham, and graduating seniors Abigail Anthony and Myles McKnight, who are PFS board members. Topics included the precarious state of free speech at Princeton today and PFS's efforts to prevent removal of the statue of John Witherspoon, who was arguably Princeton's most important president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, among other distinctions, because he owned two slaves which, new historical research suggests, he probably emancipated before his death.
On Friday, January 23, 2026, several students from Princeton University marched to the top of Capitol Hill, joining tens of thousands of Americans in the National March for Life. Originating just months after the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), the National March for Life inaugurated the first major public conversation on the sanctity of life and a constitutional protection of the unborn. Today, four years after the overturn of Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the march still serves as a platform for individuals to express their hopes and visions for the future of the Pro-Life movement.
Having experienced the tangible and transformative power of free speech evident in the march, four Princeton students have graciously agreed to share thoughts both about their participation in the march and also about the overall experience with pro-life dialogue on campus.
On February 19, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom hosted Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, to discuss his forthcoming book Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times, co-authored with Howard Gillman. Chemerinsky described universities as operating in a moment of political pressure, as debates over Israel–Palestine, race, gender identity, and other charged issues intensify scrutiny of campus speech.
Throughout the talk, Chemerinsky argued that free speech is truly tested when we defend free expression we detest.
89 years ago, the pages of the ‘Prince’ featured a series of lively debates in the “To the Editor” section about the future of the humanities curriculum at Princeton. One of the central issues of the debate, as Wallace Irwin Jr. ’40 wrote in his letter to the editor on Feb. 22, 1937, was striking a balance between the breadth of humanistic disciplines and the realistic limit of students’ time.
Irwin’s letter was a direct response to Temple Fielding ’39, who, just a few days prior, wrote a proposal for a drastic curricular change and published it in the ‘Prince.’ Fielding suggested a course combining content from different academic departments, offering undergraduates an interdisciplinary exploration of various cultural fields.
