Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

John Mark Rozendaal
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: It was a beautiful, rainy morning in August. I began to play a soulful slow dance by J.S. Bach on a $200 cello in front of Citibank’s international headquarters. Shielded by rainbow colored umbrellas, I was encircled by 12 brave cellist protectors with linked arms, dozens of fellow climate activists, and scores of New York’s “finest” deployed in riot gear.

Sena Chang
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Oct. 2, the Princeton University Board of Trustees announced in a letter that John Witherspoon’s statue would remain on campus. The decision came after an extensive review process that began in November 2022 by the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming.

Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: An art installation on Wednesday, Oct. 8 sponsored by Tigers for Israel (TFI) and Chabad House on the Frist North Lawn, which was meant to draw awareness to the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, may be the first test case of the University’s policy on symbolic structures following last spring’s ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment.’

Keith E. Whittington
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: A health sports instructor at the University of Kansas is out of a job after a video clip of his in-class behavior went viral. The university's statements do not inspire confidence, even though the professor might well have been out of bounds.

Sofia Menemenlis, Jessica Ng, Hellen Wainaina, and Givarra Azhar Abdullah
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: At the CPUC meeting on Sept. 30, Resources Committee Chair Jay Groves announced the establishment of an online portal to solicit “community input” on the divestment proposal, which would remain open for 12 days. With respect to the mechanics of this process, Groves indicated that the Committee did not have specific plans for how it would consider the feedback it was soliciting, nor whether and how it would meet with interested groups.

Setting aside broader questions about the role of “consensus” in situations of social injustice, we write to express our concern with this post-hoc, poorly defined, and inadequately communicated process.

Flora Champy, Stephen Macedo, Leora Batnitzky, Jonathan Mummolo, Sanjeev Kulkarni, Eve Krakowski, and Emmanuel Bourbouhakis
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The freedom of each Princeton faculty member to speak candidly on all manner of issues is indispensable. If faculty cannot express a broad range of intellectual views, including controversial ones, then the University’s mission to further human knowledge and educate students to become discerning, thoughtful citizens cannot be fully realized.

That is why we are supporting a proposal to modify the Rules & Procedures of the Faculty at Princeton to limit faculty meeting votes to matters directly concerning University governance. By extension, this measure would preclude votes that force faculty to take stances on political issues that lie outside of the faculty’s jurisdiction. We urge all our colleagues to vote in favor of this measure at the upcoming faculty meeting on Oct. 21.