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Zach Gardner
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In response to the Trump Administration’s recent efforts to suspend $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University and $210 million to Princeton University, professors and administrators have rushed to the defense of “academic freedom.” In a recent op-ed, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 charged President Trump with launching “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
What Eisgruber doesn’t consider, however, is that the threat to academic freedom comes not from the government but from the universities themselves. Rather than focusing on external threats, Princeton should turn the microscope inward and acknowledge the recurring problem of intellectual diversity in its ranks.
Raf Basas
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In focusing on Princeton more broadly as an institution, we often overlook Princeton’s crucial core: our community. Thus, the University must be vigorously proactive, as opposed to reactive, in defending our people, whether that be Princeton’s minorities, international students, or staff members. The University cannot just make statements — it must take tangible, material steps to empower the people in our community.
Seth Mandel
Commentary
Excerpt: David Piegaro fell down the stairs outside a Princeton University building and rolled painfully to the bottom. That’s when he was handcuffed and put under arrest for aggravated assault. The supposed victim was Kenneth Strother, the university’s head of security—who had, according to video of the incident and witness testimony—caused Piegaro to fall down those stairs. Strother was unharmed. Piegaro faced jail time.
On Tuesday, Piegaro was acquitted. On Thursday, Princeton revealed it still had some salt to pour into Piegaro’s wounds. The university honored Strother with its President’s Achievement Award for his “commitment to excellence and exceptional performance.”
Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Jacqueline Gottlieb, Tarek Masoud, Steven Pinker, and Jon Rieder
Boston Globe
Excerpt: As chairs of the Academic Freedom Councils at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton universities, we are alarmed at the threats to academic freedom currently faced by American universities. Universities are now confronted with extraordinary intrusions into their affairs by the federal government. At the same time, many threats to academic freedom emanate from within universities themselves. In this moment of crisis, we have an opportunity to address both threats, and to recommit the universities to their mission of advancing and disseminating knowledge.
Princetonians for Free Speech
Since the terrorist attack on Israel and the invasion of Gaza, several universities have been prominently featured in the national news for protests, sometimes violent, on their campuses and for antisemitic acts. Princeton had protests and instances of antisemitism, but these were nowhere near the level of what occurred at some schools, such as Columbia and Harvard. At PFS, we believe this was in part because Princeton set forth clear standards in advance for protests on campus. It should have come as no surprise that two of the first schools the Trump Administration went after to freeze grants were Columbia and Harvard.
Meghana Veldhuis
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In light of recent scrutiny on higher education by the U.S. federal government, on April 2, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom (PCAF) held a roundtable discussion in McCosh Hall titled, “Should Universities Engage in Politics?”
The discussion was moderated by Princeton politics professor Frances Lee. University of Chicago philosophy professor Anton Ford, Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy ’77, and Yale politics professor Keith Whittington all shared their opinions on the role that Princeton and other universities should generally play during a time of turmoil in higher education.
