Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Robert P. George
Public Discourse, Witherspoon Institute

Excerpt: My friend and former student Yoram Hazony has argued in Public Discourse that it’s time for universities to abandon any commitment to “absolute free speech.” In light of rampant expressions of anti-Semitism on university campuses since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, Yoram thinks universities should forbid and punish the expression or advocacy of certain ideas or positions by students and faculty, and “suspend” or “terminate” those who, for example, advocate genocide.

Yoram suggests that I and others—especially my friend Jonathan Haidt—have been “reduced” to defending a “fundamentally wrongheaded” pro–free speech view. Here I will explain why I persist in believing that the research and teaching missions of nonsectarian colleges and universities, such as the one at which Yoram was a student and at which I teach, are best served by the most robust commitment to freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression.

Sergiu Klainerman
Tablet

Excerpt: In the wake of Harvard, Penn, and MIT’s congressional testimony debacle, followed by the plagiarizing travails of Harvard’s President Claudine Gay and her reluctant and ungracious resignation, it is broadly recognized that America’s elite universities are afflicted by a rapidly metastasizing cancer. Harvard, our oldest and most admired university, is now the poster child for this terrible affliction.

Specific measures to improve our campuses include reviving free speech, institutional neutrality, viewpoint diversity, and individual merit as the only admissible criteria of selection for hiring and promotion. Such reforms are all self-evident within the framework of the traditional telos of the university, which prizes uncompromising dedication to truth and the pursuit of wisdom. If these ideas are controversial at all, it is only because the old telos has been eroded by new demands made in the name of social justice.

Bill Hewitt
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Too many of Princeton University’s leaders have sought to run and hide from their duties. In response, I have filed a three-part petition for the Feb. 19 public Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting. The purpose of this petition is to enlist the CPUC’s authority to bring an end to ongoing flights from responsibility by certain decision-makers at Princeton who have failed to sufficiently address my previous formal grievances.

Francesca Block, Princeton 2022, PFS Board Member
The Free Press

Excerpt: Free speech is the bedrock of a free society—essential for scientific progress, artistic expression, social justice, and democracy. But we live in an era in which free speech is seen as political. Where the very notion of hearing ideas from people you disagree with is viewed as suspect or even morally wrong.

Our campus culture today says it’s okay to shut down viewpoints you disagree with. There are the obvious ways this happens—through campaigns to disinvite controversial figures from campus or shout them down once they are there. But there are more subtle ways, too. There’s the unspoken, but very real, pressure in class to not question the information being presented, or to shy away from speaking up and offering a different perspective out of fear of being judged harshly by your peers.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: The article below, by the President of Princeton, just appeared in the Atlantic.  (Christopher Eisgruber has been Princeton’s President for 11 years.)  The title clearly implies that college diversity (and the implication is “racial diversity”) is not at all in conflict with excellence

It’s hard to imagine how the Atlantic could accept an article whose arguments are explained by the conflation of causation with correlation, as well as with cherry-picked examples or recent trends in grade inflation and selectivity. But let’s look at the argument.

Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The Daily Princetonian released its 2023 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) report last week, which publicly shares internal statistics on staffers’ identities, feelings of inclusion within the ‘Prince’ community, and satisfaction with the extent of ‘Prince’ coverage.

This report, which includes a multitude of analyses on the problems the ‘Prince’ faces and goals for improvement, could be read as suggesting that the utmost priority of internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts is to increase the diversity of staffers. This would be a poor takeaway from an interesting and insightful report, and leave the paper open to common criticisms that shallow DEI programs face.