Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Princeton, Columbia Deans Aim to Educate With Talk on Israel, Palestine

December 04, 2023 1 min read

Brett Tomlinson
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Amid a tumultuous semester of often polarized demonstrations by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups on college campuses, Amaney Jamal, the Palestinian American dean of Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the Israeli American dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, penned an Oct. 30 New York Times op-ed calling for universities to be centers of free speech and “hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation.”  

This week, Jamal and Yarhi-Milo put some of their ideas into practice, discussing the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of diplomacy in the region, and the role universities can play in adding nuance to the discourse at a pair of public conversations, Nov. 28 at Princeton and Nov. 30 at Columbia.
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Still no department guidelines as debate over institutional neutrality rages

December 04, 2023 1 min read

Coco Gong and Judy Gao
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The long-running debate about whether or not Universities should release statements on national and global events debate has been thrust into the limelight with recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and abortion, as well as international conflicts that impact members of the student body. The recent conflict in Israel and Gaza, for instance, has placed considerable pressure on universities across the nation regarding their official statements, and different University leaders have taken different stances on how to respond.
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Will Princeton's Leadership Airbrush Witherspoon Out of Princeton's History?

December 04, 2023 8 min read

This article by PFS co-founder Stuart Taylor, Jr. recounts the controversy surrounding the Witherspoon statue located on Firestone Plaza. The attempted cancellation of Witherspoon and what it means for academic freedom at Princeton has been a focus of our attention, as you can see in our just-published Annual Report HERE. If you like what we are doing, please consider a year-end donation to PFS HERE.  

 The University’s official proceedings on the petition by assorted students and faculty members to remove from its prominent setting on Firestone Plaza the bronze statue of Princeton’s greatest president, John Witherspoon, are looking bleak for the statue, for the memory of Witherspoon, and perhaps also that of other founders of the United States.

 The second and apparently final symposium on the statue, held on November 3 by the University’s Committee on Naming, was notable for the absence of any unambiguous statement by any of the five invited speakers or by the moderator, Associate Professor Beth Lew-Williams, that the statue should be left standing undisturbed where it was placed in 2001, with the strong support of respected then-President Harold Shapiro.

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Guest Essay in PAW: We’re Calling on Princeton to Do More to Fight Antisemitism on Campus

November 30, 2023 1 min read

Jacob Katz '23, Leon Skornicki '06
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: As PAW has compellingly demonstrated in recent articles, Hamas’ barbarous attacks on Israeli citizens hit close to home for many Princetonians. But the attacks’ aftermath has reached us all. Skyrocketing antisemitism has reverberated around the globe, and sure enough, it made its way through Fitz Randolph Gate. Following two student-led pro-Intifada rallies, concerned students reached out to alumni about unchecked antisemitism on campus.

As alumni, we want current students to guide campus discourse. We had our turn, and now it is theirs. But as Princeton occupies a prominent place in both our personal identities and our national conversation, we have reason to make our voices heard when something is awry. And when exasperated students turn to us and other alumni for help, something is awry.
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A new version of the College Republicans struggles for an identity

November 30, 2023 1 min read

Julian Hartman-Sigall
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Earlier this month, in advance of a number of state-wide elections, Princeton political groups took part in canvassing and outreach efforts to get out the vote. Notably absent from these groups — which included the College Democrats, the Princeton chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America — was the College Republicans, which, unlike its left-leaning counterpart, did not organize any programming.

The group has historically had difficulty sustaining consistent activity levels, being reliant on strong personalities that occasionally cycle through the University to revive it at recurring nadirs on a campus that has a strong conservative ecosystem.
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Can the Coming Crisis Revitalize our Republic? Thoughts on “Struggles of an Optimist,” a talk by Mitch Daniels ‘71

November 27, 2023 3 min read

By Khoa Sands ‘26


The idea of decline has always held a certain allure to historians and politicians alike. The high prophet of this declinism was Oswald Spengler, whose 1918 book The Decline of the West has become a motivating treatise for the American New Right. For these modern-day doomsayers, the United States is predestined to ruin, beset by internal crises of spiritedness and domestic politics as well as external threats of rising challengers to the US-led world order. These concerns are not unfounded – a revanchist China will be the largest geopolitical crisis of the twenty-first century and any casual observer of American politics can attest to the sorry state of domestic politics in America today.

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