Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Darius Gross
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: On Friday, November 3, the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming held a symposium entitled “Monuments, Memory, and the John Witherspoon Statue.” According to a poster advertising the event, it was held to “explore memorialization, monuments in American art history, and the university campus as a space and a community” in relation to the ongoing debate surrounding a campus statue of John Witherspoon, the University’s sixth president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The statue has lately been the subject of controversy, given Witherspoon’s participation in slavery. During the event, many of the invited speakers raised the possibility of removing or replacing the Witherspoon statue, which currently stands in Firestone Plaza.

Victoria Davies and Lia Opperman
Daily Princetonian

Amid the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine, political speech has been in the spotlight on campus. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 spoke with “Bloomberg Markets: The Close” on Oct. 10 about protecting free speech on campus in light of the war. He referenced an orientation module that first-years complete about respecting free speech and engaging in civil dialogue.

 

Excerpt: On July 4, 2020, a few hundred of my then-colleagues at Princeton University signed an open letter endorsing a number of student demands made in the name of “anti-racism” and proposing such alarming policies as the creation of a faculty committee to police “racist behaviors.” Four days later, I published a lone dissent in which I acknowledged the signatories’ right to express their views. I also suggested—and a month later, Conor Friedersdorf came to a similar conclusion—that most of them probably didn’t believe all the things to which they were putting their name or maybe hadn’t even read the document.

Jump to October 7, 2023. In the days after Hamas invaded Israel and committed unspeakable acts of brutality, I was pleasantly surprised that Princeton faculty didn’t issue another such letter. Perhaps, I thought, they had learned that it was unwise to support groups like Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which had scheduled a pro-Hamas “teach-in” for the same time as a previously announced vigil for the Israelis whom Hamas had slaughtered and issued a screed blaming Israel for Hamas’s evil.

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Strategists close to the front seek to understand the constellation of circumstances and ideas that give rise to war. So too must responsible commentators far from danger assess the adversaries’ rival claims. The need to grasp a war’s wider frame goes for Hamas’ 10/7 massacres and Israel’s exercise of its right of self-defense.

No shortage of Hamas apologists insist that the jihadists’ mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in southern Israel and their indiscriminate rocket attacks extending to much of central Israel must be placed in context. But the apologists don’t provide a reliable account of Hamas’ motives, ideas, goals, and conduct; a reasonable summary of Israel’s response; or a scrupulous overview of the Israeli-Arab conflict, not least Islamist enmity toward the Jewish state. Instead, Hamas apologists suppress facts, invent narratives, and repackage outlandish neo-Marxist talking points.

On Oct. 22, 69 professors and 595 students and alumni published in The Daily Princetonian an open letter “in solidarity with Gaza” addressed to university president Christopher Eisgruber. The professors, students, and alumni wrote “to express our unequivocal outrage over the tragic loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives during the past week” but suggested that Israel acting in self-defense was worse than Hamas jihadists butchering civilians. While declining to describe Hamas’ documented atrocities, they accused Israel of engaging in “the targeting of civilians by the relentless bombing of hospitals, homes, roads, schools, universities, and infrastructures of survival in the Gaza Strip” while imposing “unchecked collective punishment.”

Leonard Milberg
The Daily Princetonian

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.

Editor’s Note: In the process of publishing this piece, The Daily Princetonian took several steps to corroborate the facts the author alleges, including reviewing emails referenced in the piece. The ‘Prince’ was unable to independently verify the conversation between Milberg and Eisgruber or the specifics of the document Milberg alleges Eisgruber asked him to sign. The University declined to comment on the specifics of the conversation.

University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss stated the following in relation to Milberg’s account, “Princeton is grateful for Leonard Milberg’s generous support of the University over many years. The University takes steps to ensure that no donor interferes inappropriately in the conduct of University courses, exhibition, or research. As the University’s gift policies state: ‘Gifts to the University must respect the University’s fundamental commitment to academic freedom and the rigorous and independent pursuit of truth.’”

Bill Hewitt
Princeton Tory

Editor’s note: As the Naming Committee and the University approach the end of their deliberations on the vitally important decision whether to replace or remove the 10-foot bronze statue of the indispensable early Princeton president John Witherspoon (1768 to 1794), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, over his ownership of two slaves, we are featuring the latest of several articles (this one in the Princeton Tory) by Bill Hewitt ’74. The November 3 symposium, “Monuments, Memory, and the John Witherspoon Statue,” is the last scheduled public exploration of the issues. Hewitt has acquired encyclopedic knowledge of the historical facts, which he says show Withespoon to have been a heroic figure and enlightened for his time about slavery and its eventual abolition. The statue has stood in Firestone Plaza outside East Pyne Hall since being installed in 2001 under the leadership of Princeton President Harold T.  Shapiro.  

President Eisgruber has flagrantly failed his own stated standards of conduct – and abandoned his duties to the Princeton community. He refuses to prevent publication of multiple statements on University websites that falsely defame the reputation of John Witherspoon, Princeton’s indispensable early president and a founder of the United States. Moreover, these defamations’ profound misdirection about Witherspoon’s true relation to slavery have sown anguish and dissension across the University community.