Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Christopher Bao and Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The 13 members of the Princeton community arrested for occupying Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last semester had their first appearance in Princeton Municipal Court on Tuesday. All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey.

The University has indicated it will not interfere with the criminal proceedings. Municipal prosecutor Christopher Koutsouris, who is prosecuting the case, told The Daily Princetonian that the University handed him full control of the case, noting that he consulted with the University’s legal counsel on the matter.

Thomas Catalano
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Regan Crotty ’00 will serve as Princeton’s new dean of undergraduate students, according to a University announcement made July 15. Crotty will now lead the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS), which is responsible for co-curricular and extracurricular aspects of student life.

Crotty brings to the role a decade of experience serving in various capacities at the University. After graduating from Princeton in 2000, she went on to earn her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School before returning to Princeton as an ODUS investigator, responsible for investigating alleged violations of University policy. Following that role, she was Interim Executive Director for Planning Administration in the Office of Vice President for Campus Life (VPCL) where she managed travel oversight, supervised ROTC and Outdoor Action, and represented the VPCL on various committees.

Megan Cameron and Isabella Dail
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Dean Amaney Jamal of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) spoke about campus protests and the war in Gaza on a podcast with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on July 18. Jamal was in conversation with her friend and former colleague Keren Yarhi-Milo, the current Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

The pair, while expressing some wariness towards the protesters on their respective campuses, advocated for dialogue on campus's that looked to empathize with why students are protesting. Columbia University's “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which started in April, led the way for similar protests across the country in the spring, including on Princeton’s campus. Demands from protesters included divestment from Israeli-backed institutions and companies.

Aaron Sibarium
Washington Free Beacon

Excerpt: Princeton University is on the verge of promoting a professor who participated in the occupation of a campus building that disrupted university operations and led to more than a dozen arrests, according to an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The university has recommended that the classics scholar Dan-el Padilla Peralta, who along with 13 anti-Israel student protesters stormed Princeton’s historic Clio Hall in April, be promoted from associate to full professor, pending the approval of the university’s board of trustees. Peralta already has tenure, but the promotion would make him eligible for university leadership roles, including deanships.

Jess Deutsch
Princeton Alumni Weekly  

Excerpt: While 120 hostages remained captive and the death toll in Israel and Gaza continued to rise, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 described the last year as the “most turbulent and difficult on college campuses in the U.S. since the late 1960s.” With world news weighing heavily this spring and campus protests broadcasted widely, I wondered about the impact of the war and protests on the mental health impact Princeton students and alumni.

At Princeton’s encampment, students seemed to talk within their own bubbles or make statements using a megaphone. Students, faculty, and staff often walked by, heads down. As the semester was ending, more than one student who had no involvement told me they couldn’t wait to leave campus, scared to say the wrong thing. I worried about the conversations that didn’t happen.

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In “How Liberal College Campuses Benefit Conservative Students,” which appeared online in early July at The Atlantic, Lauren A. Wright, in the spirit of “A Boy Named Sue,” urges “right-wing commentators” to appreciate the benefits of a campus environment that ridicules, condemns, and excludes conservative views.

Wright’s contrarian contention that the politicization of higher education advantages conservatives while harming progressives puts the controversy over the nation’s campuses in an unexpected light. No doubt some conservative students do rise to the occasion. In the face of their professors’ and fellow students’ knee-jerk hostility to conservative opinions, some students who hold them will develop thick skins, acquire the ability to appreciate the other side’s arguments, and improve their skills in fending off denunciation and diatribe and setting forth their own views under pressure. But most students – at Princeton, according to Wright, “conservatives make up just 12 percent of undergraduates” – are imbued with the progressive orthodoxy promulgated by much K-12 education, public and private.