Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Keith Whittington
Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA)

Excerpt: We are dismayed by the reports that you suspended and launched an investigation of a member of your faculty for comments she made as a guest lecturer in a college class. We are relieved that the investigation was eventually dropped, but it never should have been launched in the first place. This affair shows a disturbing lack of concern with academic freedom principles in the Texas A&M System.

Keith Whittington
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: I am pleased to see that my latest article on the efforts of state legislatures to restrict what ideas professors can endorse in the classroom has now been published. "Professorial Speech, the First Amendment, and Legislative Restrictions on Classroom Discussions" appears in the latest issue of the Wake Forest Law Review.

Keith Whittington
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Professors speak and write in a wide range of contexts, in all of which they receive, however unevenly, some level of protection under college policies, traditional academic-freedom principles, and First Amendment doctrine. Those First Amendment protections just took a hit in a newly issued opinion by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Rikki Schlott
New York Post

Excerpt: Kate Rohde was a trailblazer as a female Unitarian minister. But, she says, a cancel culture takedown left her scraping by at age 74, stripped of her ministership and her pension.

Zach Gardner
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: The Constitution had a great week at the Supreme Court. In the span of 24 hours, the Court prohibited the violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA v. Harvard), reaffirmed the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, and upheld the separation of powers in Biden v. Nebraska.

Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Ronen Shoval, a 2022-23 associate research scholar with the James Madison Program and lecturer in politics at Princeton, faced opposition from students, faculty, and locals while on campus due to his affiliations with a right-wing Israeli movement some have said has similarities with fascism.