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To PFS subscribers, members and friends,
April saw a major campus protest, one that disrupted and cut short an April 7 event featuring former Israeli Prime-Minister Nefthali Bennett. This disruption was by far the worst we have seen on Princeton’s campus. In response,PFS issued two letters to President Eisgruber and the administration. The first letter was sent on April 9 in the immediate aftermath of the event. It makes specific recommendations for swift action to sanction those responsible for breaking university rules. Anticipating a possible recurrence at an April 22 event with Yechiel Leiter, the new Israeli Ambassador to the US, PFS sent the second letter on April 18, outlining measures not taken at the first event, that are critical to preventing more disruption.
PFS is delighted to announce our Reunions 2025 event featuring John Tomasi, President of Heterodox Academy, in conversation with Princeton Professor of Politics and International Affairs John B. Londregan.
Open Inquiry: A New Path Forward - Princeton Can Lead
Saturday May 24th, 2025
10:30AM McCosh 46
The near-term future for Princeton is filled with landmines.Princeton is now in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration, more in the national spotlight, and facing its own pressures. Our latest editorial by Princetonians for Free Speech, The Target on Princeton’s Back has Grown Bigger, published April 29,addresses key events, particularly the Harvard fight, President Eisgruber's even higher profile, the statement from now over 500 heads of universities, and the April 7 event disruption.
PFS funded three student-led events this month:
– Princeton Open Campus Coalition hostedScott Horton for a lecture based on his new book: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Click here to watch the recording.
–Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli Ambassador to the US, spoke on Tuesday April 22nd at an event titled,"The Demonization of Israel and the Rise of Antisemitism"hosted by B’Artzeinu Princeton and Tigers for Israel. PFS Writing Fellow Marisa Hirschfield ‘27 reported for PFS on the night of the April 22 event: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Gives Lecture on Israel and Anti-Semitism.
– Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnistBret Stephens spoke on April 24: “Writing About Israel As A Columnist - And A Jew”, hosted by the student group B’Artzeinu Princeton.
Maximillian Meyer '27 and PFS board member Danielle Shapiro '25, who respectively lead the student groups Princeton Tigers for Israel, and B’Artzeinu Princeton, joined PFS on April 23rd for a live Q&A about the April 7th event, the disruptions and subsequent response by the Administration.
To attend all PFS virtual events, join the Inner Circle.
Stuart Taylor Jr: Trump Challenges Princeton on Race and Free Speech
PFS Co-Founder and President Stuart Taylor Jr. ‘70, joins Tom Bevan ‘91, co-founder and Publisher of RealClearPolitcs (RCP), on the Real Clear Politics Podcast, April 28, 2025
Heterodox Out Loud with John Tomasi
How Universities Lost the Public, and How to Win them Back
Heterodox Academy, April 22, 2025
Elite Universities Form Private Collective to Resist Trump Administration
Separate from the public dissent, a group of school leaders are strategizing behind the scenes about how to respond and push back against the White House.
By Emily Glazer, Douglas Belkin and Juliet Chung, April 27, 2025
How Universities should respond to Trump’s assault on academic freedom
By Robert P. George and Cornel West, The Hill, April 25, 2025
Revealed: The Explosion in Foreign Funding for U.S. Universities
By PFS board member Frannie Block ‘23 and Maya Sulkin, The Free Press, April 27, 2025
In enforcement change, disruptors at speaker events will get single warning, U. says
By Devon Rudolph, The Daily Princetonian, April 22, 2025
Harvard Showed a Spine, Now Comes the Hard Part
Harvard needs to pair its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning
By John Tomasi, Free the Inquiry, Substack, April 25, 2025 (See Quote of the Month below.)
Academic freedom under siege: Universities must resist political interference and reform internally
Columbia, Harvard, Princeton council chairs unite against Federal overreach
By Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Jacqueline Gottlieb, Tarek Masoud, Steven Pinker, and Jon Rieder
Boston Globe, April 4, 2025
“As chairs of the Academic Freedom Councils at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton universities, we are alarmed at the threats to academic freedom currently faced by American universities. Universities are now confronted with extraordinary intrusions into their affairs by the federal government. At the same time, many threats to academic freedom emanate from within universities themselves. In this moment of crisis, we have an opportunity to address both threats, and to recommit the universities to their mission of advancing and disseminating knowledge.”
Principles That Should Stand at The Foundation of Universities
By Princeton Professor Sergiu Klainerman, Heterdox Stem, Substack, March 30, 2025
“To assert that American universities, and in fact most western universities, are in a crisis simply restates the obvious. The crisis, long in the making, is not just one of financial solvency, costly and rapidly expanding bureaucracies, worthless academic programs or declining enrollments. It is primarily a crisis of meaning resulting from the pursuit of divergent, often wildly contradictory goals: the traditional pursuit of Truth, wherever it leads, social engineering in the name of repairing the world, or simply vocational training to help students to advance their careers.”
John Tomasi, President, Heterodox Academy (HxA)
In a rare and admirable act of institutional defiance, Harvard University has rejected demands from the Trump administration that would have compromised its autonomy, chilled academic freedom, and upended core principles of academia. The government’s letter to Harvard — citing a broad civil rights investigation — demanded detailed records, ideological audits, and structural changes that amount to an effort at direct political control. Harvard was right to say no. …
The administration’s demands are a serious threat to academic freedom. Yet Harvard's resistance will ring hollow unless it pairs its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning about the internal failures that made it vulnerable to such scrutiny in the first place. …
At HxA, we believe the best defense against political overreach is a university that lives up to its highest ideals. Harvard’s moment of courage must now be matched by real reform. That means publicly affirming its commitment to civil rights and the open exchange of ideas — and then demonstrating that commitment through faculty hiring practices, classroom culture, and intellectual climate. America needs great universities. And it needs those universities to be truly great — not just in rankings, but in their commitment to truth, pluralism, and academic integrity.
Harvard just showed it has a spine. But now comes the hard part: Harvard must commit itself to the difficult, long-term work of building a culture of open inquiry.
From Harvard Showed a Spine, Now Comes the Hard Part
Harvard needs to pair its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning
Free the Inquiry, Substack, April 15, 2025
To PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
On March 10 the Department of Education’s office of Civil Rights sent letters to 60 universities, including Princeton. Theseletters warned of potential “enforcement actions” if institutions do not protect Jewish students.
On March 20, in reaction to the Trump administration’s threat to cut $400 million in Federal funding from Columbia University, 18 law professors with a range of views from liberal to conservative, signed a public letter in The New York Review arguing: “the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment-protected speech.” The next day, Columbia conceded to government demands. Other thanBrown University’s President Christina Paxson, who detailed what Brown would do under similar threats, Princeton’s President Eisgruber was a lone voice amongst the leadership of these universities – in The Cost of Government Attacks on Columbia, published by the Atlantic on March 19.
This week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, three of the 18 public letter signatories, all first amendment scholars, discuss what Columbia and other universities threatened with funding cuts should do. It is worth reading “It is Remarkable How Quickly the Chill Has Descended.” with Michael C. Dorf, of Cornell University; Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago; and Nadine Strossen, of New York Law School.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
In February the Trump administration’s focus on radical change in higher education continued unabated. The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights released a letter on non-discrimination policies. DEI programs are targeted, with sweeping mandates that have caused several universities to take preemptive action to avoid federal funding cuts.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Whoa. January certainly was a month of explosive change for higher education! Three executive orders that could impact funding of universities prompted President Eisgruber’s January 28 letter, which rightly admits “there is much we do not know.” See the Daily Princetonians coverage of Eisgruber’s letter: Eisgruber says U. is “exploring measures” in wake of Trump orders, stops short of specific guidance.
Most importantly, take a close look at our special feature, written by PFS cofounder Ed Yingling, 2025: A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campus. It is a grand synthesis of the many ways 2025 could be a year of dramatic change at US Universities, change that could critically impact free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity at Princeton and elsewhere. Yingling’s article helps to make sense of the radical changes that lie in store.
