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August 29, 2024
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
This week is Orientation for new students at Princeton. Students, faculty and staff are, no doubt, on edge. The encampment on Cannon Green and the arrests for criminal trespass of Clio Hall are fresh in everyone’s memory. Despite clear and intentional actions that broke Princeton’s rules of conduct and its core commitment to free expression and respectful disagreement, the administration struggled to respond clearly.
This moment requires clarity from Princeton’s leaders on the rights and responsibilities concerning free speech, academic freedom, respect for viewpoint diversity and rules of civil discourse.
Princeton boasts robust free speech protections and rules around peaceful protest. But principles and rules “on paper” are not enough. Specific actions need to be taken to regain the practice of a true liberal education, which is by necessity rooted in free expression. Diverse perspectives are what empower students to engage in challenging ideas and learn from respectful disagreement. Threats and harassment are not part of what free expression means. Princeton has a long way to go to embed core principles into the everyday experience and outlook of students, faculty and administrators. As students return to campus, we presentThe PFS Top Ten – the ten most important reforms Princeton’s leadership should consider.
Christopher L. Eisgruber, President, Jennifer Rexford, Provost, and W. Rochelle Calhoun, Vice President for Campus Life
President Christopher L. Eisgruber, Provost Jennifer Rexford, and Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun are perhaps the most important among the administrative leadership at Princeton who we hope will endorse these actions. As the new academic year starts, we at PFS present to them, as well as to Princeton’s trustees, our top 10 recommendations – actions the university can and should take to restore its core purpose of academic excellence in the pursuit of knowledge and truth. We will be presenting these priorities to the administration, hoping for open and constructive dialogue. And for you, our readers, we will expand on each of these ten recommendations over the course of the year. Stay posted. To comment, please contact Leslie Spencer HERE.
Marisa Hirschfield ‘27 is studying History and Creative Writing. On campus, she serves as the Education and Social Action Chair for the Center for Jewish Life, edits for the Nassau Weekly, and writes musical comedy with the Triangle Club. She is from New York City and just joined our team as a Writing Fellow.
Ignorance is not the only thing from which a true liberal education frees us.
By Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, August 28, 2024
Those of us who teach or study at American colleges and universities are facing the academic year that is about to begin with more than a little trepidation. Will there be protests? Encampments? The occupation of buildings? The invasion of classrooms? Riots?
The fact that we are asking those questions should itself prompt us to ask a more fundamental question: What is the purpose of higher education?
Most American colleges and universities proclaim themselves to be providers of “liberal education” (or “liberal arts education”). But what does that mean? Why should students want it? Why should their parents pay—a lot—for them to get it?
The word “liberal” in this context means “freeing.” So, what is it that liberal education is supposed to be freeing us from?
A Conservative Free-Speech Rock Star
Keith Whittington seeks a more complete understanding of Why Free Speech Matters on Campuses.
By G. Patrick Lynch, Law and Liberty, August 28, 2024
Whittington is now known nationwide as a defender of free speech, but he didn’t plan it that way. “I backed my way into focusing much more on campus free speech and academic freedom,” he tells me. Like many of us, he mostly took free speech “for granted” throughout his career, even though, as a conservative, he understood there was political danger and hostility to “conservatives and conservative thought” that forced him to “carefully navigate an environment that was politically sometimes fairly hostile.”
Whittington’s case is unique because he has mostly worked in Ivy League schools and departments around mentors and colleagues who are “extremely good” on the free speech front and desirous of having people around who were “interesting regardless of their politics.” He told me that he has personally “experienced a side of academia that is exactly what I would have hoped for … where ideas are taken seriously [and] people are willing to hear out ideas from a wide range of perspectives and willing to debate them in good faith.”
But despite that experience, he recognizes such a liberal atmosphere is “difficult to maintain” because the once-widespread sympathy for free speech on campus is dwindling.
Opinion | How colleges can repair the fading reputation of higher education
Here’s a handy way to grade whether colleges are earnestly addressing the many problems they face.
By Mitch Daniels, Washington Post, August 19, 2024
With classes resuming, here are a few tests of a school’s seriousness about responding to the growing discontent among those who fund, through tuition and/or taxes, administrators’ and professors’ paychecks and generally low-stress lifestyles. …
The evaluation here is pass-fail, because absent strong oversight, the system cannot be trusted to reform itself. A passing grade requires a firm top-down commitment to major improvements in cost, student centricity, viewpoint diversity in both policy and faculty composition, and rigorous standards. Key indicators of seriousness could include an end to rubber-stamping faculty-controlled tenure and promotion and the establishment of pay-for-performance compensation of administrators, contingent on documented progress toward these goals.
Opinion | Colleges Can’t Say They Weren’t Warned
By David French, New York Times, August 18, 2024
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, a number of universities were taken by surprise by the sheer sustained disruption and by the antisemitic animosity on their campuses. They struggled to respond effectively. As the war continues — and as the conflict with Hezbollah escalates on Israel’s northern border — universities can no longer claim to be surprised. They know what might happen this school year, and this knowledge has legal significance. If they fail to protect the free speech of students or to protect students from antisemitic or Islamophobic harassment, there will be consequences.
Colleges Face Growing Demands to Step Up Enforcement on Student Protesters Who Cross a Line
By Amelia Benavides-Colón andKatherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 19, 2024
One Rule for Frat Boys. Another for Violent Activists
Greek students are targeted based on rumors. College protesters who break laws get off scot-free. Francesca Block reports on the double standard on the American campus.
By Francesca Block ‘22, The Free Press, August 13, 2024
From “What I Want a University President to Say about Campus Protests”
By Brett Stephens, New York Times, August 20, 2024
…[T]he reason we intend to strictly enforce restrictions on campus protests has less to do with pressure from the outside and more to do with what we owe to ourselves as an institution dedicated to discovery, scholarship, teaching and learning. Our central concern is not with reputation — how others see us. It’s with integrity — how we remain faithful to our foundational purpose.
... [A]nti-semitism is not what I found chiefly offensive about the protests. I accept that most of the protesters are not antisemitic, or at least don’t think of themselves that way.
What bothered me, rather, was watching members of our community turn off their critical faculties. It was listening to students and faculty whom we had admitted or hired for their intellectual sophistication, their capacity to understand complexity and nuance, reduce their own thinking to a handful of slogans and mantras written for them by others. It was the absence of intellectual humility and its replacement with moral certitudes. It was the substitution of serious political thought with propaganda. It was the refusal to engage with difference and criticism in any way except denunciation and moral bullying.
In short, the way in which these protests unfolded was an insult to the spirit of inquiry that this university has an institutional responsibility to protect and champion. So does this mean we will brook no form of protest? Of course not. But we do expect that protests, so long as they happen on our campus, on our property, conform with the aims of education as we see them.
That means, at a minimum, that we will enforce clearly established “time, place and manner” restrictions, so that the rights of those who protest are never allowed to impinge on the rights of those who don’t. It also means we will invest in serious programming about the Mideast conflict, including by inviting Israeli and Palestinian scholars to campus and hosting moderated debates where you can cheer your own political side but must at least listen to the other. Our goal is never to make you think one way or the other. It’s to make you think, period.
The spirit of protest will always have a place here, as it must in every free society. Our job is to harness it to the task of inquiry sothat knowledge may continue to grow, and human life may be enriched.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Happy Giving Tuesday from PFS! We are grateful for the support we've received over the past 4 years from alumni like you and many others. As our Special Feature this month, we are proud to present the PFS 2024 Annual Report, which showcases our achievements over this year. We hope you will continue to help us grow our reach and impact during this season of giving!
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
PFS hosted two events this month, one in Santa Barbara, California, and the other on campus. See details in the Special Feature below.
Additionally, our next PFS Inner Circle event is coming up. On November 21 at 4 pm EST Abigail Anthony '23, journalist and graduate students at Oxford University, will discuss free speech in journalism, her experience as a student activist, and more. You can event this event and all of our Inner Circle events by joining the Inner Circle subscription.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
As the academic year begins at Princeton and on campuses throughout the country, an extraordinary array of newsworthy events has already occurred. In the wake of last semester’s sustained campus disruption and a contentious national election around the corner, this may be just the beginning. We start not with the usual one, but three Special Features.
