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March 28, 2024
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, members and friends,
This month PFS spotlights an exciting event on campus. On April 22, a new film, The Coddling of the American Mind, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, is showing on campus as part of a college campus national tour. See below for details.
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One of PFS’s main goals is to bring to campus and support events in collaboration with student or other groups that discuss the importance of free speech and academic freedom, or that model open discourse. Here we announce an important upcoming event, followed by information about two recent events.
On Monday, April 22, The Coddling of the American Mind, a recently-released feature documentary based on the best-selling 2018 book of the same name, will be presented as part of a US college campus tour. Hosted by Whig-Clio in collaboration with PFS, a live panel discussion and Q and A with award-winning filmmakers and journalists Ted and Courtney Balaker will follow the showing. Through the eyes of students from different universities, the film reveals how group-think, fear of cancellation, and race and gender-based orthodoxies that dominate campus life contribute to intellectual and emotional fragility, and undermine a university’s core mission of knowledge-seeking in a culture of free and open debate. The novel decision to release the film on Substack has been a success so far, and the campus tour is drawing big crowds of students. Watch the Official Trailer, and visit the movie’s Substack to learn more about the film and the campus tour. For those of you in the Princeton area, time and venue details will be announced soon.
Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Despair, and the Political Idols of the Age. On March 26, 2024, PFS collaborated with Princeton’s student Federalist Society chapter to bring to campus R.J. Snell, author and Editor in Chief of Public Discourse and Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute, who spoke about his book of the same name.
On March 20, 2024, the student group Veritas Forum, in collaboration with PFS, presented Secularism, Faith and the Future of Liberal Democracy, a conversation between Joseph H.H. Weiler, University Professor, NYU School of Law, and Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University.
Universities as Mediators, Not Partisans
By Howard Sereda *78, Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 22, 2024.
College Presidents are Oblivious to their Campus Climate
By Samuel J. Abrams, Minding the Campus, March 18, 2024 (See quote of the month below.)
2024 Survey of College and University Presidents
“Inside Higher Ed’s 2024 Survey of College and University Presidents was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey included 380 presidents from public and private nonprofit institutions, for a margin of error of 4.66 percent. The survey included questions on such issues as campus speech, public perceptions of higher education, race on campus, artificial intelligence, general financial and economic confidence, and mental health.”
America’s Elite Universities are Bloated, Complacent and Illiberal
Posted by ACTA, March 7, 2024, the article appeared in the Economist on March 4, 2024.
Why Intellectual Diversity Requirements on Campus Won’t Work
By Princeton Professor Keith E. Whittington, The Dispatch, March 13, 2024
UC Delays vote on much-debated proposal to restrict some faculty speech
By Michael Burke, Ed Source, March 20, 2024
The Skeptics were Wrong Part 2: When it comes to free speech, the college kids are not alright.
By Greg Lukianoff and Sean Stevens, The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack, March 21, 2024.
A book by social psychologist and NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt, co-founder of Heterodox Academy and co-author with Greg Lukianoff of The Coddling of the American Mind, has just been released. Parents, school teachers, college professors and administrators, and everyone concerned with the health of American youth should read it. The book is more than a sounding of the alarm, it is a call to action. In his data-rich analysis, Haidt shows that starting around 2012, rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness among children and teens start shooting up. By 2015, most girls are on instagram with unlimited data plans, and teachers can’t keep phones out of the classroom. Among girls his data shows that self-harm is rampant, and especially in the lower end of the income spectrum, boys are consumed by video games and online porn. “Phone based childhood has replaced play based childhood. … This is not a place where human children can grow up.” But Haidt is hopeful: “Everyone sees it in this generation. No one disagrees. We just need to have parents overcome their feeling of resignation…. We are going to win, this is the year for phone-free schools.” Purchase the book HERE.
The past five months have shown the world just how toxic speech is on college campuses. The climate for open inquiry and dialogue is under attack nationwide, and students are scared to speak, question, and express themselves freely. Using disparaging rhetoric, even violence, to prevent speech is now commonplace on campus, and thus, many students are turning inward, and genuine liberal learning is being interrupted. Yet, most college presidents believe their campuses are perfect examples of viewpoint diversity.
The 2024 edition of Inside Higher Ed’s survey of college and university presidents sadly reveals that many higher education leaders are oblivious to the issues of free speech on their own campuses. This should give anyone interested in the state of our colleges and universities pause. The 2024 survey captured the voices of 380 presidents, 206 from public and 174 from private institutions. While presidents remain hopeful for the future of their schools, they clearly are unaware of what is happening outside their very offices....
Nearly 82 percent of college and university presidents rate the climate for open inquiry and dialogue on their campus as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ 92 percent of presidents who have been in charge of their institutions for 10 or more years rate their campus’s dialogue as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ …
Oddly enough, when these leaders were asked about open inquiry in higher education generally, just 30 percent of collegiate presidents believed that the climate for open inquiry and dialogue in higher education generally is good or excellent. And . . . presidents with 10 or more years at their current institution . . . rate the overall collegiate speech climate poorly -- just 21 percent agree that it’s ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ …
Samuel J. Abrams, excerpted from “College Presidents are Oblivious to their Campus Climate”, Minding the Campus, March 18, 2024. A copy of the survey is available at Inside Higher Ed.
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PFS’s featured editorial this month is Yale Issues clarion call for change, joining other leading universities. Where is Princeton? We put Yale’s report in the context of the growing consensus amongst a widening circle of University Presidents that President Maurie McGinnis is correct. University leaders must take responsibility for their role in reaching this critical point. President Eisgruber is not among this list of reformers.
If you want to know more about why Princeton is not leading this movement to restore trust in higher education,link here to a comprehensive Five-Part Review of President Eisgruber’s book, Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, written for PFS by Tal Fortgang ‘17.
Can universities be reformed? Princeton’s Professor of Mathematics Sergiu Klainerman is a pessimist. In the absence of powerful external pressures, reform from within is “very close to zero” due to what he sees as the deep corruption of the universities’ core mission.
Klainerman was born in Romania and graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1974. He earned his PhD in Mathematics at NYU in 1978 and has taught at Princeton since 1987. A MacAurther Fellow (1991) and Guggenheim Fellow (1997) he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1999 "for his contributions to nonlinear hyperbolic equations."
Klainerman presented his bleak perspective on the state of higher education in an address at the recent opening of the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom, a new institution dedicated to the study of civics.
In PFS Supports Two Student and Faculty Events that Advance Free Expression, Executive Director Angela Smith highlights PFS support for two important on-campus events that happened in February, one organized by students, the other by faculty.
“Free speech and open inquiry are not abstract ideals – they are the lifeblood of a healthy university community. At Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), we strive to advance those principles through practical, tangible support for students and faculty who put them into action. As such, we are pleased to tell you about two recent events at Princeton, supported by PFS, that reflect this mission in powerful ways.”
Read more about these events, why PFS supports them, and why you should support PFS.
And read coverage of these two events in the Student Corner below, written by our writing fellows Annabel Green ‘26 and Joseph Gonzalez ‘28.
