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May 30, 2025
PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Reunions ‘25 is the focus of this month’s PFS Newsletter. While Princeton and other elite institutions of higher education are under intense and unprecedented scrutiny from the federal government, on campus PFS held a highly successful Reunions ‘25 event featuring John Tomasi, President of Heterodox Academy, in conversation with Princeton Professor of Politics John Londregan.
See an excerpt and a link to a YouTube recording of the entire event below.
Our 2025 Reunions event: Open Inquiry: A New Path Forward - Princeton Can Lead
Public trust in our universities has cratered. The Trump administration’s actions so far seem more punitive than reform-minded. But there is an actionable path forward for Princeton: build a new campus culture of open inquiry.
In this paraphrased extract from the event, Tomasi points to four constituencies that can help universities improve their behavior — to help them as they “fumble towards an ideal that is difficult to achieve … a truly inclusive university that is committed to searching for truth together.”
University presidents including Princeton’s — should recognize that fighting for inclusion is not the same thing as creating an activist university. There is a distinction between being committed to inclusion for the sake of epistemic truth-seeking, and turning the university into a reflection of one’s own political beliefs. The university is about pluralism fundamentally, and university presidents need to know that. … The drift towards ideological uniformity is one of the greatest challenges facing our universities. We can recognize it and overcome it, but if we don’t admit it, where do we go?
Professors — need to be aware and say courageously that identity does not automatically confer authority. Reasons matter. Making your case with evidence, no matter what your identity, is an important ideal.
Students — should be reminded and encouraged to see that the university is not just another venue for politics, there is something magic and sacred about a university. Universities are still in the process of becoming, and students should be part of that process, rather than side shows that move people off in the wrong way.
Alumni —need to be charitable. They should encourage the behaviors they want. Alumni face a choice when they care about a place deeply: Whether to poke the university in the eye, or to get involved and help it. Alumni should be like principled parents, not like children themselves. There is a principled role of being an ally, like a thoughtful parent.
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, and Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, discussed their new book:
Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.
Link to watch: Truth Matters: Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division - Princeton University Reunions Event
Marisa Hirschfeld ‘27, PFS Writing Fellow quoted in PAW’s featured article about PFS.
Under Second Trump Administration, Free Speech Debate at Princeton Intensifies
Stuart Taylor Jr. ’70 and Ed Yingling ’70 founded the nonprofit organization Princetonians for Free Speech
By Harrison Blackman ‘17, Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 16, 2025
“‘My personal mission while at [PFS] is to make free speech nonpartisan again,’ Hirschfield says, arguing that historic progressive gains in the abolition of slavery, gay rights, and women’s suffrage were all made ‘because dissidents were able to safely express what might have been unpopular viewpoints.’ …
… ‘A lot of the time free speech can be an obstacle to progressive causes or even perpetuate twisted ideas,’ she says. ‘It’s weird to be on the side where you’re defending that, but ultimately you’re defending the principle of free speech, not the ideas that free speech protects.’”
Our third-annualsurvey of Princeton students conducted in partnership with College Pulse was released last week. View thehighlights to learn where Princeton needs to improve.
And read our analysis by PFS Vice-Chair Leslie Spencer:PFS Student Survey shows Increased Awareness of Free Speech Principles, but Little Understanding of what Free Speech Looks Like in Practice.
A theme emerges in this PFS survey that unites many of the questions and that deserves special note: First, some questions reveal a greater awareness of free speech, indicating that the university is putting more effort into planting that awareness. However -- and this is notable: awareness among students does not seem to translate into a greater understanding of free speech and academic freedom, nor does a greater awareness impact student views of free speech in practice. For example, an increase in awareness of free speech rules has done little to change willingness to speak up or to find it unacceptable to disrupt or shut down campus speakers and events that are considered controversial or offensive. …In short, large numbers of students do not understand how and why free speech in practice is vital to Princeton’s core mission.
When University Investigations of Faculty Go Off the Rails
Heterodox Out Loud, April 22, 2025
As campus investigations into faculty appear to become increasingly common, what does this trend mean for academic freedom and open inquiry in higher education? A discussion with contributors to Professors Speak Out: The Truth about Campus Investigations, a new book that sheds light on the experiences of faculty members who have faced university investigations—often for expressing controversial or disfavored viewpoints.
Steven Pinker: Can Harvard be saved?
The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, May 7, 2025
John McWhorter – A New Agenda for Higher Ed?
The Glenn Show, May 26 2025
Princeton Faces 21 Percent Tax on its Endowment Income
By Princetonians for Free Speech, May 15, 2025
Harvard Derangement Syndrome - The New York Times
Steven Pinker, New York Times, May 23, 2025 (See Quote of the Month below.)
Yes, Harvard had it coming — but Trump's 'fix' is still unconstitutional
By Conor Murnane, Campus Advocacy Chief of Staff at FIRE, The Hill, May 18. 2025
Harvard Spends $1.4 Billion a Year on “Non-instructional Staff”
Federal education secretary sees a “bloated bureaucracy.” She has a point.
Ira Stoll, The Editors, May 15, 2025
The Trump GOPs attacks on universities advance the Left’s agenda
The political attacks on Harvard and other educational institutions aren’t conservative at all.
George Will, The Washington Post, May 2, 2025.
American Universities Should Put America First
Trump’s moves force all of us to ask: Who is higher education for? And what is its purpose?
Solveig Lucia Gold, The Free Press, May 26, 2025
And two articles by Princeton professors:
Does Trump want to Destroy Harvard or Reform It?
Gregg Conti, Compact Magazine, May 16, 2025
Why This Assault on Universities is More Serious than Earlier Ones
David A. Bell, French Reflections, Substack, May 17, 2025
… [U]niversity leaders should be prepared to affirm the paramount goal of a university — discovering and transmitting knowledge — and the principles necessary to pursue it. Universities have a mandate and the expertise to pursue knowledge, not social justice. Intellectual freedom is not a privilege of professors but the only way that fallible humans gain knowledge. Disagreements should be negotiated with analysis and argument, not recriminations of bigotry and victimhood. Protests may be used to generate common knowledge of a grievance, but not to shut people up or coerce the university into doing what the protesters want. The university commons belongs to the community, whose members may legitimately disagree with one another, and it may not be usurped by one faction. The endowment is not an op-ed page but a treasure that the university is obligated to hold in trust for future generations.
Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so.…In his manifesto for progress, “The Beginning of Infinity,” the physicist David Deutsch wrote, “Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge.” To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.
FromHarvard Derangement Syndrome - The New York Times
Steven Pinker, New York Times, May 23, 2025
July 1, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
June provides a welcome pause for PFS to try to make sense of a year uniquely disruptive in the history of American higher education. There was no better place to do this than at Heterodox Academy’s third annual conference, Truth, Power and Responsibility, held June 23 - 25 in Brooklyn, New York.
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.
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.
