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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 thePFS 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!
At PFS we work closely with students, faculty and alumni to bring back a culture of free inquiry, academic freedom and intellectual pluralism at Princeton and throughout the country. From advocating for policy changes, hosting events and debates on campus, our work is having a real impact.
But there’s still much to do. To move forward, we need more champions for free speech—like you. Princeton’s future depends on the actions we take today. Let’s work together to help preserve the pursuit of truth and the advancement of knowledge at Princeton, so that every student and faculty member can teach, conduct research, learn and speak freely and without fear of censure.
OnDecember 4 at 5 pm EST, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) will present Faculty Director Tom Ginsburg and Executive Director Tony Banout from the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.University of Chicago principles underpin American higher education’s understanding of free expression (Chicago Principles), institutional neutrality (Kalven Report) and faculty hiring based on merit (Shils Report). The Chicago Forum's leaders will offer reflections on the current state of free expression, the Forum's efforts, and its future plans.
Please feel free to join this special event HERE.
Is a new team of campus administrators protecting free speech or undermining it?
By Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 25, 2024
Academe’s Divorce from Reality
Americans are fed up, and not just people who voted for Trump.
By William Deresiewicz, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 21, 2024
By Dorian Abbott, Heterodox Stem, Stubstack, December 1, 2024
Colleges and the Dumbing Down of America
By Richard Vedder, Minding the Campus, November 19, 2024
How Ivy League Admissions Broke America
By David Brooks, The Atlantic, November 14, 2024
Encouraging Debate, Not Settling It
A Conversation with Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier
Interviewed by Bret Stephens, Sapir Journal, November 17, 2024
Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier has been one of few leaders of elite American universities to demonstrate a consistent commitment to the foundational principles of higher education before and since October 7.SapirEditor-in-Chief Bret Stephens sat down with Diermeier to learn about his views on how to shape a campus culture based in the spirit of inquiry and a commitment to reason. (See an excerpt in Quote of the Month below.)
Editor’s Note: When Did the Academy Become Illiberal?
By Bret Stephens, Sapir Journal, November 17, 2024
We have returned to the subject of education, which was the focus of our sixth volume from the summer of 2022, because the aftermath of October 7 has reminded us of how much a thriving Jewish future depends on reforming our universities. With this volume, we hope to stir conversation, ideas, and passion in the service of rescuing these broken, but still necessary, institutions.
Nadine Strossen in conversation at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, November 7, 2024
Daniel Diermeier:…I’ve been very concerned about the drop in approval and trust in higher education. The decline has been larger among people on the conservative side of the political spectrum, but it’s across the board, from the Left and the Right. My sense is that it comes from two concerns. From the progressive side, the concern is that highly selective universities are perpetuating inequality. And the concern from the Right is that we’re woke factories.…My own sense is that the concerns about the propagation of inequality are, on closer inspection, much overblown. I think the concerns on the politicization of higher education and the ideological drift are much more valid. … The question of the politicization of higher education has come into stark relief after what we’ve seen last year: the conflict in the Middle East and the drama on campus. These developments have elevated into the public consciousness concerns that have been present for years. They now are front and center, much more serious, and they require a course correction by many universities.
Bret Stephens:A historian might say, “Go back to the University of Chicago or Yale in the 1950s and you’ll find conservative critics railing against higher education as hotbeds of radicalism.” Now we look back on that and sort of chuckle. Is the criticism more valid today? If so, why?
Daniel Diermeier:Yes, I think the criticism is more valid today. If you look back, there were three pillars of how a university thought about its role in society. If you look at the University of Chicago, one pillar was this commitment to free speech that goes back to the founding and then through a whole variety of presidents, reaffirmed, most recently, by the 2015 report, often referred to as the Chicago Principles. Universities need to be places for open debate. Pillar two is what we call institutional neutrality, which means that the university will not get involved, will not take positions, on controversial political and social issues that bear no direct relevance to the university’s mission. The University of Chicago’s formulation of this policy was the Kalven Report from 1967, which so eloquently articulates that when the university formulates a party line on any issue, it creates a chilling effect for faculty and students to engage in debate and discourse. And the third pillar, less appreciated but important, is a commitment to reason, to respect, to using arguments and evidence. Discourse and debate at the university shouldn’t be about shouting. That’s a more cultural aspect. All three have eroded, and they have eroded over the past 10 years in significant fashion. Now we see the consequences of that.
Excerpted from “Encouraging Debate, Not Settling It”, a conversation between Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the quarterly journal SAPIR.
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.
February 2, 2026
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
2026 has started with a bang. “Viewpoint diversity” is in the news. What is its role in protecting the knowledge-generating and truth-seeking mission of America’s universities? Please see our Special Feature, an original article by PFS’s Edward Yingling and Leslie Spencer, The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech: Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities.
Also see an important new book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It, forthcoming next month from Heresy Press. It is a collection of essays by some of the country’s leading heterodox thinkers who confront the rise of orthodoxy on both the left and the right.
And our Quote of the Month is from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It? by the President of Dartmouth Sian Leah Beilock, who makes an urgent call for university leaders to take action now to “reform ourselves.”
Happy New Year from PFS!
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
We’d like to take this moment at the end of an eventful year at Princeton and throughout the country, to acknowledge two national organizations that pursue higher education reform in important and different ways, both of which are critical to PFS’s success. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), whose impact on free speech and campus discourse policies at over 30 campuses nationwide cannot be underestimated. Collaborating with FIRE on Princeton student surveys and campus reform policies has been invaluable to our growth and impact. The other is Heterodox Academy (HxA), the leading non-partisan membership organization for faculty, staff and students, whose campus community network has now reached over 80 campuses in the US and UK.
