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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.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Happy New Year! At PFS we are delighted to welcome our inaugural Executive Director; you can see below our introduction to Angela Smith. Our Special Feature includes two original articles by our PFS student writing fellows Marisa Hirschfield ‘27 and Khoa Sands ‘26. And nationally, we feature an event of particular importance to anyone interested in the state of academic freedom and free speech on America’s college campuses, held by the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. It is presented virtually as well as in person on January 31, 2025, and features Princeton professor and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci. See below for details.
And PFS momentum is building! As 2024 came to a close, over 1,200 hundred new subscribers signed up with PFS. Please help to build awareness by asking your alumni and other friends to join us HERE. And for those who may have missed it, here is our 2024 Annual Report.
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.
