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December 1, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
This month we are proud to present our 2025 Annual Report. It includes a message from our founders, financial summary, highlights of our projects and initiatives for the year, and our list of Top Ten recommendations for Princeton’s leadership to help restore a culture of free speech, open debate and viewpoint diversity, and put Princeton’s free speech principles into practice. We are pleased to present this summary of our year as you plan for your year-end charitable giving. Alumni must not be bystanders in our university’s future. Please spread the word about PFS by sharing the link to the Annual Report with your fellow alumni or on social media. We cannot do this alone.
A Special Feature
Articles of Interest
We start with two articles that discuss grade inflation, the first by our regular contributor Tal Fortgang ‘17. The second is the National Association of Scholars’ assessment of Harvard’s Grade Inflation Report, sent to all Harvard Faculty and Students last month.
Ivy League Universities Still About Education? A Closer Look at Harvard and Princeton
By Tal Fortgang ‘17, Princetonians for Free Speech, November 19, 2025
Easy Come, Easy Go: The Grade Inflation Report
By Kali Jerrard, National Association of Scholars, November 4, 2025
The Charlie Kirk purge: How 600 Americans were punished in a pro-Trump crackdown
By Raphael Satter and A.J. Vincens, Reuters, November 19, 2025
‘We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed
By Ariel Kaminer, Sian Beilock, Jennifer L. Mnookin and Michael S. Roth
New York Times, November 18, 2025
Universities Can't Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity
This is what we wish the critics of the concept on both the left and the right would understand
By John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt, Inside Higher Ed, October 29, 2025
Conversations of the Month
Kidnapped and Held Hostage by Hamas, an evening with Moran Stela Yanay
Princeton University’s Chabad, streamed live on November 20, 2025
Moran Stela Yanai was abducted from the Nova Music Festival on October 7th, 2023. Throughout her 54 days in captivity in Gaza, Moran says that the only thing that kept her going was her faith. Special thanks to Princetonians for Free Speech and BICEP.
Robert P. George and the Great Campus Vibe Shift
As progressive orthodoxy weakens, academe’s most influential conservative warns of growing illiberalism on the right.
By Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 24, 2025
Turning the Tide, A Candid Conversation with Professor Robert P. George
Moderated by Ed Yingling ‘70, PFS Co-Founder
Rebuilding Debate: What The Harvard Crimson Taught Us About Free Expression at Harvard
Tommy Barone and Jacob M Miller, two former Chairs of the Harvard Crimson Editorial Board in conversation with John Evangelakos of Harvard Alumni for Free Speech
Student Corner: Self Censorship at Princeton
Quote of the Month
“Sadly, too many today – including government officials, university administrators and faculty, and even traditional-media leaders – have lost faith in free speech as the primary instruments for the pursuit of truth, and instead support the top-down imposition of ideological orthodoxy.
Free speech is the essential means to the end of any idea – conservative or liberal. Supporting free expression offers a chance to fact-check your views through debate – the “right to hear,” as Strossen and Lukianoff point out, echoing Frederick Douglass in his timeless speech, “A Plea for Free Speech in Boston.”
But there are even more “selfish” reasons for endorsing free speech. When you defend the right to speak freely, you are protecting your right to express yourself by agreeing to respect others’ rights to do the same. …”
From the forward toThe War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech – and Why They Fail By Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, Forward by Jacob Mchangama
October 1, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
On September 25, PFS Vice-Chair Leslie Spencer ‘79 and Executive Director Angela Smith attended the third annual conference of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, an affiliated alumni group. The conference focussed on this fraught moment in higher education, with threats posed by both left and right and by the federal government.
August 29, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Big news! PFS now has over 10,000 subscribers, representing 14% of the undergraduate alumni population.
“Resist vs. Reform” is this month’s Special Feature: President Christopher Eisgruber ‘83 was in the spotlight, forcefully defending his leadership role in the now publicly acrimonious divide. Some university presidents, including Eisgruber, urge their colleagues to present a united front against the Trump administration and refuse to admit a need to reform longstanding problems. The opposing camp, led by Chancellors Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt University and Andrew D. Martin of Washington University St. Louis, argues that “de-wokification” reform from within is the only way to resolve what is needed to restore public confidence in elite higher education.
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.
