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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
On Sunday, May 24, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) hosted a breakfast at the Nassau Inn — and despite dreary skies outside, the energy inside couldn't have been brighter. About 70 alumni, current students and other free speech supporters turned out for what proved to be an engaging and inspiring morning.
PFS leadership set the stage with organizational updates from Co-founder Ed Yingling '70, President & CEO Todd Rulon-Miller '73, and Executive Director Angela Smith — including the exciting news that PFS has grown to over 26,000 email subscribers (20,000 of whom are Princeton alumni). This represents remarkable growth from just 1,400 two years ago, showing a momentum that was on full display during this packed event.
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.
