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September 29, 2023
To Princetonians for Free Speech subscribers, members and friends,
Welcome to our PFS Monthly Newsletter! Here you will find our most important features and updates, articles you don’t want to miss, and more. Please let us know what you think HERE.
FIRE’s 2024 Rankings
FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings were recently announced, and received much media attention. The survey interviewed over 55,000 students from a larger-than-ever pool of 254 US colleges and universities. Princeton ranked a dismal 187, showing no clear improvement from last year’s ranking. See the full 2024 rankings HERE. And details of the Princeton survey including student comments HERE.
Some Princeton highlights:
Mitch Daniels ’71 is speaking on October 24 at 5pm – 6:30pm, in the Senate Chamber of Whig Hall. Former Governor of Indiana and former President of Purdue University, Daniels will speak on the role that tomorrow's leaders, including Princeton students, might play in resetting the stage for national success. The event is sponsored by Princeton’s Whig-Clio with financial support from Princetonians for Free Speech. A video will be posted to YouTube not long after the event.
“I believe that the great research universities are the finest ornaments of Western civilization. …Their magnificent legacy can, however, be squandered in a generation, destroyed from within, not by outside forces.”
That was the most trenchant passage of a powerful September 13 speech by eminent Washington Post syndicated columnist George F. Will *68 to nearly 200 people in the Friend Center. His title was “Consciousness as the Political Project: A 21st Century Echo of the 19th Century.” PFS and the James Madison Program Initiative on Free Thought and Inquiry hosted the event.
Watch the full event including an introduction by Princeton Professor Allen Guelzo HERE.
PFS Letter to Princeton Trustees
We have launched a major PFS initiative to make Princeton a leader in the promotion of free speech and academic freedom. See our September 18 letter to Princeton’s Board of Trustees HERE. We value your thoughts. Please let us know what you think HERE.
Anonymous Bias Reporting Software
PFS is collaborating with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), and with American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) to alert college students throughout the country to the potential dangers to free speech and due process of theAnonymous Bias Reporting Software (ABRS) in use by administrations of most colleges today, including Princeton.
On August 28, ACTA emailed over 100 college newspapers with information on this topic, including instructions for students to request copies of their own files per their rights under Federal law (FERPA). PFS will be working in coordination with student groups and others throughout the 2023-2024 academic year to raise awareness of how these massive record-keeping systems operate, how they can chill protected speech and thereby infringe on students’ rights, and how students can obtain their files and help to end the use of ABRS.
Have a look at Princeton senior Matthew Wilson’s alarming report on the problem: Princeton’s Bias Reporting System is Stifling Campus, that appeared in National Review earlier this year.
If any of you are students who wish to request to see your files, or if you are interested in volunteering to join PFS in our efforts to research how Princeton’s ABRS works or to share information you may have, or if you are alumni or friends with information about this major emerging story, you can contact us HERE.
Supreme Court is Asked to Rule on Campus Speech Codes at Virginia Tech
by Dan McLaughlin, National Review, September 25, 2023
Excerpt: One case ...[that] could intrigue the justices, is Speech First, Inc. v. Sands (No. 23-156), which challenges campus speech codes. The case comes from a divided panel decision of the Fourth Circuit, which rejected challenges to two Virginia Tech campus speech policies.
The Limits of Academic Freedom
by James Huffman, Academic Questions, Summer 2023
Excerpt: "The principle of academic freedom has long stood as the guarantor of the free and open inquiry requisite to the academic pursuit of truth and is widely understood to allow for no exceptions. But adherence to the principle does not preclude all limits on faculty conduct. Academic freedom does not require colleges and universities to tolerate bad teaching or incompetence. Nor should it protect professorial conduct that undermines open inquiry and pursuit of truth."
D.E.I. Statements Stir Debate on College Campuses
by Michael Powell, The New York Times, September 8, 2023
Excerpts: “Candidates who did not ‘look outstanding’ on diversity, the vice provost at U.C. Davis instructed search committees, could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a later round. …
“At Berkeley, a faculty committee rejected 75 percent of applicants in life sciences and environmental sciences and management purely on diversity statements, according to a new academic paper by Steven Brint, a professor of public policy at U.C. Riverside, and Komi Frey, a researcher for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has opposed diversity statements. …
“If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger, Vinod Aggarwal, a political science professor at the university, said in an interview. ‘This is compelled speech, plain and simple.’”
I Left Out the Full Truth to get Published in Nature, by Patrick T Brown, The Free Press, September 5 2023
“To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”
Princeton sophomore Ethan Hicks, a PFS Writing Fellow, jumped out of the gate this month with two important articles: George Will on How a “Magnificent Legacy can be Squandered” and Princeton Welcomes Class of 2027 with Free Speech Events
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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.
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.
