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Martin Di Caro
Washington Times

Excerpt: The uproar over free expression and antisemitism on college campuses is evoking a controversy from the late 1970s that left a lasting mark on First Amendment case law and provided an enduring lesson on the importance of free speech in a democratic society.

In this episode, Nico Perrino of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reflects on why Skokie matters at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Mr. Perrino co-directed the documentary Mighty Ira about Ira Glasser, who led the ACLU for 23 years after the intense backlash over its role in the Skokie case.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: American University administrators have banned all indoor protests in a move they say is intended to promote inclusivity and signal a clear intolerance of antisemitism on campus.  

Sylvia Burwell, the university’s president, said in a Jan. 25 letter to the campus that the decision was made in response to “recent events and incidents on campus [that] have made Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” The protest ban comes on the heels of a complaint filed by multiple Jewish advocacy groups to the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, asserting that the Washington, D.C., institution is a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students.

Leslie Spencer ‘79
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: On Jan. 18, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 released his “State of the University” letter entitled “Excellence, Inclusivity, and Free Speech.” The core of his remarks defended the course that Princeton has steered in pursuit of excellence and ever-increasing inclusivity through many decades and into these turbulent times.

He added a telling admission: “Promoting both free speech and inclusivity is a challenging task. There are, to be sure, times when we or others will make mistakes. When we do, we should strive to correct them and become better.” Was Eisbruber hinting at mistakes Princeton has made and a desire to find ways to have honest conversations about how to get this right?

Signed by Alex Morey and James Pasch
Letter from FIRE and ADL

Excerpt: FIRE and the Anti-Defamation League write to express our collective concern about Princeton University’s improper use of no-contact orders to censor students.

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, contentious debates on the conflict have dominated campus discourse. Yet Princeton is stifling these discussions and newsgathering by its student press, by permitting students who dislike certain speech to be granted no-communication or no-contact orders against other students. While no-contact protocols are important tools to keep students safe from properly defined discriminatory harassment, and threatening, intimidating, or assaultive conduct, Princeton appears to be granting these orders for any student who requests one, so long as minimal procedural prerequisites are satisfied.

Elisabeth Stewart
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Last Thursday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) addressed a letter to President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 accusing Princeton University community members of leveraging no-contact and no-communication orders (NCOs) to “censor student journalists.”

The letter from the ADL and FIRE made an explicit connection between the issue of NCOs and the campus conversation surrounding the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

Ramesh Ponnuru
Public Discourse

Excerpt: I went to a nearby college in the early 1990s at a time when debates were raging about a phenomenon then called “political correctness.” An editorial cartoon at the time featured three left-wing professors expressing their outrage at the debate. As I recall it, one was saying, “There’s no such thing as political correctness!” “There’s no climate of intolerance here,” said another. The third added, “And anyone who says there is should be kicked off campus!”

Sharon Otterman
New York Times

Excerpt: Three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College in New York posted a statement on its departmental website in support of the Palestinian people. Below the statement, the professors posted links to academic work supporting their view that the struggle of Palestinians against “settler colonial war, occupation and apartheid” was also a feminist issue. Two days later, they found that section of the webpage had been removed, without warning, by Barnard administrators.

What happened next has sparked a crisis over academic freedom and free expression at Barnard at a time when the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to tense protests on American college campuses and heated discussions about what constitutes acceptable speech.

Lisa Tolin
PEN America

Excerpt: Amid its high-profile struggle around free speech on campus, Harvard University invited PEN America to convene a Free Speech Summit on Friday for 100 student leaders from Harvard and other universities.

The event kicked off with a lively keynote panel about free expression in higher education featuring PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, and University of Chicago Dean of the College John W. Boyer, moderated by Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana.

Anemona Hartocollis
New York Times

Excerpt: A Harvard task force on antisemitism has gotten off to a rocky start, with complaints that the professor chosen to help lead the panel had signed a letter that was critical of Israel, describing it as “under a regime of apartheid.”

The choice for co-chair of the task force, Derek J. Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard, was met with opposition from Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, and Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager whose relentless criticism of Dr. Gay helped bring about her downfall.

Carole Hooven
The Free Press

Excerpt: Since early December, the end of my 20-year career teaching at Harvard has been the subject of articles, op-eds, tweets from a billionaire, and even a congressional hearing. I have become a poster child for how the growing campus DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—bureaucracies strangle free speech. My ordeal has been used to illustrate the hypocrisy of the assertions by Harvard’s leaders that they honor the robust exchange of challenging ideas.

To be a central example of what has gone wrong in higher education feels surreal. If there is any silver lining to losing the career that I found so fulfilling, perhaps it’s that my story will help explain the fear that stalks campuses, a fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech.

Times Union
Barbara DeMille

Excerpt: When dealing in the arts of propaganda and thought control, you must always, first, dishonor the intellectuals. And in the insidious process of disgracing independent thought, those who think — and have the temerity to speak and publish what they think — will always be prime targets.

Faced with aggressive questioning from U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik in a congressional hearing last month, college presidents stumbled through answers about antisemitism on campus. Stefanik claims it as a vital victory to be rid of these instances of “deep institutional rot.” And what do the Republican congresswoman and her colleagues plan to do once they have cleansed our institutional rot?  Her North Star, Donald Trump, offers clues.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: The Atlantic is actually becoming a reasonable venue instead of a woke one.  Example in point: this article by podcaster and writer Josh Barro.  We’ve probably encountered most of his indictments before, but he explains why the problems with American universities is making most Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and independents—lose respect for the institutions. Click to read, or, if the article is paywalled,  you can find an archived version here.

Jennifer Kabbany
College Fix

Excerpt: A higher education watchdog group has filed a complaint with the organization that accredits Harvard University over campus leaders’ probe into plagiarism accusations against former President Claudine Gay.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni filed a 12-page complaint with the New England Commission of Higher Education that calls on the group to launch a probe into “Harvard’s apparent violation of its own established procedures in the investigation of the alleged plagiarism committed by Dr. Gay,” ACTA stated in a Jan. 12 news release.

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Colleges and universities would have to report annually the number of civil rights complaints they receive and how they addressed them under a new Senate bill introduced Thursday.

Sponsored by Dr. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican senator, and Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, the legislation would require colleges to give students information about how to file a complaint with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The bill is largely a response to the recent rise in reported antisemitic incidents on college campuses. But the lawmakers say they are seeking to support any students who experience violence or harassment on college campuses due to their heritage.

Matthew Wilson
National Review

Excerpt: As Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and other elite universities have lately languished in unwanted public attention, Princeton and its president, Christopher Eisgruber, have largely avoided the spotlight. While Penn president Liz Magill was forced from office soon after a disastrous congressional hearing on antisemitism on December 5 — with Harvard’s Claudine Gay following her out the door just last week -- Eisgruber remains, and Princeton has emerged more or less unscathed.

But the past several years at Princeton have been troubled — indeed, political controversies have plagued the university for nearly my entire time as a student.

Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Inbar is an eminent, influential, and highly cited researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University. There is no question that he is qualified. Anyone worth their salt doing work on political polarization knows Inbar's name. Inbar also jumped through all the hoops UCLA put up for the job, including submitting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement, which is currently all the rage in colleges and universities. He even shares the politics of the majority of the psychology department.

But on his podcast, Inbar had expressed relatively mild concerns over the ideological pressures that DEI statements impose and wondered aloud whether they do harm to diversity of thought. As a result of this petition—signed by only 66 students—UCLA did not hire Inbar. And he's not the only academic this has happened to. Far from it.

Heather Mac Donald
City Journal

Excerpt: MIT president Sally Kornbluth announced on Wednesday that the university would soon reveal its inaugural Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). If one wanted evidence of the disconnect between university culture and the outside world, Kornbluth’s announcement provides it.

Kornbluth exemplifies a rule of thumb: anyone in a university leadership position not affirmatively opposed to race politics supports antimeritocratic ideas. She also demonstrates just how blinding campus ideology is: her first instincts are to parrot local received wisdom about MIT’s being insufficiently “welcoming” to diversity and not yet being a place where “all feel that we belong,” in Kornbluth’s words.

Christofer Robles
The Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: To the political right, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is the beginning of the end. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board warns of DEI officers who “enforce ideological conformity.” Abigail Anthony ’23 claimed that DEI initiatives “divide, exclude, and ostracize students of all political affiliation.” The freedom of speech, some people argue, will be obliterated by DEI-obsessed bureaucrats.

But no one seems to be satisfied. While the right shames DEI for rejecting intolerance and correcting historic systems of oppression with perceived threats to free speech, many on the left, too, have turned against DEI. Rather than rejecting the right’s continued ridiculing of their initiatives or responding to progressives’ calls for a more revolutionary and effective DEI, Princeton has done neither.

John Tomasi
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” Instead of rising to the moment at a high-profile congressional hearing, Harvard president Claudine Gay ducked into a nearby legal hedge and crouched. The Economist put it kindly: “Sometimes you get the technicalities right but still flunk the test.” What test was flunked? The test of presidential leadership.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: The litany of college wokeness, and especially the harm it causes, is now being discussed by the mainstream media, including the Atlantic and the Washington Post. Here, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the most respected venue for discussing college affairs, published a long piece (ca. 6000 words) discussing how “a decade of ideological transformation”—and that means “wokeness”—is no longer off limits to criticism.

Ethan Bueno de Mesquita
Boston Review

Excerpt: While intolerance is a matter of culture, policy and administrative actions play a role in creating the culture. When university leaders who enthusiastically made statements about Black Lives Matter, knowing that such statements would likely discourage free expression of dissenting views on related issues, later assert a deep commitment to free expression concerning genocide of the Jews, they appear to be cynically picking and choosing their principles to suit short-run exigencies.

In this sense, university leaders are lying in a bed of their own making. I suspect at this point many wish they could give something like my First Amendment answer but cannot without facing charges of hypocrisy. One important question, then, is how they might get from here to there.

Bill Hewitt ’74 (author of Tiger Roars)
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Given President Eisgruber’s statement about his recent remarks at the CPUC, readers might conclude that Dr. Pangloss is alive and well at Princeton, and then give the matter no further thought. But President Eisgruber’s statements warrant careful evaluation.

I, too, am a supporter of freedom of speech at Princeton. The University’s Statement on Freedom of Expression explicitly recognizes, however, the existence and need for important limits as to what, when, where, and how speech can be conducted. President Eisgruber should provide the University community explication of how his administration identifies and enforces these limits. The problem of harassment would be a good place to start.

Campus Reform

In a Dec. 13 letter, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber echoed the sentiments expressed by Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, and since-resigned University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill during their disastrous congressional testimonies, in which all three refused to state that “calling for the genocide of Jews” is unequivocally unacceptable on their campuses. The three university leaders asserted that the acceptability of such calls for violence would depend on context, with appeals to the value of free expression.

Ben Sasse
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (originally printed in The Atlantic).

Excerpt: In the spring of 1994, the top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies testified under oath before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Nearly 30 years later, Americans remember their laughable claims, their callous indifference, their lawyerly inability to speak plainly, and the general sense that they did not regard themselves as part of a shared American community. Those pampered executives, behaving with such Olympian detachment, put the pejorative big in Big Tobacco.

Last week, something similar happened. Thirty years from now, Americans will likely recall a witness table of presidents—representing not top corporations in one single sector, but the nation’s most powerful educational institutions—refusing to speak plainly, defiantly rejecting any sense that they are part of a “we,” and exhibiting smug moralistic certainty even as they embraced bizarrely immoral positions about anti-Semitism and genocide.

James Kirchick
New York Times

Excerpt: The tentative, lawyerly answers given last week by three university presidents at a House committee hearing investigating the state of antisemitism on America’s college campuses have generated widespread revulsion across the partisan divide. When none of the presidents — representing Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — could muster a straightforward reply to the question from Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” amounted to “bullying or harassment,” many prominent Democrats joined Republicans in denouncing the testimony.

But two wrongs don’t make a right. If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalize various forms of bigotry, the solution is not to expand the university’s power to punish expression. It’s to abolish speech codes entirely.

Danielle Allen
Washington Post

Excerpt: Last week Congress put squarely on the table the question of whether the health of our democracy requires renovation of our colleges and universities. I believe the answer to that question is “Yes.”

Important and clarifying as that moment was, the opening statement of Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) gave the hearing a broader frame. Foxx questioned the health of universities generally and called attention to “a grave danger inherent in assenting to the race-based ideology of the radical left,” arguing that we are at “an inflection point” requiring a reshaping of “the future for all of academia.” The chairwoman’s theme was not antisemitism alone but whether the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts of college campuses have been a wrong turn for America’s intellectual culture.

Niall Ferguson
The Free Press

Excerpt: Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich. A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it.

Naomi Schaefer Riley
Commentary

Excerpt: In the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill declined to comment because, she said, she didn’t think it was the role of college administrators to express an official view on controversial political issues. And she noted that “as a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission.”

Thanks to some vocal donors who are closing their wallets and some employers who want nothing to do with these students once they graduate, those administrators who have spent the past decade making life uncomfortable or worse for those with views that do not conform to the latest campus fashion are getting a taste of their own medicine. This is not the resolution that Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott favor. In their new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, they worry that “for some on the right, a false sense has arisen that the way out of Cancel Culture is More Cancel Culture.”

Megan Zahneis
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: A day after M. Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, testified at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, the state’s Democratic governor said she had “failed” to “speak and act with moral clarity” and made an implicit call for her removal.

by Bill Hewitt ‘74

A recent Princetonians for Free Speech opinion essay finds the outlook at Princeton “bleak for the [John Witherspoon] statue, for the memory of Witherspoon, and perhaps also that of other founders of the United States.” But this controversy has far more at stake for Princeton.
Consider four matters of great concern. They go to whether decision-makers at the University are transparent and responsive. Moreover, these matters go to whether these leaders further Princeton’s missions to pursue truth and transmit knowledge to society.

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Delegates to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges may vote on Tuesday to require the examination of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as a condition of accreditation, according to Belle Wheelan, the group’s president.

If that vote is successful, it could set up a clash with state politicians who describe DEI efforts as violating legal bans on racial preferences and a way to enforce liberal groupthink on college campuses.

Julian Hartman-Sigall
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Earlier this month, in advance of a number of state-wide elections, Princeton political groups took part in canvassing and outreach efforts to get out the vote. Notably absent from these groups — which included the College Democrats, the Princeton chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America — was the College Republicans, which, unlike its left-leaning counterpart, did not organize any programming.

The group has historically had difficulty sustaining consistent activity levels, being reliant on strong personalities that occasionally cycle through the University to revive it at recurring nadirs on a campus that has a strong conservative ecosystem.

Natasha Lennard
The Intercept

Excerpt: A week after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, by which time Israel’s all-out assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had killed thousands of civilians, the online editors of the prestigious Harvard Law Review reached out to Rabea Eghbariah.

Eghbariah submitted a draft of a 2,000-word essay by early November. He argued that Israel’s assault on Gaza should be evaluated within and beyond the “legal framework” of “genocide.” In line with the Law Review’s standard procedures, the piece was solicited, commissioned, contracted, submitted, edited, fact checked, copy edited, and approved by the relevant editors. Yet it will never be published with the Harvard Law Review.

Joseph Goldstein
New York Times

Excerpt: A prominent doctor is suing NYU Langone Health after he was fired as director of its cancer center over his social media postings about the Israel-Hamas war. The lawsuit could propel NYU Langone — a major New York hospital — into the center of a national debate over how much power private institutions have to fire employees over their online postings.

Laws protecting employees from being fired for what they say or do outside of the office vary widely by state. In New York, the law is somewhat unclear, lawyers say. But as tensions and protests escalate over the violence in the Middle East, the issue of what sort of speech is protected or acceptable has roiled American businesses and campuses.

Olivia Sanchez and Lia Opperman
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday, Nov. 16 that it is launching an investigation into University research fellow Seyed Hossein Mousavian, amid allegations that Mousavian is using his position to advance the interests of Iran. 12 Republican committee members wrote a letter to University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 with 10 questions to aid their investigation. No Democratic committee members signed the letter.

Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Academics are losing the support of the public. We read it in newspapers, we see it in surveys, we feel it in our bones. There are many dimensions to this problem. One is the claim that colleges restrict speech and lack intellectual diversity.

Whether and by whom free speech is under threat on campuses are hotly debated questions. Less commonly examined, however, are the assumptions that free speech is a cardinal virtue of higher education, and that colleges should aspire to a diversity of opinions. Are these goals in their own right, as college administrators often seem to think, or means for achieving something else altogether?

Nell Gluckman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: When Indiana’s abortion ban took effect, in the fall of 2022, Tamara Kay, a tenured professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, tweeted that she was prepared to help students get access to health care. She hung a sign on her office door with her personal email address and a similar message.

About a month later, The Irish Rover, a student publication that says its mission is to uphold Notre Dame’s Roman Catholic identity, published an article about Kay titled “Keough School Professor Offers Abortion Access to Students.” A subhead read: “Abortion assistance offered to students despite IN law, ND policy.” In the days before the Rover article appeared, a business-school professor texted a student reporter that “there needs to be a coordinated assault on the Tamara Kay issue.”

Michael Arria
Mondoweiss

Excerpt: Columbia University says its suspending two campus Palestine groups.

In a statement posted on the school’s website Senior Executive Vice President of the University and Chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety Gerald Rosberg said the university is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) for the remainder of the fall term. The event that Rosberg referenced was a peaceful walkout and subsequent art installation. It was carried out as a part of a national call to action in response to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. So far over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Bari Weiss
The Free Press

Excerpt: DEI is not about the words it uses as camouflage. DEI is about arrogating power.

And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism. It does not believe that America is a good country—at least no better than China or Iran. It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress; it is explicitly anti-growth. It claims to promote “equity,” but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.

An ideology that pathologizes these fundamental human virtues is one that seeks to undermine what makes America exceptional. It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.

George F. Will
National Review

Excerpt:  The First Amendment was produced by a Princetonian, Princeton’s first graduate student, James Madison. So, it is altogether fitting and proper that, propelled by Princetonians for Free Speech, this university can spearhead a nationwide rebirth of freedom — freedom of speech, the freedom that matters most, because all others depend on it.

Bari Weiss
The Free Press

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, it has been hard to miss the explosion of antisemitic hate that has gripped college campuses across the country. At Cornell, a student posted a call “to follow [Jews] home and slit their throats,” and a professor said the terror attack “energized” and “exhilarated” him. At Harvard, a mob of students besieged an Israeli student, surrounding him as they bellowed “shame, shame, shame.” At dozens of other campuses, students gathered to celebrate Hamas. 

PEN America

Excerpt: A wave of antisemitic rhetoric, harassment, threats, vandalism and violence has rocked campuses across the U.S. as the Israel-Hamas war escalates. At Cornell University, law enforcement was called in to investigate what the university president called “a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence” against the campus’s Jewish community that forced students into lockdown. Drexel University, a women’s restroom was reportedly defaced with antisemitic graffiti and a Jewish student’s dormitory door was set on fire. At Bates College, a swastika was drawn in a public restroom and at American University a swastika and Nazi slogan were graffitied in a student dorm.

By Amaney Jamal and Keren Yarhi-Milo
New York Times

The conflict in Israel and Palestine has thrown American campuses and society into turmoil.

We are both deans of public policy schools. One of us comes from a Palestinian family displaced by war. The other served in Israeli military intelligence before a long career in academia. Our life stories converged when we were colleagues and friends for 10 years on the faculty of Princeton University. Notwithstanding our different backgrounds, we are both alarmed by the climate on campuses and the polarizing and dehumanizing language visible throughout society.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: The government cannot force public colleges to derecognize Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. That's just what State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, reportedly at the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trying to do.

There’s no indication from the chancellor’s letter that any action from Florida’s Students for Justice in Palestine groups went beyond expression fully protected by the First Amendment. This directive is a dangerous — and unconstitutional — threat to free speech. If it goes unchallenged, no one’s political beliefs will be safe from government suppression.

Sandeep Mangat
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Oct. 18, a truck with the message “DEAN JAMAL: WHY DO YOU CODDLE ANTISEMITISM” appeared on Nassau Street with photos of the recent terrorist attack in southern Israel. The truck circulated in town for three days during fall break, targeting Amaney Jamal, Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). The group in question has since apologized to Jamal, noting a previous statement she issued condemning Hamas.

The truck was sent by Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), a group which claims to “counter antisemitism and the demonization of Israel on college and university campuses across the nation.”

Zach Kessel
National Review

Excerpt: Wednesday, October 25, was a national walk-out day ostensibly in support of the Palestinian cause, promoted by activist groups and even some professors who offered extra credit in exchange for participation in the rallies. Just as I did with horrific student-group statements in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, I’ve asked students on campuses across the country to send me footage of what happened at their universities. I will continue to update this post as I receive more.

By Khoa Sands ‘26
Princetonians for Free Speech

Excerpt: The rights of free expression enshrined in the First Amendment are often considered the most foundational freedoms in American society. However, while free expression in the public sphere is constitutionally guaranteed, free expression within private universities is not similarly protected. Academic freedom cannot be properly understood as a mere extension of the First Amendment. Rather, academic freedom is justified by the unique mission of the university: the pursuit of truth.