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Edward Waters U Shuts Down Faculty Union

November 30, 2022

by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

The university cited “core values and Christian tenets.” The Supreme Court has indeed ruled that private and religious college need not recognize unions, but some colleges do recognize them anyway.

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Nobel Prize Winner Maria Ressa Fights For Press Freedom

November 25, 2022

by Emily Bobrow, The Wall Street Journal

When the Philippine investigative journalist Maria Ressa won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, the committee called her “a fearless defender of freedom of expression” who “exposed the abuse of power, use of violence and increasing authoritarianism” of Rodrigo Duterte,

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Free speech coordinators monitor as students hold ‘die-in’ outside BP conference

May 08, 2023

by Miriam Waldvogel and Jeannie Kim, Daily Princetonian

At a conference on Friday, May 5, executives from oil and gas companies British Petroleum (BP) and members of the University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), an academic research program within the High Meadows Environmental Institute, were met the sight of students lying on the Julius Romo Rabinowitz (JRR) atrium floor with their mouths duct-taped and eyes closed.

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Eisgruber lauds University's free speech climate, pitches free speech to progressives in student event

May 03, 2023

by Janny Eng, Daily Princetonian

President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 is “very proud” of University students’ commitment to free speech, he said at an event hosted on Saturday by the Princeton Progressive Law Society.

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AAUP accuses Emporia State of flouting academic freedom with faculty layoffs

April 25, 2023

by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Higher Ed Dive

The nation’s leading faculty group has accused Emporia State University of imperiling academic freedom when it laid off at least 30 professors last year over financial concerns.

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Whitworth student government denies TPUSA request to invite Chinese dissident to campus citing ‘anti-woke’ tweets

April 03, 2023

by Sabrina Conza, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

In the latest example of students shutting down views they disagree with on campus, Whitworth University’s student government denied the campus Turning Point USA chapter’s request to invite Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet to campus because of her criticism of “woke culture.”

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THE PRINCETON & SLAVERY PROJECT MISLEADS ON WITHERSPOON; IT SHOULD BE CHALLENGED

April 25, 2023

PFS Editorial

Much of the debate over the possible removal of the statue of John Witherspoon from the Princeton campus is based on information about Witherspoon’s involvement with slavery and the debate over abolition contained in the University’s Princeton & Slavery Project (the Project).

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Commentary: Thoughts on the “Heckler’s Veto”

April 14, 2023

by Hank Reichman, Academe Blog

Permitting speakers to be shouted down, allowing demonstrators to block access to speeches, or failing to provide sufficient security to ensure that a speech will be delivered...

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Commentary: The Moral Center Is Fighting Back on Elite College Campuses

April 16, 2023

by David French, The New York Times

The extremist attacks on free speech (from right and left) degrade American democracy, and those attacks are especially acute on college campuses, whether they come from angry left-wing students who shout down conservative speakers or from vengeful right-wing legislators.

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Editorial: "McCarthyism at the Daily Princetonian"

February 07, 2021

McCarthyism: “The use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.” American Heritage Dictionary.

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A New Attack on Free Speech Is Insipid as Well as Vicious

February 17, 2021

The Daily Princetonian launched another lengthy McCarthyist attack on a Princeton professor on February 11, exactly one week after its original attack article on him...

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An Important Day for Free Speech and Academic Freedom

March 12, 2021

Monday, March 8, was an important day for free speech and academic freedom on campuses across the United States.  On that day, the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) was officially launched,

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The Academic Freedom Podcast with Jonathan Rauch

August 24, 2021

by Keith Whittington, Reason

The Academic Freedom Alliance recently released the third episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast. In that episode, I spoke with Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch.

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PRINCETON MUST ACT ON ITS TERRIBLE FREE SPEECH RANKING

September 23, 2021

PFS Editorial

Two recent developments show free speech is in serious trouble at Princeton. This week, the “2021 College Free Speech Ranking,” published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), placed Princeton dead last in the Ivy League on free speech and...

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Letter from Princeton Open Campus Coalition to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber

November 24, 2021

Dear President Eisgruber:

We, the undersigned students, write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), a group of undergraduates committed to the philosophy that a university cannot fulfill its mission without...

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How Princeton Eviscerated Its Free Speech Rule and Covered It Up

March 05, 2022

By Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor Jr

Originally published in Real Clear Politics

In July 2020, a Princeton University professor, Joshua Katz, wrote an article containing provocative language that generated controversy on campus. 

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WILL PRINCETON FLUNK ORIENTATION – AGAIN?

July 22, 2022

Editorial by Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Founders of Princetonians for Free Speech

It has been a very bad year for Princeton on free speech. Its reputation on this critical issue is in tatters. 

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Freshman Orientation: A Welcome Change on Free Speech

September 06, 2022

We have been quite critical of Princeton's orientation a year ago, which contained not one word about Princeton's robust free speech rule and in fact contained a section on racism at Princeton that suggested free speech is a tool for racists. We will not revisit those criticisms here.

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Commentary: Wokeness in all its self-flattering moral vanity comes for a statue at Princeton

January 06, 2023

by George F. Will

Squalls of indignation gust across campuses so frequently that they seem merely performative — synthetic, perfunctory, uninteresting. Princeton’s current contretemps, however, fascinatingly illustrates how wokeness, which lacks limiting principles, limits opposition to itself. 

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Commentary: Deceitful Statistics Prop up the Princeton Free Speech Panic

January 18, 2023

by Eleanor Clemans-Cope, The Daily Princetonian

George F. Will GS ’68 recently took to the pages of the Washington Post, where he is a regular columnist, to announce to the world that wokeness at Princeton is destroying free speech.

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Of Dissent and its Discontents: Beloved Community, the Black Justice League, and the Curious Case of Professor Joshua Katz

June 10, 2022

By Adam Gussow ’79 *00

[T]hat brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part!

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Commentary: The Universalism of Mathematics and its detractors

May 08, 2023

By Sergiu Klainerman (Higgins professor of mathematics at Princeton), Heterodox STEM, Substack

The scientific enterprise in United States is being seriously challenged by powerful anti-scientific trends. Postmodern relativism, under the pretense of anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-colonialism, anti-ableism... is undermining the very foundations of science as a search for truth.

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Texas guts ‘woke civics’. Now kids can’t engage in a key democratic process

May 01, 2023

by Asher Lehrer-Small, The Guardian

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.

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8 takeaways from the 2023 senior survey

April 24, 2023

by Laura Robertson, Daily Princetonian

Last year, The Daily Princetonian launched the Senior Survey, asking a range of questions of the senior class and breaking it down in over 200 ways. Today, the ‘Prince’ released its second senior survey.

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At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?

April 08, 2023

Stanford Law School was under extraordinary pressure. For nearly two weeks, there had been mounting anger over the treatment of a conservative federal judge, whose talk had been disrupted by student hecklers.

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Texas lawmakers move forward with proposed bans on faculty tenure, diversity offices in public colleges

April 11, 2023

This month, Texas Senate Republicans advanced bills that would prohibit tenure and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices. The Senate’s Committee on Education approved the anti-tenure bill last week 9-3, with one lawmaker absent, while its Subcommittee on Higher Education moved the diversity office legislation to the full committee.

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Shouting Down Speakers Who Offend

April 13, 2023

by Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed

Students at the State University of New York at Albany don’t view their recent protest of Ian Haworth, a conservative writer and podcaster who has made provocative statements about transgender people, as a disruption of his speaking engagement on campus.

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‘How to Stand Up to a Dictator’ by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Ressa is the Class of 2027 Pre-read

April 06, 2023

by Denise Valenti, Office of Communications

Maria Ressa, Class of 1986, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her efforts to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines.

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PFS Podcast: Jonathan Rauch on his acclaimed new book

September 03, 2021

Below is a link to our first podcast, a 52-minute interview of Jonathan Rauch, a Brookings scholar and journalist who is one of America’s sharpest and most original thinkers, by Stuart Taylor Jr., president of Princetonians for Free Speech. 

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Florida’s Public-University Board Approves Firing Poorly Performing Tenured Professors

March 29, 2023

The governing board overseeing Florida’s public universities on Wednesday approved a post-tenure-review process that allows for poorly performing professors to be fired.

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Princeton faculty, students, and alumni join together to support free speech

September 09, 2022

For the first time on a college campus, faculty, students, and alumni have created an organization to promote and defend free speech and academic freedom on their campus.

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Princeton University Marks Constitution Day With Event Deeming Founding Document ‘A Form of Geopolitical Gaslighting’

September 29, 2022

Princeton University celebrated Constitution Day in mid-September with an event featuring a panel of academics who spent 90 minutes deriding the country’s founding document as "a tool of geopolitical gaslighting" that "furthers a racial crisis and a democratic crisis."

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The Culture of the Canceled

October 15, 2022

On Monday, May 23, 2022, I went to bed around 11 p.m. and slept more soundly than I had in nearly two years. My easy rest may seem surprising. That day, Princeton University had fired me. . . 

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A Page of History: From the March 7, 2018 issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly

March 07, 2018

While some guest speakers raise eyebrows on campus, Walter Hickel, President Richard Nixon’s first secretary of the interior, raised a ruckus. Indeed, the repercussions of his visit were felt for weeks — not because of anything he said but because of the way he was received March 5, 1970.

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COMMENTS OF PRINCETONIANS FOR FREE SPEECH ON THE PROPOSAL TO REMOVE THE STATUE OF JOHN WITHERSPOON

December 19, 2022

This is the submission sent by PFS to Princeton on the proposal to remove the statue of John Witherspoon currently being considered by the University. 

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Davidson College Affirms Free Speech

March 08, 2023

Last week, faculty at Davidson College affirmed their commitment to free expression on campus by approving their own version of the Chicago Principles. It’s a step that the pro-free-speech organization Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse (DFTD) has been promoting for five years and a major free-speech milestone for the college.

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A Fuller Measure of Witherspoon on Slavery

January 26, 2023

by Kevin DeYoung, PrincetoniansForFreeSpeech.org

As of the online publication of this essay, Princeton University is still deciding what to do with Witherspoon...

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Statehouses’ Targeting of Diversity and Tenure Is Starting to Scare Away Faculty Job Candidates

May 05, 2023

by  Megan Zahneis, Chronicle of Higher Education

Recently proposed and passed legislation that targets tenure and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is having a chilling effect on the recruitment of faculty members and administrators in Florida and Texas, where some of the highest profile laws and bills of that type have been undertaken.

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Commentary: Presidents Are Changing Their Tune on Free Speech

May 03, 2023

by David Jesse,  Chronicle of Higher Education 

The tales are swapped in conference-hotel hallways or over quiet dinners: controversial speakers attracting rowdy protests, professors drawing fire for an offhand comment during a lecture and then posted online, legislators trying to codify what can and can’t be taught in classrooms.

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We should all be ashamed of what the Senior Survey shows

April 30, 2023

by Matthew Wilson '24, Daily Princetonian

 

On April 22, the Daily Princetonian released the results of its highly anticipated annual Senior Survey. This year’s Senior Survey simply captures a snapshot of Princeton’s marred free speech culture. Those looking for the cause of the decay can find some answers in the many institutional failures that have taken place during my three years here: an accomplished professor’s highly politicized firing

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UCLA lacks intellectual tolerance, but these alumni are banding together to fix it

April 26, 2023

by Jessica Wills, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

During his years in the University of California system at both Berkeley and Los Angeles, Dominic Manser was disturbed by the student body’s penchant for disruptive conduct.  

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‘Shame on You’: Over Fiery Protests, Florida’s New College Trustees Deny 5 Tenure Bids

April 26, 2023

by Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education

The meeting of New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday afternoon began with a full hour of fierce criticism from members of the community, as dozens of professors, students, and parents lambasted what they view as a hostile takeover of the institution by a Republican governor with likely presidential ambitions.

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Commentary: Ronen Shoval’s position as a lecturer at Princeton is deeply concerning

April 25, 2023

by Eldar Shafir and Uri Hasson, Daily Princetonian

We write this to alert faculty, students, and the administration of the appointment of Ronen Shoval as Research Scholar and Lecturer in Politics, and to invite us to reflect on who we want to appoint to teach our students.

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Commentary: “Burn the College’s Buildings to the Ground”

April 13, 2023

Aaron Hillegass attended New College of Florida as an undergraduate, had a successful career as a software engineer, and returned to the school this January to teach in its new data science program. 

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Class of ’27: choose scholarship, not dogmatism

April 03, 2023

by Matthew Wilson & Mile McKnight

Welcome to Princeton! This fall, if you so choose, you will walk through FitzRandolph Gate and join an intellectually vibrant community united by a desire to pursue knowledge, test ideas, and be challenged. 

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Commentary: New faculty-led organization at Harvard will defend academic freedom

April 12, 2023

by Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras, Boston Globe

We have joined with 50 colleagues to create a new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. It’s not about us. For many years we have each expressed strong and often unorthodox opinions with complete freedom and with the support, indeed warm encouragement, of our colleagues, deans, and presidents.

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