Calvin Kenjiro Grover and Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: More than a year ago, pro-Palestine protesters concluded a three week-long sit-in with an ominous message: “See you at Reunions.”
While the subsequent disruptions at that year’s Reunions and Commencement were far less dramatic than the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ they were, for Princeton, still substantial: blood-colored dye in the SPIA fountain, a loud walkout at a speech by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, and even an attempt to block the P-Rade.
Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is true
Excerpt: This article in The Atlantic by Frank Foer, former editor of The New Republic (and who attended Columbia) gives a thorough and excellent summary of the history of antisemitic protests at the school. You can probably access it for free by clicking on the headline below, or you can find the article archived here. It’s well worth reading.
Lexi Lona Cochrane
The Hill
Excerpt: President Trump said Tuesday that he will seek to block the federal funding for colleges and universities “that allow illegal protests” on their campuses.
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post, though he did not specify an enforcement mechanism.
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.
Can faculty lead the reform of higher education from the inside — and if so, who checks whom?
Oversized inflatable beach balls get bounced out on college campuses by student organizations that invite everyone to write on the “speech ball.” Students scrawl political slogans, insults, and provocative symbols. On some campuses, it might be a speech wall or a boulder. In all these cases, the idea, we’re told, is to exercise free expression. But what actually happens is a spectacle of empty rhetoric, where showboating and shock masquerade as meaningful discourse and campuses become stages for provocative performances rather than spaces for genuine intellectual exchange.
Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The University is investigating the disruption of a speaker event on Monday with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 wrote to The Daily Princetonian on Tuesday. Eisgruber also said that he had personally apologized to Bennett and said he was “appalled at reports of antisemitic language” outside the event.
Eisgruber’s statement followed a letter written by Danielle Shapiro ’25 and Maximillian Meyer ’27, the respective presidents of pro-Israel student groups B’Artzeinu Princeton and Princeton Tigers for Israel. The letter accused protesters of antisemitism, asking Eisgruber to implement a campus-wide mask ban and dissolve Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The letter also called on Eisgruber to issue a public apology to Bennett and initiate disciplinary action against the protesters.
The debate over free speech on campus is usually framed as a persuasion problem: if only more students believed in free expression, the culture would protect it. A new study in Science Advances, by researchers at Stanford, Penn, Columbia, and the University of Colorado, suggests the problem runs deeper.
Harvard University leaders have been soliciting wealthy donors for $10 million contributions to fund endowed professorships with the stated goal of expanding “viewpoint diversity” on campus.
Pardon me for finding this hypocritical. Over the past year, the University has systematically curtailed, suspended, or restructured every program with a serious focus on studying Palestinian rights and raising up Palestinian voices targeted by the Trump administration’s April 11 demands. It’s abundantly clear that some views are not welcome on this campus.
Karin Fischer
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security set up a special unit to scrutinize international student and scholar activists for possible violations of visa or immigration law, pulling analysts from investigations in areas such as counterterrorism and cyberterrorism to handle the workload.
Akela Lacy
The Intercept
Excerpt: Harvard Divinity School broke precedent by refusing to publish a video of its commencement speech after a speaker went off-script to call attention to the perilous conditions in Gaza, The Intercept has learned.
Ana Ley
New York Times
Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, 30, emerged as a public face of students opposed to the war, leading demonstrations and granting interviews. He delivered a message that his side viewed as measured and responsible but that has been branded by some, including the Trump administration, as antisemitic.
Over the weekend, Mr. Khalil was at the center of the news again. He was arrested by federal immigration officials in a drastic escalation of President Trump’s crackdown against what he has called antisemitic campus activity. Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, had been living in Columbia’s student housing when he was detained and then transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La.
The Manhattan Institute offers a simple proposal: state legislatures should expand oversight of their public universities. With powers clarified by lawmakers and a new mandate to exercise their existing powers, university board members can act as a counterweight to the excesses of university faculty and administrators—specifically, through greater involvement in the hiring of administrators, the approval of faculty lines, and the creation of core curricula.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her legal team have dropped their appeal of a federal court ruling that blocked the department from requiring colleges to eradicate all race-based curriculum, financial aid and student services or lose federal funding.
The motion to dismiss was jointly approved by both parties in the case Wednesday, ending a nearly yearlong court battle over the department’s Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter that declared race-based programming and policies illegal. If institutions didn’t comply within two weeks, department officials threatened to open investigations and rescind federal funding.
Garrett Gravley
FIRE
Imagine wearing an “I Voted” sticker to class and having the school investigate you for it. Or handing out pocket editions of the Constitution on campus for Constitution Day, only for your school to deem this disruptive.
On Nov. 7, individuals identifying with Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine left chalkboard messages around campus while classes were out of session. These messages read, “Trinity is suppressing freedom of assembly,” “Disclose Divest Protest,” “Trinity Invests in Genocide,” “You are on stolen land,” and “Free Palestine.” That evening, Trinity President Daniel Lugo emailed the campus community, announcing an investigation of the messages for disruption, intimidation, and harassment.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: If America’s colleges could earn report cards for free speech friendliness, most would deserve an “F”— and conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship.
Len Gutkin
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, has fiercely defended DEI initiatives in the face of pressure to disavow them from the Trump administration. But in his forthcoming book, Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, he recommends that colleges jettison at least one such initiative, namely “politically loaded practices like mandatory diversity statements for job candidates.”
Given that Eisgruber has accused other college leaders, as The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch put it, “of carrying water for the Trump administration,” his concession on diversity statements matters. If even the Ivy League’s biggest defender of the status quo ante Trump has turned against diversity statements, it seems likely that they’re on the way out.
Robert Manzer
AEI
Excerpt: Whatever their political persuasion, most observers of American higher education now agree that the real or apparent politicization of universities has become a major problem. Accreditors, the member most responsible for academic quality in the higher education regulatory triad, should be at the forefront, helping universities confront this problem.
Accreditation can most effectively address universities’ politicization by strengthening faculty governance. Faculty play a central role in shaping academic life, and their authority over curricula and standards is well established by tradition and regulation.
Nathan Honeycutt
FIRE
Excerpt: Supporters claim that requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in job applications can help foster those values. But critics say it does just the opposite. Findings from a new study I conducted supports the latter position, and they come just as schools are backing away from DEI.
The University of California said last week it will stop requiring standalone DEI statements in faculty hiring. The Chronicle of Higher Education has tracked the dismantling of DEI efforts at colleges, including the 10 states passing legislation to restrict the use of DEI statements on campuses.
Vimal Patel
New York Times
Excerpt: The University of California said on Wednesday that it would stop requiring the use of diversity statements in hiring, a practice praised by some who said it made campuses more inclusive but criticized by others who said it did the opposite.
