The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. For years, the core argument of Princetonians for Free Speech was treated by university administrators as a provocation rather than a diagnosis. The claim that American higher education had drifted from its foundational mission, that a culture of ideological conformity and administrative overreach had corroded the open inquiry that justifies the university’s privileged place in democratic life, was dismissed as politically motivated, answered with defensive boilerplate, or simply ignored. That era appears to be ending. No dramatic reversals have taken shape yet, but something significant is happening. The academy itself—the ivory tower that prides itself on being above and beyond the slings and arrows of the outside world—is beginning to acknowledge that the critics had, and have, a point.
As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.
They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities. To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen.
Last Friday, the following letter was sent to President Eisgruber from the Princetonians for Free Speech Executive Committee regarding further action after the protests and event disruption that occurred on April 7th in McCosh Hall, and preparatory measures for upcoming campus events:
A solid marriage lasts until…finances do us part?The marriage and family planning landscape are changing, partly due to the financial costs of raising children. At a discussion hosted by the James Madison Program in early March of 2026 titledMarriage, Kids, and the State: Can Government Help?, panelists informed attendees that research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that the U.S. birth rate sits at a low 1.6 births per woman, marriage and fertility rates are linked, and the median age of marriage is increasing for those who don’t opt out altogether.
Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, is the sort of highly selective institution that jockeys for the unofficial title of Harvard of the South. Recently, the university’s chancellor had a new idea: What if Vanderbilt was also in San Francisco? Maybe it could become the Harvard of the West too.
This new tactic, pioneered by Northeastern University a few years ago, is taking the satellite-campus concept to its logical extreme: the national-chain model of undergraduate education. If it works for Vanderbilt, other selective institutions are likely to follow.
If ever a case made plain the clash of values between freedom of speech and the desire of college administrators to compel everyone to support their “progressive” beliefs, Reges v. Cauce is it. This is an important First Amendment case, one in which the Martin Center joined in an amicus brief in support of a professor who was targeted with official retaliation because he spoke out against his university’s “land acknowledgement” policy and substituted his own views for the school’s.
What nerve!
Douglas Belkin
Wall Street Journal
Excerpt: President Trump has made an example of Ivy League universities, attacking, cajoling and fining them in brisk succession. There’s a notable exception: Yale University. In New Haven, Conn., the school’s conspicuous absence from the crosshairs has become a subject of intense campus speculation—among professors, students and even parents.
During a talk with moms and dads, university President Maurie McInnis was asked why Yale had been spared. She said there was no obvious answer, according to the Yale Daily News.
The Crimson Editorial Board,
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard just can’t stay out of the spotlight.
This time, Dunster House resident dean Gregory K. Davis recently came under fire after the right-wing website Yardreport published screenshots of years-old inflammatory social media posts and called for his removal.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said Friday that it issued a letter giving Harvard University 20 days to submit documents related to admissions that it says the university has been refusing to provide. Those documents are related to an investigation OCR opened in May regarding whether Harvard is “using racial stereotypes and preferences in undergraduate admissions,” according to the announcement.
“Despite OCR’s repeated requests for data, Harvard has refused to provide the requested information necessary for OCR to make a compliance determination,” the office continued, adding that the university will “face further enforcement action” if the information is not provided.
Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: More than 14,000 students, faculty, alumni, and members of the public signed a letter urging Harvard to reject any deal with the Trump administration that would sacrifice the University’s autonomy.
The letter was sent to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and the Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s highest governing body, on Wednesday. It warns that a settlement with the Trump administration could have a “chilling effect on the Harvard community and on all of higher education.”
Tyler Tone
FIRE
Excerpt: “A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning.” These were the words of my colleague Bob Corn-Revere upon hearing that Paramount Global had agreed to settle President Donald Trump’s 60 Minutes lawsuit — to the tune of $16 million.
Trump filed the lawsuit in November, demanding $10 billion over what he alleged was the “deceptive editing” of a 60 Minutes interview featuring then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The lawsuit claimed CBS’s “substantial news distortion” was calculated to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of last year’s election in her favor. But despite legal experts widely labeling the lawsuit baseless, Paramount opted to settle. Why?
Walter Olsen
The Unpopulist, Substack
Excerpt: Billing itself as the “Manhattan Statement,” the new manifesto was sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. (I was affiliated with the Institute for many years, through 2010; so far as I know I haven’t met the drafters of this document). One of its promoters has labeled it “a program of national reform.”
What is distinctive about the Manhattan Statement is not that it calls for reforming universities; others regularly call for that. In fact, many of its reforms, considered at a vague and aspirational enough level of abstraction, are neither new nor even particularly controversial. What stands out is by whom and by what means the manifesto proposes to impose the changes.
Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: A university president took the platform he was given at the annual convening of Heterodox Academy, a viewpoint-diversity group, to tell attendees that their long-standing gripes had found “resonance” with those trying to destroy higher education.
Brendan Cantwell
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: A recent report from the consulting firm Deloitte confirms what everyone working in higher education already knows: Donald Trump “brings a layer of complexity to questions of financial sustainability for colleges and universities.” The administration’s dizzying range of punitive measures for academe comes at an inconvenient time: Our institutions are already grappling with diminished state support and a looming demographic cliff.
Scott Gac
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The email from faculty in our would-be 51st state up north confirmed what I’d been suspecting for months: though I’d been selected as the finalist for a Fulbright chair at a Canadian university, the U.S. Department of State refused to approve my file.
It wasn’t a shock—race is at the center of my research. And I know that I am not alone in this Fulbright conundrum. But it was a gut punch. As a faculty member at a liberal arts institution, my access to external support is far more limited than that of colleagues at research institutions. When I am able to look past the personal sting, however, it’s easy to see the move as part of a broader effort—in the form of economic sanctions and ideological surveillance—to shape the expression of ideas and values in American higher education.
American Association of University Professors Press Release
Excerpt: As a result of public pressure and significant media attention generated by AAUP members’ collective action, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted on June 4 to tenure the remaining thirty-three faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools, including the School of Law and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, who had been denied a tenure vote since the May 22 board meeting.
The board offered no explanation for this unprecedented large-scale delay, which was expected to violate faculty contracts.
John D. Sailer
City Journal
Excerpt: The challenge of higher education reform can be boiled down to one issue: the talent pipeline. If we can reconfigure the academic talent pipeline and ensure that those who believe in the classical mission of the university both choose academia and prosper in it, then the reform movement will succeed. If not, no list of policies, from securing campus free speech to dismantling DEI offices, will restore public trust in our universities.
Ellie Avishai
Quillette
Excerpt: On 8 November 2021, the founders of the University of Austin (UATX) announced the launch of their new project—a school where students would receive “an education rooted in the pursuit of truth.” Unlike Ivy League universities, where “illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life,” the school’s founding president declared, this would be a place “where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized.” On a web page titled, Our Principles, UATX pledges that it will “renew the mission of the university, and serve as a model for institutions of higher education by safeguarding academic freedom and promoting intellectual pluralism.”
Christopher F. Rufo, Ryan Thorpe
City Journal
Excerpt: Omar Sultan Haque has spent 23 years at Harvard University. He is furious about what has happened within the school.
While the media have framed the recent fight between Harvard and President Donald Trump in partisan terms, Haque believes that the problem goes much deeper than political score-settling. As he rose through the ranks—from graduate student to postdoctoral fellow to medical researcher to faculty member at Harvard Medical School—Haque watched the university gradually abandon the pursuit of truth and replace it with left-wing racialism.
Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth President
Office of the President
Excerpt: People on and off campus are asking what I think about the battle between higher education and the federal government. A binary framework has emerged—fight or flight—that, I worry, means higher-education institutions aren’t reflecting on what we could do better to further our standing as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth.
I understand that some see any sort of self-reflection at this moment—anything less than all-out battle—as surrender. I disagree. Given the long, successful partnership America’s research universities have had with the federal government, we owe it to our country to look for ways to move forward, and for solutions that protect our fierce independence as institutions of higher education while improving who we are and what we offer.
FIRE
Excerpt: FIRE today filed a "friend of the court" brief in support of the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers in their lawsuit against the Department of Justice and other federal agencies. FIRE argues that the Trump administration's actions against Columbia University are unlawful and unconstitutional attacks on freedom of expression, freedom of association, and academic freedom. The brief's summary of argument follows.
Kali Jerrard
National Association of Scholars
Excerpt: Higher education won’t reform without a fight. As we discussed in last week’s edition of CounterCurrent, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) isn’t dead, and schools are either quietly or defiantly standing against the Trump administration’s education orders to curb DEI ideology and anti-Semitism on campuses.
The Trump administration has not explicitly endorsed a plan for education reform. But with the administration’s latest responses to Harvard and Columbia, a plan of sorts appears to be taking shape.
Susan Svrluga
Washington Post
Excerpt: With billions of dollars in federal funding at risk, Harvard University officials on Monday rejected Trump administration demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, admissions and hiring practices. The administration responded Monday night by saying it would freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding to the Ivy League school.
FIRE
Excerpt: The federal government abandoned its existing process to brow-beat Columbia — and Columbia folded.
Higher education reform shouldn’t resemble a shakedown. Colleges and universities shouldn’t be bullied into accepting speech-restrictive demands because the government dangles a $400 million check over an institution’s head. Any changes made as a result of this flawed process are inherently suspect.
Ryan D. Enos and Steven Levitsky
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Democracy is in greater peril today than at any time in modern U.S. history. President Donald Trump ran an openly authoritarian campaign in 2024, pledging to prosecute his rivals, punish media critics, and deploy the military to repress protest. Now, with stunning speed, he is doing just that.
Jessica Blake and Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the federal workforce; crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and cut spending have faced swift pushback from higher education associations, students, legal advocacy organizations and colleges, and they’ve turned to the courts to seek relief.
So far, federal judges have temporarily prevented Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team from accessing student financial aid data and blocked the National Institutes of Health from capping payments for costs indirectly related to research. Elsewhere, legal challenges blocked a freeze on federal grants and loans and stopped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from laying off employees.
