Jeremy C. Young and Jeffrey Sachs
The Daily Beast
Excerpt: The legislative war on college and university free speech has sadly become a persistent feature of the policymaking process in statehouses across the country. Another round of state legislative sessions has come and gone and with it many new proposals that would impose extensive restrictions on what can be taught in higher education classrooms.
Excerpt: Wherever you get your news, whether it is Twitter or The New York Times, you might reasonably imagine that higher education is awash in political conflict. You might see with dismay that progressive students are intolerant, hysterical, and fragile; or, depending on your sources, that right-wing students platform the vilest, most bigoted media personalities in the name of free speech.
Excerpt: According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), textbook publishers are attempting to indoctrinate Florida students by incorporating "woke" concepts into social studies textbooks — in violation of state laws prohibiting certain kinds of instruction on race and gender.
The lists of “top colleges” have varied little in many years. They always include the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. But that could change. Colleges of all types can differentiate themselves on the core values of free speech and academic freedom, and those that do will increasingly attract more and better students, faculty, and employment opportunities for their graduates.
However, most of these “prestige” schools have low ratings in the annual survey of students on free speech issues conducted by the Foundation for Rights and Expression (FIRE). Many have had recent embarrassments that rightfully tarnished their image on free speech. And many have atmospheres that smack of indoctrination and huge bureaucracies to enforce those atmospheres.
Trigger warnings were proposed as a means to protect students with PTSD. Not only do they fail to do that, but they undermine the resilience of all Cornellians and risk encouraging cognitive distortions commonly observed in mentally ill patients.
Stanford University's Black Law Students Association will no longer help the university recruit black students after the law school's dean, Jenny Martinez, apologized in early March to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan.
By Ian Hodgson, Tampa Bay Times
by Joshua Katz, National Review
Last week, I was supposed to be in Greece. When, almost exactly a year ago, I was invited to speak at a four-day international conference in Athens...
Ahead of tomorrow’s midterm elections, Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research asked 1,665 faculty members how their jobs have changed since 2024, including whether they’re self-censoring on hot-button issues and if they’d like to stay or leave their current state. The survey also asked about the impact AI has had on their relationships with students.
Hundreds of respondents reported all kinds of self-censorship. Nearly half—47 percent—of faculty members said that they’re refraining from making extramural utterances, such as posting on Facebook, because of the situation on their campus or the political environment at large.
HxA has long argued that ideological conformity within the academy suppresses worthy lines of inquiry. Similar concerns have been raised by the much-discussed Vanderbilt/Washington University Report and the Yale Report, both of which identify ideological conformity as a threat to open inquiry. But identifying the specific topics, questions, and perspectives that have been stifled is a challenging task, requiring disciplinary expertise and an intimate understanding of how each field operates.
What did HxA members tell us? Broadly speaking, topics relating to race, sex, religion, and politics were all identified as unfairly neglected within respondents’ disciplines.
Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of “viewpoint diversity,” according to two people familiar with the initiative.
The campaign, driven by Harvard’s top brass, aims to raise several hundred million dollars to support a new cohort of professors. If successful, the funding could bring dozens of faculty members to campus and drastically shift Harvard’s academic makeup.
Matters of viewpoint diversity have recently received considerable attention in the academy and the media. A recent essay by Lisa Siraganian, “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” makes the case against efforts to increase viewpoint diversity.
I believe that the lack of viewpoint and intellectual diversity within the university has hindered the pursuit of knowledge and the well-being of society. I would thus like to take up Siraganian’s invitation and charge.
To keep the frontier of inquiry truly open, we must address the lack of viewpoint diversity in the academy. HxA’s most recent report reviews literature on faculty political diversity, and draws attention to a potentially narrow range of political viewpoints on campus — with some important caveats. We found that left-leaning faculty are the norm, yet many faculty are apolitical or independent and only a small proportion are conservative.
Higher education faces a choice on how to proceed: build to expand, or ban to counter. Both of these competing approaches are underway, and this week’s news displayed that tension.
Every so often, the complexities of the world break through the orange bubble that is Princeton University. There are occasional reminders of the world outside, like the pro-Ukraine flag-waving event outside FitzRandolph Gate, reminding us that a major conflict in Europe is still ongoing four years later. Even as a veteran, it still feels like something happening in a remote place. It was only when I attended the European Cultural Studies (ECS) Faber Colloquium, a requirement for the European Studies minor I am pursuing, that I reflected on Europe’s significance and the debt Princeton as an institution owes to Europe, from its architecture to its precept system.
December 1, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
This month we are proud to present our 2025 Annual Report. It includes a message from our founders, financial summary, highlights of our projects and initiatives for the year, and our list of Top Ten recommendations for Princeton’s leadership to help restore a culture of free speech, open debate and viewpoint diversity, and put Princeton’s free speech principles into practice. We are pleased to present this summary of our year as you plan for your year-end charitable giving.
Isaac Barsoum
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Leftists at Princeton cheer the assassination of Charlie Kirk — at least, that’s what you would think if you’ve been reading the Opinion section of this newspaper lately. On Sept. 17, Tigers for Israel President Maximillian Meyer ’27 declared that Princeton’s progressives exhibit “a willingness to cheer violence itself.” Princeton Tory Publisher Zach Gardner ’26 didn’t go quite so far, but did say that students “treat bloodshed flippantly,” at least in the context of Kirk’s assassination.
Here’s one problem: large portions of both their arguments rest on evidence drawn from Fizz. For the uninitiated, Fizz is a campus social media app where any Princeton student can say anything at all, true or false, behind the veil of anonymity. It is remarkable that I have to say this: Fizz is not real life.
Maximillian Meyer
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Members of the far-left have spent years talking down to the American people from a position of self-styled moral superiority. They have scolded that it is racist to support the police, transphobic to seek to keep biological men out of women’s sports, and emboldening of Nazis to dare to support President Trump.
Rhetoric reducing political opponents to “Nazis” excuses people from ever having to engage with the other side. And when the core values of honest dissent and earnest dialogue slip out of the political arena, it’s all too easy for violence to fill the void.
August 29, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Big news! PFS now has over 10,000 subscribers, representing 14% of the undergraduate alumni population.
“Resist vs. Reform” is this month’s Special Feature: President Christopher Eisgruber ‘83 was in the spotlight, forcefully defending his leadership role in the now publicly acrimonious divide. Some university presidents, including Eisgruber, urge their colleagues to present a united front against the Trump administration and refuse to admit a need to reform longstanding problems. The opposing camp, led by Chancellors Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt University and Andrew D. Martin of Washington University St. Louis, argues that “de-wokification” reform from within is the only way to resolve what is needed to restore public confidence in elite higher education.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
In February the Trump administration’s focus on radical change in higher education continued unabated. The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights released a letter on non-discrimination policies. DEI programs are targeted, with sweeping mandates that have caused several universities to take preemptive action to avoid federal funding cuts.
Andrew Bosworth and Hellen Luo
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: A flurry of Trump administration executive orders and memos have paused, blocked, and then unblocked various streams of federal research funding since taking office, leaving scientists confused about their funding.
In his Jan. 28 email to the campus community, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 acknowledged the confusion surrounding funding, writing that “you can expect to receive guidance from the Office of the Dean for Research, which is coordinating University-wide efforts.”
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.
All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.
Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: It’s been my belief that going outside of Princeton to complain about Princeton’s functioning is always wrong. The benefit of a small community is precisely its opportunity to voice your beliefs in an open forum, one that is easy to access and easy to get responses. It is not hard to publish a letter in the ‘Prince,’ and the entire undergraduate community can be accessed via an email listserv. This, of course, guarantees no changes — I know well that the University is not accountable to its constituents. But that’s just the nature of the University: it’s a place where you subordinate yourself to receive an education.
It seems I’ve been playing by outdated rules, however, because this is not how most people interact with Princeton.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
PFS hosted two events this month, one in Santa Barbara, California, and the other on campus. See details in the Special Feature below.
Additionally, our next PFS Inner Circle event is coming up. On November 21 at 4 pm EST Abigail Anthony '23, journalist and graduate students at Oxford University, will discuss free speech in journalism, her experience as a student activist, and more. You can event this event and all of our Inner Circle events by joining the Inner Circle subscription.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
This week is Orientation for new students at Princeton. Students, faculty and staff are, no doubt, on edge. The encampment on Cannon Green and the arrests for criminal trespass of Clio Hall are fresh in everyone’s memory. Despite clear and intentional actions that broke Princeton’s rules of conduct and its core commitment to free expression and respectful disagreement, the administration struggled to respond clearly.
This moment requires clarity from Princeton’s leaders on the rights and responsibilities concerning free speech, academic freedom, respect for viewpoint diversity and rules of civil discourse.
Princeton boasts robust free speech protections and rules around peaceful protest. But principles and rules “on paper” are not enough. Specific actions need to be taken to regain the practice of a true liberal education, which is by necessity rooted in free expression. Diverse perspectives are what empower students to engage in challenging ideas and learn from respectful disagreement. Threats and harassment are not part of what free expression means. Princeton has a long way to go to embed core principles into the everyday experience and outlook of students, faculty and administrators. As students return to campus, we present The PFS Top Ten – the ten most important reforms Princeton’s leadership should consider.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, members and friends,
While the nation is gripped by the uncertainty of the Presidential race, what’s happening in higher education may not be a focus of attention. But plenty is going on, even in July. Four surveys published this month track trends that have direct impact at Princeton and most universities in the country. The surveys featured here measure the following: 1) the radical decline of public confidence in higher education, 2) the dramatic rise in student and faculty concern about censorship and self-censorship post-October 7, 3) the dismantling of DEI programs, and 4) the lack of student knowledge of their country’s government and history. As universities including Princeton prepare to welcome students to campus next month, the results of these surveys will shape campus experience.
We also remind our subscribers of PFS’s own survey published in June – the second annual poll of Princeton students. Follow the link to see the results, and PFS’s recommendations for improving the campus free speech and academic freedom climate at Princeton: Princetonians Student Free Speech Survey Shows More Work Needs To Be Done.
