by Michael Poliakoff, Forbes Magazine
In the current legislative session, five state legislatures will review bills that seek to limit or abolish offices on public university campuses known by the catch-all acronym “DEI.”
There is an important lawsuit being litigated in the Southern District of New York over the limits of free speech and academic freedom for faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Professor Tim Bakken, West Point’s longest-serving civilian law professor, is challenging new Trump Administration regulations that allegedly constitute unconstitutional prior restraints on academic publications and limit academic freedom and free speech.
The official charged with carrying out the Trump administration’s higher-education agenda has a particular diagnosis for what’s ailing colleges.
“We are here because the value of higher education is in question by too many — and at the center of that is our quality-assurance system,” Nicholas Kent, under secretary of education, said in a Tuesday interview. “It is undeniable that accreditors are failing institutions, they’re failing students, and they’re failing taxpayers.”
Anna Krylov
Heterodox at USC, Substack
Excerpt: On October 1st, nine schools—including USC—received a letter from the US Secretary of Education inviting them to proactively join the effort to improve “higher education for the betterment of the country.” The letter announces plans to offer a Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, an agreement that universities will be invited to sign.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: One of the Trump administration’s attempts to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses and in K–12 classrooms has been struck down by a federal district court judge who previously put the guidance on hold.
Judge Stephanie Gallagher declared in the Thursday ruling that the Department of Education broke the law when it tried to withhold grant funding from institutions that practiced DEI based on one of the president’s executive orders and a related guidance letter.
Matan H. Josephy and Laurel M. Shugart
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: A federal judge extended her halt on Donald Trump’s entry ban on holders of Harvard-sponsored visas until next Monday at a hearing where lawyers for Harvard and the federal government sparred over whether the ban is constitutional.
The extension of the temporary restraining order will keep incoming international students’ authorization to enter the U.S. in place until U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs decides whether to cement the pause in a preliminary injunction. Burroughs said at Monday’s hearing that she will issue an opinion within a week.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education has publicly called on Columbia University’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, to take action against the university’s alleged noncompliance with federal nondiscrimination laws.
In a Wednesday news release, officials wrote that Columbia was found to have acted “with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Officials said, “Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.” As a result of that finding, ED called on MSCHE to take action on the matter.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.
FIRE
Excerpt: West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order yesterday to eliminate certain diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in state agencies and organizations that receive state money. While the state may limit certain programs or activities of state agencies, the executive order is written so broadly that it applies to classroom instruction in higher education.
As such, the executive order violates the First Amendment and must be rescinded or amended to make clear that it does not affect what’s discussed in college classrooms.
By Ed Yingling '70
PFS Co-Founder
The Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) second annual survey of Princeton students is now available. This survey provides information on student attitudes on key free speech issues. Because the survey is being done annually, comparisons can be made to see if Princeton is making progress. Unfortunately, with three important exceptions, on most issues the survey shows little or no progress from the troublesome results in the first survey. In a few cases, the results are worse than last year. Clearly Princeton still has work to do.
PEN America
Excerpt: The end of June marks the conclusion of most state legislative sessions. One new educational gag order and one higher education autonomy restriction became law in June, with others in Ohio and Texas going down narrowly to defeat.
After reviewing these new laws, we examine an aspect of higher education governance that has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts and seems likely to figure centrally in next year’s legislative sessions: college and university accreditation.
by Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post
The Florida Board of Education has forbidden the teaching of gender identity and sexuality throughout all grades in K-12 public schools, extending a nearly year-old legislative ban on such lessons from kindergarten through third grade.
On Friday, January 23, 2026, several students from Princeton University marched to the top of Capitol Hill, joining tens of thousands of Americans in the National March for Life. Originating just months after the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), the National March for Life inaugurated the first major public conversation on the sanctity of life and a constitutional protection of the unborn. Today, four years after the overturn of Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the march still serves as a platform for individuals to express their hopes and visions for the future of the Pro-Life movement.
Having experienced the tangible and transformative power of free speech evident in the march, four Princeton students have graciously agreed to share thoughts both about their participation in the march and also about the overall experience with pro-life dialogue on campus.
Michael Hurley
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: A federal court has once again vindicated FIRE’s longstanding concerns with the Trump administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional approach to enforcing Title VI — including combatting antisemitism — in higher education. This time, the smackdown came in a ruling for plaintiffs at the University of California.
On February 10, 2026, PEN America, joined by a broad group of 36 organizational partners, wrote to the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University to request that they rescind two policies, passed in fall 2025, that have resulted in the censorship of academic courses across the institution, and the announced closure of the University’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program.
The letter explains that these policies are not only a threat to academic freedom, but, put simply, that “Censorship undermines the quality of education that faculty can offer students.” As recent news reports are making clear, these policies are limiting students’ access to education, particularly when it comes to course content related to race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In a recent op-ed for Time Magazine, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 ostensibly affirms the value of student protest. But reading between the lines, his piece is at best an ambivalent defense of campus activism, vacillating between qualified praise and condescension.
The piece suggests that student protests are just manifestations of misguided youthful zeal, and that, as a vehicle for social change, they’re always inferior to his ideal of rational discussion. Eisgruber describes student movements and protesters, by turns, as “naive,” “ill-considered,” “oversimplified,” and “irritating” — never as courageous, virtuous, or necessary.
Abigail S. Gerstein
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard Medical School canceled a pro-Palestine vigil organized by two recognized student groups on Thursday, alleging the groups violated the school’s campus use rules by distributing and posting event flyers without authorization.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: College students—particularly those who identify as conservative—are less likely to tolerate controversial speech than they were last year, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual survey.
For the 2026 edition of its free speech rankings, FIRE surveyed over 68,000 students from 257 colleges and universities in the U.S. In a question about six hypothetical speakers—three with what are widely considered conservative views and three with traditionally liberal beliefs—the share of students who said the speakers should be allowed to speak on campus dropped by at least five percentage points in all six cases.
David Zimmerman
National Review
Excerpt: The student government at the University of Michigan has removed its top two leaders, who vowed to block funding for campus groups unless the university agreed to divest from companies accused of profiting from the Israel–Hamas war.
The student assembly’s president and vice president, Alifa Chowdhury and Elias Atkinson, were officially ousted late on Monday after they were impeached last month, the New York Times reported. Each received a guilty count of dereliction of duty for either missing council meetings or failing to organize them.
In retrospect, it is no coincidence that wokeness blossomed at prestigious American colleges at the very moment when those schools were facing rising discontent over student debt and tuition costs. For the academic aristocracy, touting fealty to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, trans rights, and other progressive movements served as a convenient distraction from the intractable economic and social issues that the colleges themselves were perpetuating.
Olivia Sanchez and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In interviews with the ‘Prince,’ six students subject to University disciplinary proceedings described a tangled process that appeared fixated on searching for protest leaders to blame and employed tactics they described as invasive. The students were all investigated for supposed participation in pro-Palestine disruptions last spring.
Their accounts, corroborated by dozens of documents reviewed by the ‘Prince,’ including emails and investigation records, provide a rare glance behind the scenes of the University’s investigative apparatus.
Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: An executive order signed by President Donald Trump and released on Wednesday, Jan. 29 calls for Princeton and other universities to “monitor” and “report activities by alien students and staff” for actions that constitute antisemitism.
The executive order gives various federal agencies — including the Department of Education — 60 days to create a list of all cases involving a university alleging civil rights violations related to antisemitism that occurred following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A Title VI case related to antisemitism at Princeton was opened by the Department of Education in January 2024, referencing chants at pro-Palestine protests in October 2023.
April 9, 2025
Dear President Eisgruber:
We, the officers of Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), are writing to express our organization’s very deep concerns about the disruption of the program featuring former Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on April 7 and actions of severe antisemitism during and after that program.
Pity Chris Summerlin, the dean of students at the University of Florida. He’s being sued by an anti-Semite, and that’s not the worst of his predicament. So far, judges who have ruled on the case have given mixed verdicts on whether he is likely to win or lose at trial.
College deans and administrators keep confronting the same dilemma: They face intense pressure to punish speech that elicits fear or moral disgust on campus. They also have legal obligations—and face countervailing pressure—to refrain from violating the free-speech rights of students. They cannot always do both. The result is cases such as Damsky v. Summerlin—cases that might be avoided under a better approach to fighting anti-Semitism and other hateful ideas.
Frannie Block and Maya Sulkin
The Free Press
Excerpt: In 2024, David Piegaro attended a pro-Palestine rally on Princeton University’s campus as a self-described “citizen journalist.” After watching all this from a distance, Piegaro began to follow and videotape Princeton professor Max Weiss, who Piegaro recognized as a leader of a pro-Palestine faculty group, and another man wearing a suit. When Piegaro tried to enter a building with them, the man with the suit essentially shoved him down the stairs, alleges Piegaro.
In April, a New Jersey judge found Piegaro not guilty of all the charges, concluding that he might “have been unwise, or even defiant, but it does not amount to reckless disregard.” On Wednesday, Piegaro filed a lawsuit against Princeton and Strother in a federal court in New Jersey, alleging violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, use of excessive force, wrongful imprisonment, fabrication of evidence, and more.
