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Wherefore art thou, Romeo? South Carolina’s new, one-size-fits-all library regulations will restrict access to the classics

June 26, 2024

Wherefore art thou, Romeo? South Carolina’s new, one-size-fits-all library regulations will restrict access to the classics
John Coleman
FIRE

Excerpt: Yesterday, the South Carolina State Board of Education imposed new regulations requiring the removal of all books that include any description of “sexual conduct” from every public school library in the state. This means that classic literary works like “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Canterbury Tales,” and “Ulysses” could be taken off the shelves, raising First Amendment concerns.

Blanket bans like this one in South Carolina impose one-size-fits-all, top-down mandates that require school district administrators to review library books without analyzing whether the specific content is suitable for specific age groups and grade levels.

Commentary: The Supreme Court Is About to Decide the Future of Free Speech

June 04, 2024

Nadine Strossen
Persuasion

Excerpt: The current Supreme Court term includes a cluster of cases that could well shape the future of online free speech. These cases invite the Court to determine the power of both government officials and social media platforms concerning “content moderation” policies, which in turn define platform users’ speech rights.

Given the unparalleled importance of these platforms for all manner of communication—personal, professional, and political—meaningful free speech rights depend on the platforms’ policies. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Court’s rulings over the next weeks may well determine the shape of speech online for years to come.

Don’t blame the Supreme Court for universities’ stunning reversal on DEI

June 10, 2024

Megan McArdle
Washington Post

Excerpt: After a decade of ever-escalating commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, elite campuses are reversing course. It's amazing to watch such an abrupt volte-face. What’s even more amazing is how far things went beforehand and how long the correction took to arrive.

Such double-think regimes are vulnerable to what economist Timur Kuran calls a “preference cascade in reverse”: As people realize their neighbors share their skepticism, they start voicing their true opinions, an effect that dominoes until the whole regime collapses.

Harvard Will Refrain From Controversial Statements About Public Policy Issues

May 28, 2024

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.

The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group, which advised leadership to not “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

Abigail Shrier: There Are Two Sets of Rules for Speech

May 02, 2024

Abigail Shrier
The Free Press

Excerpt: A police officer who pulls over speeding black motorists—and only black motorists—isn’t protecting “law and order.” He’s engaging in invidious discrimination. So too the university administrators who suddenly discover they are free speech absolutists only when student protesters call for the death of their Jewish classmates.

Commentary: Abolish DEI Statements

April 18, 2024

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: This month, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an eminent scholar of race and civil rights, published an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in academic hiring. “I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” he wrote. “The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince.” But a “contrasting perspective” on diversity statements that the Crimson published argued that “furor over diversity statements in hiring is a red herring.”

But people who see the flaws of the status quo should not be seduced by the illusion that tweaking how DEI statements are solicited or scored is a solution. In fact, interviewing Hall, the ostensible reformer in the Harvard Crimson debate, left me more convinced that abolishing DEI statements is the best way forward.

Columbia President Weathers Grilling Over Campus Antisemitism

April 18, 2024

Katherine Knott and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik carefully and repeatedly condemned antisemitism over the course of a nearly four-hour appearance before Congress on Wednesday. She denounced the speech and actions of some pro-Palestinian professors and student protesters. She made clear under questioning that she considers the oft-changed slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to be antisemitic, though she noted that other people don’t hear it as such.

But judging from the responses she received from Republicans on the House education committee, none of that might be enough to keep Shafik or Columbia—or its faculty members—from further Congressional scrutiny.

Commentary: ‘1984, 40 Years Late’: Cornell’s Interim Policy Cripples Democracy

March 07, 2024

The Editorial Board
Cornell Daily Sun

Excerpt: College students are losing sight of why democracy matters. At Cornell, where censorship is becoming the norm, it’s no wonder why. When people get robbed of opportunities to participate peacefully in what the late civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble,” that disillusionment quickly alchemizes into rage and disdain.

That’s what makes the University’s Interim Expressive Activity Policy so backward, depraved and ultimately dangerous — it fans those flames of resentment. On Jan. 24, the administration unilaterally implemented a set of draconian guidelines to redefine what acceptable protest on campus looks like.

MLA Delegates Pass Motion Defending Pro-Palestine Speech

January 08, 2024

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly passed an “emergency motion” Saturday defending college and university employees and students who are facing threats, harassment and violence for criticizing Israel’s violence against Palestinians.

The weekend-long MLA Annual Convention included multiple panels that discussed the war in Gaza. A Friday open hearing ahead of the Delegate Assembly featured heated debate on the motion that ultimately passed, along with a different one that would’ve broadly supported “academic freedom and free expression” without mentioning either Palestine or Israel.

Commentary: Should Universities Ban “Advocacy of Genocide”?

December 06, 2023

Eugene Volokh
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason

Excerpt: This question has been in the news recently, in light of the recent House Committee hearings on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." A few thoughts on my part:

[1.] There's no "advocacy of genocide" exception to the First Amendment, or to the contractual promises of student free speech that many private universities rightly implement.

[2.] Indeed, as I've argued before, it is important that students be free to debate what is proper to do in war, and what wars are just. War involves mass killing, in some wars by the millions. I think some such killing is atrocity and some is just. But different people draw the lines differently, and that is a matter that is quite rightly up for debate.

A Jewish professor at USC criticized Hamas while confronting pro-Palestinian students. He’s now barred from campus

November 26, 2023

Matt Hamilton
Los Angeles Times

Excerpt: Until recently, USC professor John Strauss was known mostly for his research on the economics of developing countries, with decades of fieldwork in Indonesia and China. That changed Nov. 9, when Strauss stopped before students staging a walkout and protest calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and holding a memorial to thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israel-Hamas war.

The economics professor’s interactions with students that day ended with the 72-year-old Strauss, who is Jewish, declaring: “Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.” Within a day, an associate dean told Strauss that he was on paid administrative leave, barred from campus, and that he would no longer teach his undergraduates this semester.

Supreme Court Is Asked to Rule on Campus Speech Codes at Virginia Tech

September 25, 2023

Dan McLaughlin
National Review

Excerpt: One case that isn’t quite ready to be considered Tuesday, but could intrigue the justices, is Speech First, Inc. v. Sands (No. 23-156), which challenges campus speech codes. The case comes from a divided panel decision of the Fourth Circuit, which rejected challenges to two Virginia Tech campus speech policies.

Virginia Tech has backed off the policy since the suit was filed. FIRE also notes that “time and time again, [it] has seen universities revise unconstitutional policies, only to bring them back when there is employee or state government turnover.” Given the widespread use of such policies and the open circuit split on their legality, it would seem a fit time for the Court to get involved.

UNC System issues new directives after U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race in admissions

August 23, 2023

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The UNC System has issued directives to its 17 campuses on how to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision on the role of race in admissions. Over five pages, it lays out specific policies for universities and warns against actions and policies not explicitly prohibited by the Supreme Court decision, due to “the high cost of litigation” for those who might sue.

As NC Newsline has reported, legal scholars and critics of the decision have warned threats of lawsuits by conservative activists may intimidate universities into going beyond what is required by the ruling. The UNC System’s directives appear to substantiate those fears.

FREE SPEECH FOR PRINCETON BUREAUCRATS, BUT NOT FOR FACULTY OR STUDENTS

April 25, 2022

Florida approves Black history standards decried as ‘step backward’

July 19, 2023

Lori Rozsa
Washington Post

Excerpt: The Florida State Board of Education approved new rules Wednesday for how Black history will be taught in public schools that critics are decrying as a “step backward.”

The updated standards say students should learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and that in teaching about mob violence against Black residents instructors should note “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

Supreme Court rules against race-conscious admissions at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill

June 29, 2023

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against race-based admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shattering decades of legal precedent and upending the recruitment and enrollment landscape for years to come.

In fact, most colleges don’t rely on race as an admissions factor, as they accept a majority or all of their applicants. Thus, only a small swath of selective higher ed institutions will likely need to remold their admissions policies. But no matter what, when enrollment offices have accounted for race, it was not supposed to be the sole admissions criterion, which court precedent already established as illegal.

This Professor Criticized Diversity Statements. Did It Cost Him a Job Offer?

June 28, 2023

By Megan Zahneis

Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: A psychologist spoke out this week about what critics see as a job offer gone awry over an ideological spat about diversity statements.

Yoel Inbar, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, was up for a job at the University of California at Los Angeles. But the psychology department there decided not to proceed after more than 60 graduate students in the department signed an open letter urging the university not to hire him. At issue, the students wrote, were Inbar’s comments on his podcast expressing skepticism about the use of diversity statements in hiring, as well as about other efforts intended to make the academy more inclusive.

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

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.

After punishing people for Charlie Kirk comments, colleges are paying steep settlements

July 16, 2026

Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.

Harvard’s Viewpoint Diversity Initiative: A Good Idea That Could Still Go Wrong

June 10, 2026

Prestigious universities and leading state schools across the nation have embraced viewpoint diversity by building new institutions—civic education centers and the like—which are simultaneously on yet apart from the campus. Harvard has quietly taken a different tack. Over the past several months, the university’s top brass have been asking major donors for $10 million gifts to endow new professorships under the banner of “viewpoint diversity.” Provost John Manning, a scholar often associated with the conservative legal movement, has led the effort, aiming to place between 20 and 30 new faculty across schools and departments rather than siloed in a standalone institute.

Why Harvard would need additional funding for this is an open question, but putting that partly aside, we ought to ask what to make of this unique initiative. It stands a chance of being either the most consequential reform attempt in elite higher education this decade, or a sophisticated piece of reputation management serving double duty as a clever fundraiser. Which one it turns out to be depends on whether Harvard has thought carefully about what viewpoint diversity means, and whether it intends to execute in line with a considered answer.

UCLA Law School’s problems are higher education’s problems. Do campus leaders care that students are not interested in persuasion, or even in hearing what people they disagree with have to say?

May 27, 2026

The protests that greeted Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival a UCLA School of Law in April were not surprising. Law students, especially at highly ranked schools like UCLA, have become notoriously intolerant of disfavored speakers coming to campus — and few institutions are quite as polarizing as DHS in the “Abolish ICE” era. It was striking, however, that the students who organized the interruptions of Percival’s presentation — with heckling, hacking coughs, cellphones, and the occasional profanity — did exactly what “snowflake” students have been ridiculed and denounced for doing when encountering someone they don’t agree with.

This Week in History: Debating the role of interdisciplinary humanities in a Princeton education

February 25, 2026

89 years ago, the pages of the ‘Prince’ featured a series of lively debates in the “To the Editor” section about the future of the humanities curriculum at Princeton. One of the central issues of the debate, as Wallace Irwin Jr. ’40 wrote in his letter to the editor on Feb. 22, 1937, was striking a balance between the breadth of humanistic disciplines and the realistic limit of students’ time.

Irwin’s letter was a direct response to Temple Fielding ’39, who, just a few days prior, wrote a proposal for a drastic curricular change and published it in the ‘Prince.’ Fielding suggested a course combining content from different academic departments, offering undergraduates an interdisciplinary exploration of various cultural fields.

USG meeting holds presentation on free expression, emphasizes new mental health and menstrual product initiatives

February 18, 2026

At the Sunday Undergraduate Student Government (USG) senate meeting, University administrators spoke about the purpose of campus free expression facilitators, while student groups presented new mental health and menstrual product initiatives.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Garrett Meggs spoke about the University’s free expression facilitators. Meggs explained that the University’s purpose behind the facilitators is to allow students to engage in civil and respectful dialogue on campus. Free expression facilitators are assigned to campus events in order to ensure that speakers and audiences are protecting expression and following the University’s time, place, and manner restrictions.

Eisgruber discusses budget cuts, fields questions from CPUC and community

February 10, 2026

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 presented his annual State of the University letter and answered questions about various student concerns at the first 2026 meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC).

Eisgruber spent the majority of his presentation reviewing the University’s strategic shift in endowment spending priorities amid diminishing long-term endowment return projections. This includes a 10-year estimated $11.3 billion deficit in endowment growth relative to previous growth projections, according to the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO).

More budget cuts anticipated in annual ‘State of the University’ letter

February 10, 2026

In his 2026 “State of the University” letter sent to students on Monday, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 previewed major upcoming changes to University finances. The letter, titled “From Growth to Focus,” described a move away from expansion, citing long-term economic factors.

The changes will come in addition to the 5–7 percent departmental budget cuts over the last year, alongside the hiring freeze instituted last March. “The long-term endowment trends described in this memorandum are likely to require more targeted, and in some cases deeper, reductions over a multiyear period,” Eisgruber wrote. “The change that I am describing … goes beyond the pace of construction. It will affect everyone on campus.”

Buckley report on liberal faculty gains traction, and Yale responds

January 13, 2026

A Buckley Institute report last month on the predominance of Democrats on the Yale faculty sparked criticism from conservatives about political imbalances in higher education — and prompted an apparent response from Yale.

On Dec. 1, the organization released its Yale Faculty Political Diversity Report, which reported that 82.3 percent of the 1,666 faculty members examined are registered Democrats or primarily support Democratic candidates. Of the remaining faculty, 2.3 percent were found to be Republicans with the remaining 15.4 percent not affiliated with either major party. Of 43 departments that grant undergraduate degrees, 27 had no Republican faculty members at all, according to the report.

What this year’s dismal turnout says about civic life at Princeton

December 09, 2025

Luqmaan Bamba
Daily Princetonian

This winter, only 2,005 of roughly 5,826 undergraduates cast a ballot in the Undergraduate Student Government election, a mere 34 percent of the undergraduate population. This is the lowest turnout in around a decade.

We often conveniently explain Princeton’s civic life as just “apathy.” Truthfully, undergrads are overwhelmed with classes, internships, social life, and clubs. Voting sinks to the bottom of the to-do list. But this year’s number is less about apathy; students do pay attention to USG, and what it aims to accomplish for the student body and Princeton as a whole. The problem is that they wrongfully characterize USG as an insignificant or useless organization.

Campus Leaders Can’t Avoid Viewpoint Diversity in Pursuit of Open Inquiry

December 04, 2025

John Tomasi
Free the Inquiry

Despite campus leaders’ renewed commitment to open inquiry, it’s largely understood as the free exchange of ideas and constructive disagreement. However, the third pillar of open inquiry — viewpoint diversity — is rarely (if ever) explicitly mentioned by leaders as part of their commitment to open inquiry. In today’s changing campus climate, supporting free expression and respectful discussion have (thankfully) become fashionable; but viewpoint diversity remains a third rail of university life.

New policy will broadly prohibit recordings of University settings, events without explicit approval of all attendees

November 11, 2025

Cynthia Torres and Benedict Hooper
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) voted overwhelmingly on Monday to prohibit any recording of a broad category of campus activities without the permission of all participants, with few exceptions.

“Princeton prohibits the installation or use of any device for listening, observing, photographing, recording, amplifying, transmitting or broadcasting sounds or events occurring in any place where the individual or group involved has a reasonable expectation of being free from unwanted surveillance, eavesdropping, recording or observation without the knowledge and consent of all participants subject to such recordings,” the policy reads.

Princeton hires professor who denied Oct. 7 massacre to teach course on Gaza

November 10, 2025

Patrick McDonald '26
Campus Reform

Excerpt: Princeton University is offering a new course titled “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” that compares the Israel–Hamas conflict to the Holocaust.

The class is instructed by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a self-identified “noted Palestinian feminist” who has publicly denied that Hamas killed babies or raped women during the Oct. 7 massacre, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Congress Accuses GMU President of Lying About DEI Efforts

November 07, 2025

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: House Republicans have accused George Mason University president Gregory Washington of lying to Congress about diversity practices at his institution, ratcheting up pressure on the president to step down.

Washington has denied breaking the law through efforts to diversify GMU’s faculty and staff, telling Congress that the university did not practice illegal discrimination under his leadership.

Universities Can’t Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity

October 29, 2025

John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the president of Heterodox Academy (Tomasi) and as co-founder of the organization (Haidt), we are delighted that the issue of viewpoint diversity in higher education is now being so widely discussed. We just wish the most prominent antagonists on the right and on the left understood why viewpoint diversity is essential to the mission of a university—and thus how it can, and can’t, be brought about.

Americans Think Trump Is Overreaching on Higher Ed

October 24, 2025

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: With federal funding as its leverage, the Trump administration has mounted a sustained campaign to give the federal government greater oversight of higher education. By a wide margin, the public rejects that effort — including the White House’s most recent foray, its proposed “compact” for higher education.

Top universities ramp up lobbying amid Trump higher education crackdown

October 28, 2025

Surina Venkat
The Hill

Excerpt: The nation’s top schools have ramped up their spending on lobbying the federal government this year amid President Trump’s crackdown on higher education, disclosures filed last week show.

Twenty-four top universities and one of the nation’s largest college systems have already spent around $24 million lobbying Washington this year, more than double what they spent during the same time period last year, according to federal disclosures.

Eisgruber calls Trump administration compact ‘a dangerous step in the wrong direction’

October 20, 2025

Kian Petlin
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 spoke out against the Trump administration’s higher education compact in a LinkedIn post on Oct. 10, calling the proposed agreement on university funding “a dangerous step in the wrong direction.”

He also thanked the presidents of the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) for opposing the compact, which was sent to nine universities, including Brown, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania in early October.

In Katz Case, Eisgruber Muddled Role of Free Expression

October 08, 2025

Bill Hewitt '74
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Those interested in President Eisgruber’s leadership failures should read “A Princeton President’s Evasions” by Len Gutkin in The Chronicle of Higher Education and my recent complaint filed with Princeton’s accrediting agency detailing crucial failures by Eisgruber, his administration, and Princeton’s Board of Trustees.

Heritage Foundation yanks lecture at Princeton after Charlie Kirk’s death, citing security concerns

September 19, 2025

Sena Chang
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Heritage Foundation, one of America’s most prominent right-wing think tanks, abruptly canceled a lecture at Princeton scheduled for Sept. 16, citing security concerns. The event was originally scheduled to feature Wilson Beaver, the Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Advisor for Defense Budgeting and NATO Policy, but was pulled just days before it was set to take place.

“Heritage made this decision out of an abundance of caution as it reviews its personnel security policies following the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk,” the American Whig-Cliosophic Society (Whig-Clio) said in a statement online.

Commentary: The Battle for ‘Viewpoint Diversity’

September 02, 2025

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Viewpoint diversity. Civics. Western civilization. Republicans and conservative-leaning groups across the country have been using these terms prolifically, and at times interchangeably, to explain what’s lacking in higher education today and why the overhauls they’re pushing are necessary to save the sector from domination by the left.

Now the White House is fueling their push, demanding viewpoint diversity under threat of huge funding cuts. Some say universities need to reform themselves to regain public and governmental support. But even academics and higher ed observers who may agree that universities have become too one-dimensional now find themselves defending the academy against a conservative campaign to force change under the banner of terms that sometimes sound like euphemisms.

He’s the ‘Mozart’ of Math and Trump Killed His Funding

August 06, 2025

Jonathan Cohn
The Bulwark

Excerpt: Terence Tao may be one of the smartest human beings on the planet. That’s not an exaggeration.

Now a UCLA professor, Tao has been a mathematics superstar for pretty much his entire life, going all the way back to the early 1970s when he was a 2-year-old with building blocks showing the other kids how to count. He was 7 when he started calculus, 13 when he became the youngest person ever to win the International Mathematical Olympiad, and 19 when he started his Ph.D. at Princeton.

Civil and respectful dialogue on difficult topics: A bedrock Princeton commitment

July 21, 2025

Jamie Saxon
Princeton University

Excerpt: Princeton’s research and teaching mission rests on a bedrock commitment to free expression, where thoughtful people of all backgrounds voice their opinions in civil discussion.

As University President Christopher L. Eisgruber emphasized in his 2025 State of the University letter, “ours must be a community where all members can speak their mind and where they engage in civil and respectful dialogue, even on — indeed, especially on — difficult topics.”

Commentary: Are Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?

June 11, 2025

Jonathan Chait
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The Trump administration is carrying out a brazen crackdown on academic freedom: deporting students for writing op-eds, withholding funds from colleges that defy his control, and justifying it all as a response to anti-Semitism. Who is to blame for this?

According to one popular theory on the left, the answer is liberals who have consistently supported free speech and opposed Donald Trump.

How House Lawmakers Could Reshape Higher Ed

May 15, 2025

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: All the pieces of House Republicans’ plan to cut trillions in federal spending are now public, and if the package becomes law, colleges and universities could face crippling repercussions, higher education experts say.

“It is a full-out assault on the ability of students—especially low-income students—to access and afford higher education,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “It will have a dramatically negative impact, not just on higher ed, but on the whole population.”

As endowment tax looms, Princeton asks departments to make plans for ‘permanent’ budget cuts, warns of potential layoffs

May 13, 2025

Christopher Bao and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton asked all departments and University units to prepare “separate plans for 5 percent and 10 percent permanent budget cuts to be phased in over the next three years, with some actions to start later this summer” in an email sent to faculty and staff on Monday afternoon — the University’s most dramatic budgetary guidance yet following a tumultuous semester for higher education.

The email, sent by Provost Jennifer Rexford and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright, explicitly acknowledged the potential for layoffs to be part of budget reductions. “Cuts of this magnitude to our budget cannot be achieved without changes to some operations and the associated elimination of some staff positions,” they wrote.

Commentary: Trump’s Funding Axe Triggers a Convenient Free Speech Cry from Presidents and Deans

May 06, 2025

Samuel J. Abrams
American Enterprise Institute

Excerpt: In response to the Trump Administration’s continued attacks on higher education, leaders of some of the most prominent colleges and universities are pushing back—albeit hypocritically. Nearly 500 college presidents and deans signed an open letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, titled “A Call for Constructive Engagement.” Without proper context, the letter is quite reasonable.

Consider three well-known cases where presidents did not promote open inquiry and the pursuit of truth. At Princeton, like so many other schools, the influence of identity politics was so powerful that potential faculty hires and entire streams of inquiry were not possible, and areas of research would not be supported if they did not conform to expected progressive political norms and expectations.

Three weeks after Trump cut Princeton’s funding, no demands have been publicly issued. Here’s what we know.

April 25, 2025

Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Twenty-four days since the suspension of $210 million in federal grants to the University, Princeton has yet to publicly receive any demands from the Trump administration. Harvard University and Columbia University, both of which had grants and contracts from federal agencies suspended for antisemitism investigations, received a specific list of demands from the Trump administration within 10 days of their funding pauses.

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 revealed that the federal grants had been suspended in a letter to the University community on April 1. Princeton received a total of $455 million from all levels of government in the 2023–24 fiscal year, according to the 2023–24 Report of the Treasurer, more than double the amount that was recently paused.

Letter to Vice President Calhoun

April 26, 2024

Below is a copy of the letter our team sen to Vice President Calhoun in regards to her statement to the student body yesterday about the encampment protest happening today. This Daily Princetonian Article showcases what is taking place on campus.

The University President Willing to Fight Trump

April 09, 2025

The Daily, New York Times
Hosted by Rachel Abrams

Excerpt: This week, we interviewed two people with leading roles in the rapidly escalating conflict between the Trump administration and American higher education.

Today, we speak with the president of Princeton University, Christopher L. Eisgruber, about the institution’s path forward in the face of drastic funding cuts, and his vow to protect academic freedom at all costs.

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