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More than half of respondents to The Crimson’s annual faculty survey opposed Harvard’s efforts to solicit donations for a viewpoint diversity initiative — rejecting a push to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through $10 million endowed professorships meant to broaden ideological representation.

Nearly 47 percent of faculty respondents also disagreed that Harvard has a troubling lack of ideological diversity among its faculty, while roughly 31 percent agreed. The split was little changed from last year, when 45 percent disagreed and 34 percent agreed — putting most respondents at odds with critics, including Trump administration officials, who have charged that Harvard’s faculty is too ideologically narrow.

Students returned to campus this fall after a tumultuous summer for Yale’s relations with the federal government. Since the start of the second Trump administration, universities have faced heightened pressure through threats to federal research funds, criticism of diversity policies and scrutiny into alleged antisemitism on campuses, and many of them have reached settlements. Yale seemed to be an exception. But not anymore.

As the academic year begins, the status and details of the federal negotiations remain unclear, although University President Maurie McInnis has released several comments about Yale’s talks with the federal government as pressure mounts against any settlement with the Trump administration. The ongoing period of uncertainty in the negotiations “may well continue, and we do not know for how long,” McInnis wrote in an Aug. 21 message to the Yale community.

Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recently released a “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” a less openly threatening version of the earlier “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that had been broadly rejected. More than a month prior to the release of McMahon’s letter, Vanderbilt University published “The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles,” signed by its chancellor and board chair and adopted by its board. 

Whether this alignment is the result of happenstance or collaboration is impossible to know, but what is clear is the extent to which Vanderbilt is positioning itself as a model of the sort of elite higher education of which the Trump administration approves. This does not, prima facie, make the Vanderbilt model wrong, but, given the stakes, it does suggest that the model should be examined with great care.

What is college for? If you ask four different people, you’re likely to get four different answers. Universities teach students how to think. They produce groundbreaking research. They create citizens. They prepare students for jobs. They archive the wisdom of the past. And so on.

However, beneath the veneer of diversity, all university goals ultimately come down to the same thing. At their core, universities are epistemic institutions, committed to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.

When news of Iván Chaar López’s tenure denial broke last month, the scholar’s supporters pointed to what they believed was the University of Texas at Austin’s unstated reason: politics.

University President Maurie McInnis has engaged in private conversations with student leaders, as well as the faculty senate chair, about Yale’s attempts to settle with the Trump administration — a venture that has faced widespread backlash from students, faculty and alumni.

Last week, a committee of scholars convened by Vanderbilt University released a report on the state of humanities and social sciences scholarship across the United States.

As one of the signers of the report, I am all too familiar with the fact that activist scholars sometimes play fast and loose with logic and evidence to justify conclusions dictated in advance by a political program. Those who dissent can risk serious damage to their careers. Journals have been forced to apologize for research they have published — not because of poor logic or manufactured evidence, but because the results were politically unacceptable. 

The University of Chicago has undergone a “curriculum degradation” in the past 13 years, according to a new analysis by an accounting professor.

Professor Ivan Marinovic, who teaches accounting at Stanford University, analyzed language used in University of Chicago course titles and descriptions between 2012 and 2025 for his analysis, published at the Heterodox STEM Substack.

He found the use of “progressive” language, such as “equity” and “intersectional” has doubled, compared to the use of “Western canon” words, such as “Bible” and “Western civilization.”

Lightning rarely ever strikes the same place twice, so the fact that higher education is experiencing yet another case of self-awareness is a miraculous occurrence. 

The Harvard Medical School (HMS) released a report on April 21, 2026 following an assessment on the state of open inquiry and public discourse at HMS. This yearlong assessment began in May 2025 and was led by the HMS Open Inquiry Working Group (OIWG), culminating in a 40-page report that offers 11 key recommendations to “serve as a roadmap for fostering and advancing a culture at HMS that is dedicated to open inquiry and respectful discourse.”

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from requiring colleges and universities to collect and report admissions data disaggregated by race and gender, Reuters reported.

The temporary restraining order, issued by U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor IV in Boston, comes in response to a lawsuit filed last week by 17 Democratic states over the administration’s demand that colleges and universities complete the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement survey by March 18. Saylor’s order extends the deadline through March 25 “to permit a hearing and orderly resolution of the issues.”

“I’ve had the tremendous privilege of knowing so many fantastic students at Princeton, who I know will become extraordinary military leaders. And I think that it would be a massive shame if that potential was eliminated,” the student said in response to an announcement that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ’03 made on Feb. 27. In a video posted on social media, Hegseth announced that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) will end sponsorship for graduate students at Princeton and other Ivy League institutions beginning in the 2026–27 academic year.

University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince’ that there are “a dozen active-duty military graduate students currently enrolled at Princeton, representing all four branches of the U.S. Armed services with all but two of those students enrolled at SPIA.” As the policy currently stands, active-duty service members may be unable to attend Princeton for graduate school while remaining in service.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that immigration provisions that allowed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revoke student visas had a chilling effect on noncitizen student journalists at the Stanford Daily. Wise wrote that portions of two federal immigration provisions are unconstitutional when used against noncitizens for speech protected by the First Amendment. 

The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation brought the lawsuit alongside two anonymous students unaffiliated with Stanford, though one student was later dismissed from the case. The plaintiffs were represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.

It’s time for conservative faculty to stop “keeping their heads down until tenure.” Universities need bold, excellent conservative scholars—not undercover ones—to strengthen their institutions. Having worked at a free-market think tank before academia, my sympathies were clear. Yet as the only openly right-wing faculty member in my college, I earned tenure, served as program director, and became department chair. Here is my advice.

Sara Spurgeon, an English professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has been teaching literature for 20 years. But preparing for the spring 2026 semester was the first time she was forced to submit her course materials through a portal to be evaluated by an artificial-intelligence program. It flags anything that might violate new rules laid out by the university chancellor, including a prohibition on the “advocacy/promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” and a requirement—now Texas state law—that “only two sexes, male and female, are recognized.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Tuesday vacated the district court decision that ordered the University of Pennsylvania to turn over the names and contact information of Jewish employees to the Trump administration. 

Though the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had already withdrawn its subpoena, the American Association of University Professors, a party to the case, still considers the decision a “significant victory” that will protect other institutions from similar probes.

The decision by the American Anthropological Association to expel a panel (“Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby”) from its 2023 annual meeting — on the manifestly false grounds that the panelists’ belief in a biological sex binary “contradicts … settled science” — remains an open wound disfiguring the face of the discipline. 

So it is no surprise that the Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich, in his critique of the state of anthropology (released last week, it is the fifth field-specific supplement to the Vanderbilt/WashU “Report on the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences”) spends several pages on the controversy. Why, he wonders, did the Princeton anthropologist Carolyn Rouse, the AAA’s current president, tell the Chronicle that, if you are an anthropologist who considers biological sex to be binary, perhaps “you want to kill babies” born with atypical sex chromosomes?

Higher education groups representing administrators and faculty filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a recent executive order that threatens to strip federal contracts from colleges and other organizations over their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The coalition — which also includes a faculty group at the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as the National Association of Minority Contractors and one of its local chapters — took aim at this definition in the new lawsuit. The groups argued that the definition is overly broad and encompasses lawful practices that “routinely, necessarily, and legally recognize and vary based on race.”

The Iowa Board of Regents voted Tuesday to hire the first permanent director for the civics center at the University of Iowa, despite the interim director’s call to suspend the search. The board offered the position leading Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom to Carson Holloway, currently the chair of the political science department and interim chair of the philosophy department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

This year, the conservative publisher Encounter Books published his No Liberty to Libel: The Constitutional Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan, in which Holloway argues the Supreme Court should throw out that landmark case, which increased journalists’ defenses against defamation lawsuits. He’s also authored and co-edited books on Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

Last month, Yale University released a striking report acknowledging that public trust in higher education is eroding — and that universities themselves bear responsibility. The report’s authors offer a candid recognition of the depth of this crisis, citing a recent  Pew Research Center poll indicating that 70% of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction.

Reports like Yale’s point to real issues: cost, transparency and questions about academic culture. But recognition is not the same as a reckoning.

In Princeton, we have access to opportunities that can enrich our experience of the anniversary. Walking our university’s campus every day makes it easy to take for granted the footsteps of greatness we follow. However, I believe that reflecting on Princeton’s role in the Revolution – the legacy of which surrounds us in the form of buildings, monuments, and documents – will help us gain a deeper appreciation of our history and lead us to recommit to the values we hold dear as Americans.

Professor George explained that he does not believe there is “one single uniquely correct model for colleges and universities.” The success of College of the Ozarks demonstrates the strength of its distinctive mission—not the need for every college to adopt the same model.

On April 10, 2026, a committee of 10 professors at Yale University published a report examining issues including the suppression of free speech. The Daily Princetonian published an article outlining perspectives from multiple Princeton professors on the report and its potential implications for Princeton. PFS released a related editorial, Yale issues a clarion call for change, joining other leading universities. Where is Princeton? PFS put Yale’s report in the context of the growing consensus amongst a widening circle who believe University leaders must take responsibility for their role in reaching this critical point. President Eisgruber is not among this list of reformers.

About two-thirds of grades at Harvard College last school year were A’s. That doesn’t count A-minuses, which were another 18 percent, meaning fewer than one in six grades were a B-plus or lower. You might have guessed grading at Ivy League schools was lenient, though not this lenient.

Grade inflation — like the inflation of a currency — is a collective action problem. Professors increase the share of A’s they hand out because they know other professors are doing so and breaking from the herd would have costs. Just 35 percent of grades at Harvard were A’s in the 2012-2013 academic year, but the number climbed at a rapid clip and then surged during the covid pandemic.

As the University undergoes budget reduction measures, the Board of Trustees has officially approved the operating budget for the 2026–2027 fiscal year. In a report recommending key budget parameters, the University signaled the beginning of a “gradual reduction” in graduate student enrollment, asked academic and administrative units to trim budgets, and revealed curtailed funding available for faculty raises and graduate students. 

While subject to change, the total operating budget for fiscal year 2027, which runs from July 2026 to June 2027, is currently set at $3.407 billion — a small increase from this year’s projected spending of $3.336 billion.

Four years ago, a user on a subreddit for Princeton asked, “What are some easy but interesting distribution requirement fillers for LA, SA, EM, EC? I’m basically asking for the humanities side of ‘rocks for jocks.’” This sentiment remains widespread at Princeton. During course selection periods, I often encounter inquiries on apps like Reddit or Fizz about easy classes to fulfill Princeton’s distribution requirements.

It’s time we say the quiet part out loud: many Princeton students are gaming the system. Rather than exploring the foundations and methodologies of a broad range of disciplines, they’re engineering the narrowest possible encounters with classes outside of their comfort zone and interests.

It’s like clockwork. War breaks out. Then come the calls for censorship. After the war with Iran began over the weekend, the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest tweeted “Marg bar Amrika” — Persian for “death to America.” The group is not a recognized student organization at Columbia University, and it’s unclear who operates its X account. But that didn’t stop demands for punishment.

The group’s tweet is unquestionably protected speech. The Supreme Court has twice held that even flag burning — often a visceral, symbolic expression of contempt for the nation — is constitutionally protected. As the Court famously declared, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

The Princeton chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) met Monday afternoon for a discussion surrounding academic freedom and the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education. 

Fewer than 30 faculty members attended the meeting, compared to the over 50 members present at the chapter’s inaugural meeting. Faculty members reformed the Princeton chapter of the AAUP last March amid attacks on higher education from the Trump administration. Since then, they have convened monthly to discuss updates and to identify threats to higher education.

As I complete my undergraduate studies at Princeton University, I find myself reflecting on the purpose of education. This article aims to articulate my understanding of education in an abstract sense and to advance a normative argument grounded in the classical tradition. I address more concrete implications of the historical vocation of education in greater depth in my essay published last October by PFS,The Ideal of the University.

On February 19, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom hosted Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, to discuss his forthcoming book Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times, co-authored with Howard Gillman. Chemerinsky described universities as operating in a moment of political pressure, as debates over Israel–Palestine, race, gender identity, and other charged issues intensify scrutiny of campus speech.

Throughout the talk, Chemerinsky argued that free speech is truly tested when we defend free expression we detest.

by Leslie Spencer, '79

Hardly a day goes by without national media spotlighting controversies involving free speech and academic freedom at universities across the country.  In California, Stanford Law School is scrambling to repair the damage done to its reputation when...

In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.

However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.

Renowned legal scholar and public intellectual Cass Sunstein joins John Tomasi to examine one of the most important and contentious questions in higher education today.

Drawing on his decades of experience at institutions including the University of Chicago and Harvard, Sunstein reflects on what universities get right, where they fall short, and why debates over viewpoint diversity have become so central to the future of academic life. Offering both philosophical reflection and practical insight, Sunstein explores the tensions between academic freedom and institutional accountability, the role of administrators in shaping intellectual culture, and why ideological homogeneity may pose risks even when everyone involved is acting in good faith.

Virginia Tech governing board member John Rocovich has refused to resign after Gov. Abigail Spanberger removed him last week after 16 years. Rocovich stated in a four-page letter addressed to the Secretary of the Commonwealth that he will not resign before his term ends on June 30, 2027. There was no sign of him at the board’s committee meetings on Monday in Blacksburg.

Spanberger’s decision is the latest effort by her administration to shake up governing boards at Virginia’s colleges and universities, amid concerns within the higher education community about the politicization of public university governing bodies. She recently appointed four new members to Tech’s governing board.

The Harvard Crimson reports that “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.’” If so, it’s an initiative that would improve Harvard. But it sure is a big-budget one.

But the point of these rumored endowed professorships at Harvard is to promote “viewpoint diversity,” and the ecosystem for the professors to get hired does not fit the Harvard endowment model. Who will Harvard hire from?

A day after winning election to represent Pennsylvania’s 3rd congressional district in the House of Representatives, Chris Rabb ’92 appeared in a video on Instagram bashing Yale’s negotiations with the Trump administration.

Rabb, a Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is one of a host of alumni who have rebuked Yale’s decision to pursue a voluntary agreement with the Department of Justice over investigations into its admissions processes. In the Wednesday night video, which was posted from the accounts of several progressive organizations based on college campuses, Rabb noted Yale’s billions of dollars in endowment money and posed a question to his alma mater.

The American Association of University Professors has endorsed 11 more Democrats running in U.S. House and Senate races this November, further cementing its evolving role as a political organization.

The association made its first-ever political endorsement in July, throwing its weight behind Abdul El-Sayed during Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary. The endorsement—an opening gambit from the AAUP, which resolved in June to get more aggressive in its defense of higher ed—drew backlash from some members and critics who say the association should maintain political neutrality. But Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, has said for months that getting more politically involved is necessary to protect higher education from an onslaught of federal and state attacks.

The academy has been battered by the turbulence inherent to the digital age. A feudal institution reformed along rigid German lines more than a century ago, the university confronts an environment of instant communication and collapsed categories, defined by a deafening cacophony of voices and a near-infinite supply of information. This development, more even than concerns about “wokeism” and the like on campus, poses the greatest threat to the future of higher education.

Higher education today is reeling from multiple crises. From the incursion of artificial intelligence  into the classroom, to the crackdown on research funding by the Trump administration, the skyrocketing cost of college, and the decline in trust from the American public, it is hard to know what university leaders can do to restore their institutions to their former status as pillars of the country’s progress and prosperity.

Following up on last year’s roundup of convocation speeches and welcome addresses, we took another look at what campus leaders are saying to their communities at the start of the 2026-2027 academic year. Across a non-exhaustive set of speeches at influential universities, several themes stood out. Like last year, civil discourse and constructive disagreement appear to be top of mind for many university leaders, alongside curiosity, uncertainty, and the growing presence of artificial intelligence.

A new episode of the Academic Freedom Podcast has been released. The podcast is sponsored by the Academic Freedom Alliance and the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Yale Law School.

For almost all of the past 65 years, I have been a part of Harvard — from that day in 1960 when I walked up the steps of Thayer South to begin my freshman year, to my time at Harvard Medical School, both as a student and a professor. But never, in all that time, have I been so deeply ashamed of the University, nor as fearful about its future, as I am now.