Zach Gardner
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: On Wednesday, prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus, silenced in the middle of a debate with a liberal influencer. The killing was a horrific spectacle, both in its sheer violence and tragic symbolism. It was first a human tragedy, but it was also a tragedy for the idea that politics can, and must, be conducted through reasoned discussion. Here at Princeton, it has reignited the debate over the state and role of free speech on our campus.
Questioning the prevailing narrative about the "Cornell seven" case is bound to create controversy. And at Columbia University, two student journalists drew condemnation for their views on the case from the unlikeliest of places: a college free speech group.
On October 13, Barnard junior Christina Ma and Columbia junior Nikos Mohammadi published an article called "The 'Cornell Seven' Is Really About Liberalism" in the Columbia Sundial, an independent student publication. The piece argued that the discourse surrounding the alleged rape at Cornell University infantilizes women by omitting the possibility that in a post–sexual revolution, liberal society, women may make regrettable but consensual choices.
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.
By Tal Fortgang ‘17
With students returning to campus for the start of the new academic year, and demonstrations from radical groups sure to crop up on quads once again, one question universities face is how to balance robust academic freedom with universities’ competing interests. Schools cannot live on academic freedom alone; the functioning of a university requires standards, rules, and regulations to allow students and faculty to flourish. Yet university leadership, especially at elite schools where abstract thinking is prized and questions are regularly left unanswered as matters of mere intellectual exercise, has not even begun to articulate a principled way of weighing these matters. They can begin to do so by considering an unlikely – and unwitting – source of wisdom: Princeton professor Lorgia García Peña’s recent address to the Socialism 2025 conference, on using one’s academic perch to dismantle the academy.
Robert Pondiscio
American Enterprise Institute
Excerpt: The conservative education watchdog group Defending Education has done important and often brave work exposing ideological overreach in K–12 schools. I’ve cited their reports and findings many times and consider them friends and compatriots, so I don’t say this lightly: they’ve badly misfired with their new report, Consultants in the Classroom: Making Big Money in K–12 Schools. So badly, in fact, that they should withdraw the report and issue a correction and apology.
by Princetonians for Free Speech
On April 4, we published a Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) editorial entitled “Princeton in the Crosshairs,” in which we discussed the multiple attacks on universities being launched by the Trump Administration and listed reasons why Princeton was now likely to become a major target, much like Columbia and Harvard have been. In the few weeks since we published that editorial, there have been very important developments, involving universities in general and Princeton specifically. The bottom line is that Princeton is noweven more in the crosshairs, with investigations and lawsuits coming from several directions. Yet Princeton still does not admit it has problems and will not take the most basic steps to address them, steps that other universities are increasingly taking.
In August, Indiana University Bloomington sanctioned professor Benjamin Robinson after a student complained that Robinson had discussed in class his own experiences of being arrested and jailed during pro-Palestinian rallies.
Robinson said the examples were relevant to the lecture for his Introduction to German Thought and Culture course, which discusses philosophical concepts. Robinson, who received a letter of reprimand that will be in his permanent personnel file, is among at least two professors disciplined by Indiana’s flagship university under a two-year-old state law aimed at promoting intellectual diversity in college classrooms.
Speaking at the American Whig-Cliosophic Society on Feb. 5, J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami acknowledged that many people who come to his events are already “his people” — they agree with him and are excited to hear their position reaffirmed. J Street is a nonprofit and lobby that self-describes as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy.” Although Ben-Ami took questions from students who, in turn, considered his positions too supportive of Israel or not supportive enough, Ben-Ami is correct that, in general, political speakers preach to their own choirs.
This phenomenon does not stop at FitzRandolph Gate, and it undermines the value of inviting acclaimed speakers to Princeton.
In his new book Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber argues that all is well with America’s universities when it comes to free speech and academic freedom. He takes issue with the view that over the last few decades America’s colleges and universities have lost their way – chilling free speech and undermining viewpoint diversity and academic freedom – as they have drifted towards activism and political orthodoxy. Eisgruber’s view, which he has stated in numerous forums in recent months, stands in sharp contrast to the widespread critique of current college campus culture.
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:
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.
There is a particular kind of bad idea that thrives under the protection of academic freedom. Such a toxic philosophy does not contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Rather, it gains prominence within the academy precisely because it systematically poisons that marketplace from within. When it comes under attack from outside university gates, campus administrators invoke free inquiry and end up defending it as precisely the kind of controversial matter academics must be free to explore; professors assign it as cutting-edge gospel; students come to think of it as precisely what they’re attending college to absorb.
Third Worldism is such an idea. Though it is not campus-grown like critical theory, it has found the American university to be an almost perfect habitat.
The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.
However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.
A discussion about Fizz and the role of social media in our discourse took place at Princeton University on December 3rd, 2025, hosted by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) and funded by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), While the discussion has been lauded as an example of what can come about through open and civil exchange of ideas, several questions remain worth considering. What is the place of anonymous speech in our society? Should someone take responsibility for the things they say? Or has our public discourse been hollowed out by social media to the point where online commentary should be considered performative?
Annabel Green '26
Before declaring my major in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), I had considered many majors such as classics, history, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. I settled on SPIA because it offers a disciplinary breadth through which I can narrow down my tentative interests.
Early into the major, I was sympathetic to the political orthodoxy through which many Princetonians operate which I would summarize as characterized by critical theory (i.e. neo-Marxist concepts of group identity and power struggle). However, I soon found myself increasingly in misalignment with the prevailing narrative and the deep grievance and resentment my fellow classmates seemed to feel toward the current state of the country.
Annabel Green
Princetonians for Free Speech
Excerpt: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise, follows protagonist Amory Blaine, who enjoys a particularly affluent life as an undergraduate at Princeton. Fitzgerald writes of Princeton:
Marisa Warman Hirschfield ‘27
I worry that many progressives are abandoning free speech as a core value of our movement, endorsing it only when politically advantageous. “We believe in a diverse set of thoughts,” a University of Wisconsin student told the Associated Press earlier this year. “But when your thought is predicated on the subjugation of me or my people, or to a generalized people, then we have problems.” FIRE president Greg Lukianoff told the New York Times that in the current era, libertarians and conservatives are more often the champions of free speech.
Khoa Sands ‘26
Attend a free speech-themed event at Princeton, or read any of our articles on the Princetonians for Free Speech website and you will encounter a familiar phrase, so ubiquitous it has almost become cliche: the “truth-seeking mission of the university.” Many defenders of academic freedom frame the debate in terms of a conflict over the fundamental telosof the academy (I myself have done this several times.) Is the mission of the university the pursuit of truth, or is it a socio-political goal? Whatever this socio-political goal, whether the radical social equality of Herbert Marcuse or the fascism of the Nazis, when the university dedicates itself towards political ends, truth suffers, freedom is extinguished and the academic vocation is compromised. Therefore, in order to protect free speech in the academy, we must reiterate and defend the mission of the university as the pursuit of truth. But what if we have it all wrong?
By Khoa Sands ‘26
The idea of decline has always held a certain allure to historians and politicians alike. The high prophet of this declinism was Oswald Spengler, whose 1918 book The Decline of the West has become a motivating treatise for the American New Right. For these modern-day doomsayers, the United States is predestined to ruin, beset by internal crises of spiritedness and domestic politics as well as external threats of rising challengers to the US-led world order. These concerns are not unfounded – a revanchist China will be the largest geopolitical crisis of the twenty-first century and any casual observer of American politics can attest to the sorry state of domestic politics in America today.
A PFS Editorial
Last week was a good week for free speech at Princeton. Three separate events were held covering controversial topics that had drawn protests and even shout-downs at other universities, and there was only one minor and appropriately carried out protest. Furthermore, university administrators addressed all concerns of the event sponsors, supplied on-site security, and in one case, reminded a small group of protestors of the rules on protesting before the event.
On August 29, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke alongside Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber at a mandatory freshman-orientation event ostensibly meant to highlight the university’s commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom. More than 1,000 Princeton freshmen were required to attend this event as a part of their regular sequence of orientation activities; I was there as an undergraduate academic adviser for freshmen and out of my own personal curiosity.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
If you combined two of Princeton’s three most popular A.B. majors — SPIA and Politics — you could nearly fill McCosh 50. With so many students taking courses about politics and policy, one might expect the American Whig-Cliosophic Society senate — the Society’s home of parliamentary-style debate — to be a vibrant center of debate on campus. Yet the benches of the senate chamber frequently lie empty.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced more than $75 million in awards, including $10 million grants to two public universities with “civics” schools and to an education network headquartered at a conservative think tank.
The $10 million going to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education is for a project dubbed Recovering the Humanities in Service of the University. Kelly Hanlon, FEHE’s operations director, said the foundation “does not have any political, ideological or religious affiliation, nor does it fund policy work.” But FEHE is based at—and shares its president with—the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank next to Princeton University’s campus.
On Jan. 2, the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life released a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) regarding a new University policy regulating audio and visual recording. The policy classifies any recording made at events deemed private — where not all participants have consented — as “secret or covert,” placing such recordings in violation of University rules.
However, recording at public events, such as advertised public speaker events, is permitted unless the speaker, performer, or party hosting the event explicitly states otherwise. “The policy does not cover meetings open to all current members of the resident University community or to the public,” according to the FAQ website.
