Guillermo Molero
Bloomberg
Excerpt: A crowd of about 20 people assembled at Bobst Hall on Princeton University’s campus, as they do every Tuesday morning, to hear from Robert P. George, the founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.
George was there on a mission to combat the indoctrination of American youth with progressive values. As he sees it, illiberalism had spread rapidly in recent years, culminating in the campus culture wars that roiled quads from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles last year amid protests over the war in Gaza and the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Lia Opperman
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: As some universities scrub diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) websites to comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders targeting diversity efforts, Princeton’s websites have largely remained up.
Lily Halbert-Alexander
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Amid a national decline in study of the humanities, prestigious universities are cutting their entire classics departments. As a discipline, classics may seem to fly under the radar — classics majors comprised less than one percent of Princeton’s graduating Class of 2024. But over the last few years, classics has been the subject of charged conversations tying closely back to Princeton. This has sparked fundamental questions about what to do when books known as great and inspirational are called out for inspiring dangerous political movements.
Christopher Bao and Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Municipal Prosecutor Christopher Koutsouris dropped the trespass charge against David Piegaro ’25 after several hours of testimony by witnesses for Piegaro’s defense in court on Tuesday, Feb. 4. Piegaro still faces an assault charge for an altercation with Assistant Vice President for Public Safety Kenneth Strother on the steps of Whig Hall on April 29 following the occupation of Clio Hall.
Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: This spring, Princeton imposed the kind of penalties that Giberson escaped on students involved in the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Jordan Johnson ’24 was a bystander at a pro-Palestinian protest in the Richardson Auditorium that disrupted President Eisgruber’s Reunions address. Larry Giberson ’23 was an active participant in a violent insurrection intended to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Yet in a blatant perversion of justice, Johnson had his Princeton degree withheld for over a week, and Giberson was quietly granted his diploma on time even after he’d been charged with six violations of the U.S. code.
Leonard Milberg
The Daily Princetonian
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
Editor’s Note: In the process of publishing this piece, The Daily Princetonian took several steps to corroborate the facts the author alleges, including reviewing emails referenced in the piece. The ‘Prince’ was unable to independently verify the conversation between Milberg and Eisgruber or the specifics of the document Milberg alleges Eisgruber asked him to sign. The University declined to comment on the specifics of the conversation.
University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss stated the following in relation to Milberg’s account, “Princeton is grateful for Leonard Milberg’s generous support of the University over many years. The University takes steps to ensure that no donor interferes inappropriately in the conduct of University courses, exhibition, or research. As the University’s gift policies state: ‘Gifts to the University must respect the University’s fundamental commitment to academic freedom and the rigorous and independent pursuit of truth.’”
by George F. Will
Squalls of indignation gust across campuses so frequently that they seem merely performative — synthetic, perfunctory, uninteresting. Princeton’s current contretemps, however, fascinatingly illustrates how wokeness, which lacks limiting principles, limits opposition to itself.
by Eleanor Clemans-Cope, The Daily Princetonian
George F. Will GS ’68 recently took to the pages of the Washington Post, where he is a regular columnist, to announce to the world that wokeness at Princeton is destroying free speech.
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:
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.
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.
Last month’s issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW) fawns over Michael Park ’98, a right-wing lawyer and, since 2018, a U.S. circuit judge. Park’s portrait commands the cover, while the accompanying long-form profile, titled “The Contender,” speculates that he could become Donald Trump’s next nominee to the Supreme Court. The author is P.G. Sittenfeld ’07.
But Sittenfeld is not just any old journalist. Last May, President Donald Trump pardoned Sittenfeld, a one-time rising star in Cincinnati politics, following his conviction on federal bribery and extortion charges in 2022. Sittenfeld, a Democrat, owes his freedom to Trump — the man who nominated his subject Park to his judgeship, and the man with the power to elevate Park further to the nation’s highest court. Nowhere does PAW disclose this striking conflict of interest.
Researchers at Princeton and across the nation who receive federal funding have had a tumultuous year. Come Wednesday, they have one more thing to balance: a new federal public access policy that could cost researchers thousands of dollars more to publish in academic journals.
The new public access policy, known as the Nelson Memo, was released under the Biden administration in 2022 and mandates that any research that is funded by federal agencies be made publicly available at the time of publication.
Enzo Baldanza
Princeton Tory
Excerpt: We hear it all the time: we live in the age of disinformation. Social media users all contain biases and omit/distort truths that make it difficult to know who and what to trust. Our commitment to the right of free expression exacerbates this problem by hindering potential attempts at regulation.
However, free speech boasts an interesting duality as both a solute and a solvent. If free speech can be used to spread disinformation, then it can be used to spread truth as well: counteracting disinformation by using your platform to clarify and promote the whole truth is an ability in all of our wheelhouses.
Teresa Chen and Oliver Wu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Thai pro-democracy figures Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut and Kunthida Rungruengkiat GS spoke on Wednesday at the U.S. premiere of “Breaking the Cycle,” a documentary on the rise and suppression of Thailand’s modern reform movement.
The event was hosted by Thaigers, the Thai Students’ Association on campus and sponsored by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination. Directed by Aekaphong Saransate and Thankrit Duangmaneeporn, “Breaking the Cycle” traces the ascent of the pro-democracy Future Forward Party (FFP) and its founder Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit from the 2019 Thailand election through subsequent court-ordered dissolutions of both FFP and its successor, Move Forward.
Rodrigo Menezes
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Recently, Princeton University announced a policy that would require members of eating clubs and co-ops living in University housing to buy a second meal plan, costing about $900 a year. I, along with all the other members of the Graduate Interclub Council (GICC), believe that this policy would be disastrous for Princeton’s undergraduate experience.
Oliver Wu and Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In September, Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering rebranded its diversity, equity and inclusion committee as the “Office of Culture and Belonging,” while their School of Medicine abruptly shuttered its DEI program. Harvard has pared down its diversity offerings under direct pressure from the Trump administration, most recently canceling an over 50-year-old program that encouraged minority students to apply to the university.
Megan McArdle
Washington Post
Excerpt: As the Trump administration’s war on universities settles into its entrenched phase, it’s given new urgency to a long-simmering debate about whether, and how, academia should pursue viewpoint diversity. This conversation has been happening for decades, mostly between conservatives who want more of it and an academic establishment that wants to leave well enough alone. Now, that conversation has become existential.
Bill Hewitt
National Review
Excerpt: September 30 marks the publication of a new book by Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber, Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right. For those who plan to read the book that ostensibly defends the culture of free speech on campuses, it is worth reviewing the author’s abysmal record on protecting free expression.
Christofer Robles
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Trump administration and its lackeys have used the recent assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk to hide its own suppression of free speech. But conservatives, nationally and at Princeton, are crying wolf.
The death of Kirk is not symptomatic of some leftist guerrilla psyop. American political violence has long been a tool of the right, and the attempt to pin Kirk’s assassination on the left is symptomatic of the real free speech problem at Princeton: dishonesty. Members of the campus right have misrepresented the status of free speech on campus, drawing on a few isolated incidents to paint themselves as the real victims in the debate.
Paul Du Quenoy
Tablet Magazine
Excerpt: Endlessly self-congratulatory, insufferably pedantic, irritatingly repetitive, and self-referential nearly to the point of parody, Eisgruber argues that our system of higher education is, with rare and regrettable exceptions, successfully fulfilling its primary functions. In his opinion, his industry deserves “high marks” for protecting free speech rather than criticism for devaluing it. Academia’s travails indicate that our campuses are merely hapless victims of a larger “civic crisis” besetting American society, not a cause of it.
Endowed with a strong tradition of free expression, in Eisgruber’s strikingly ahistorical view, America has only recently succumbed to political divisions exacerbated by rampant partisanship and pernicious social media use.
