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Now we can get to the heart of the book. Eisgruber’s novel approach to campus free speech issues builds on this foundation, to argue that campus free speech issues aren’t really campus issues, and aren’t really about free speech. Rather, campuses reflect national divisions in microcosm, and the division is not about speech and its discontents, but about “the meaning of respect and, ultimately, what it means to treat people as equals.” He ultimately concludes that while speech has to foster constructive dialogue and truth-seeking, the controversies making waves are about the terms on which that constructive dialogue occurs—which is a good thing, as Eisgruber and his critics alike agree—and that universities are closer to being models (albeit imperfect ones) than sources of the problem. It’s this surprising take that gives Terms of Respect its punch and has made Eisgruber a minor folk hero among academia’s defenders.
In a series of February memos, the University informed faculty and non-union staff of raise cuts and benefit reductions for the coming fiscal year, with a decrease in personnel also on the horizon.
The adjustments to employee pay and benefits came shortly after the annual State of the University letter from University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 reported that the University would be tightening its budget primarily due to declining long-term endowment return expectations and continued uncertainty over federal funding. Eisgruber discussed some of the raise cuts at his annual Council of the Princeton University Community town hall on Feb. 9.
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.”
In PFS Supports Two Student and Faculty Events that Advance Free Expression, Executive Director Angela Smith highlights PFS support for two important on-campus events that happened in February, one organized by students, the other by faculty.
“Free speech and open inquiry are not abstract ideals – they are the lifeblood of a healthy university community. At Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), we strive to advance those principles through practical, tangible support for students and faculty who put them into action. As such, we are pleased to tell you about two recent events at Princeton, supported by PFS, that reflect this mission in powerful ways.”
Read more about these events, why PFS supports them, and why you should support PFS.
And read coverage of these two events in the Student Corner below, written by our writing fellows Annabel Green ‘26 and Joseph Gonzalez ‘28.
RocaNews is one of those new platforms growing by the seemingly simple acts of building trust and conducting on-the-ground reporting in the places the New York Times promised to do. They believe their readers are smart enough to form their own opinions. At least that was being claimed on February 19th in McCosh Hall at an event entitled RocaNews, Non-Partisan Reporting, and the Fight against Legacy Media organized by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC). RocaNews currently has 2 million instagram followers, 651,000 YouTube subscribers, and a daily newsletter sent to over 200,000 subscribers. If that growth is not enough to convince you that they are doing something right, you can see for yourself through a myriad of ways, all focused on ease of access and user experience. Roca uses Instagram and newsletters to build a go-to news community based on factual, on-the-ground reporting.
Texas Tech leaders have somehow convinced themselves that race and gender are not legitimate topics to discuss in a psychology class. That’s absurd on its face: You can’t teach human behavior while treating basic dimensions of human identity as off-limits.
Will Crescioni, a lecturer in Texas Tech’s Department of Psychological Sciences, submitted his course materials for his honors-level psychology course the same day the Texas Tech system issued a memo ordering universities to review courses and ensure faculty do not “promote or otherwise inculcate” certain ideas related to race and gender. Just over a month later — and only two days before the semester began — his course was scrapped. His offense? Refusing to alter his course content.
The Manhattan Institute offers a simple proposal: state legislatures should expand oversight of their public universities. With powers clarified by lawmakers and a new mandate to exercise their existing powers, university board members can act as a counterweight to the excesses of university faculty and administrators—specifically, through greater involvement in the hiring of administrators, the approval of faculty lines, and the creation of core curricula.
On Friday, approximately 200 students and community members gathered at the Fountain of Freedom to protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. The protest was the first campus rally of the spring semester and was part of a “national shutdown” initially organized by protesters in Minneapolis.
Abigail Saguy, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, was a little bit nervous to teach a course called “Sociology of Gender” again. She’d last done so in 2019, and found the atmosphere increasingly combative, saying student activists in her course had attempted to “police” her readings and word choice. So in 2024 she tried something new: She got students to debate each other virtually.
In 2023, FIRE raised the following question: What’s going on in Florida? In light of recent affronts to academic freedom in the Sunshine State, we regret to raise this question once again.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her legal team have dropped their appeal of a federal court ruling that blocked the department from requiring colleges to eradicate all race-based curriculum, financial aid and student services or lose federal funding.
The motion to dismiss was jointly approved by both parties in the case Wednesday, ending a nearly yearlong court battle over the department’s Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter that declared race-based programming and policies illegal. If institutions didn’t comply within two weeks, department officials threatened to open investigations and rescind federal funding.
A trial began Friday for five current and former Stanford University students who occupied the university president’s offices during a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024 — in a rare instance of demonstrators facing trial for actions from the wave of campus protests that year.
Prosecutors accused the demonstrators of spray-painting on the building, breaking windows and furniture, disabling security cameras and splattering a red liquid described as fake blood on items throughout the offices. The university is seeking $329,000 in restitution.
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.
The Trump administration wants to streamline its existing higher education accountability measures with a new earnings test, holding all postsecondary programs to the same standard—regardless of the certification level or institution type involved. But doing so could water down an existing accountability measure for certificates and for-profit programs.
Under a new policy proposal, released by the Department of Education late last week, undergraduate programs would be required to show that on average their graduates earn more than a working adult with a high school degree. Programs that fail to meet those standards for multiple years could lose access to all federal loans.
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes the current trend on college campuses of starting “civil dialogue” programs. These programs are designed to help students engage with diverse ideas in more constructive ways. This effort is commendable but the question is: Will these programs work?
Even as campuses embrace civil dialogue, there is a danger that some university leaders are quietly redefining “open inquiry.” And they are doing so in a way that makes campus dialogue more narrow and less intellectually demanding than it ought to be.
Attorneys with the US Department of Justice have reportedly said they felt pressured to accuse the University of California of discriminating against Jewish students and faculty, at the urging of the Trump administration, in what one lawyer described as a “hit job”.
Nine attorneys, some of whom requested anonymity, shared insider accounts with the Los Angeles Times of the federal government’s investigation into California’s research university system. The attorneys said they felt pushed to conclude the UC had violated the law before they had determined the facts. All of the attorneys eventually resigned.
A group of students and professors at public universities across Alabama are asking an appeals court to halt a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools and prohibits the endorsement of what Republican lawmakers dubbed “divisive concepts” related to race and gender.
The Alabama measure, which took effect in October 2024, is part of a wave of proposals from Republican lawmakers across the country taking aim at DEI programs on college campuses.
Collin Binkley
Associated Press
Some of the country’s most prestigious colleges are enrolling record numbers of low-income students — a growing admissions priority in the absence of affirmative action.
At Princeton University, this year’s freshman class has more low-income students than ever. One in four are eligible for federal Pell grants, which are scholarships reserved for students with the most significant financial need. That’s a leap from two decades ago, when fewer than 1 in 10 were eligible. “The only way to increase socioeconomic diversity is to be intentional about it,” Princeton President ChristopherEisgruber said in a statement. “Socioeconomic diversity will increase if and only if college presidents make it a priority.”
Garrett Gravley
FIRE
Imagine wearing an “I Voted” sticker to class and having the school investigate you for it. Or handing out pocket editions of the Constitution on campus for Constitution Day, only for your school to deem this disruptive.
On Nov. 7, individuals identifying with Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine left chalkboard messages around campus while classes were out of session. These messages read, “Trinity is suppressing freedom of assembly,” “Disclose Divest Protest,” “Trinity Invests in Genocide,” “You are on stolen land,” and “Free Palestine.” That evening, Trinity President Daniel Lugo emailed the campus community, announcing an investigation of the messages for disruption, intimidation, and harassment.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
The University of Oklahoma put a lecturer on administrative leave last week for allegedly exercising “viewpoint discrimination” five days after a different instructor was placed on leave for alleged religious discrimination.
Kelli Alvarez, an assistant teaching professor focused on race and ethnicity in literature and film, allegedly encouraged students to miss her English composition class to attend a protest in support of Mel Curth, a graduate teaching assistant in the psychology department who was removed from teaching after a student filed a religious discrimination complaint against her. Alvarez said she would excuse the absences of students who attended the protest. But according to university officials, she did not extend the same offer to students who intended to miss class that day to “express a counter-viewpoint.”
Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin
Chronicle of Higher Education
Robert P. George, the conservative legal scholar and moral philosopher, has spent the past four decades at Princeton University assiduously cultivating an ever-widening network of influence. For parts of the religious right, he’s an intellectual lodestar on issues including gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research. The Catholic journal Crisis once quipped that “if there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy, its leaders probably meet in George’s kitchen.”
Over the course of two interviews — the first conducted from his home and the second from his office on the Princeton campus — George discussed the risk of indoctrination from the left and the right, the need for a more ideologically diverse professoriate, and how academe made itself vulnerable to attack by the Trump administration. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rose Horowitch
The Atlantic
Administering an exam used to be straightforward: All a college professor needed was an open room and a stack of blue books. At many American universities, this is no longer true. Professors now struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation, which may entitle them to extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of otherwise-prohibited technology.
No one should be kept from taking a class, for example, because they are physically unable to enter the building where it’s taught. Over the past decade and a half, however, the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations—often, extra time on tests—has grown at a breathtaking pace.
Samuel J. Abrams
FIRE
The recent controversies surrounding Charlie Kirk — and the extraordinary reaction that followed his campus appearances and commentary — offer a revealing window into the fragile state of free expression in contemporary America.
Two recent New York Times opinion pieces examining the backlash were right to highlight how quickly public discourse has hardened into a zero-sum contest in which speech itself becomes grounds for professional punishment, social ostracism, and institutional retaliation. But the deeper lesson is even more unsettling: Free speech is increasingly treated not as a constitutional principle, but as a conditional privilege — one that applies only when speech is politically comfortable.
