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.
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.
April 9, 2025
Dear President Eisgruber:
We, the officers of Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), are writing to express our organization’s very deep concerns about the disruption of the program featuring former Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on April 7 and actions of severe antisemitism during and after that program.
A leading House Democrat on Tuesday called for an investigation into new whistleblower allegations that the Trump administration forced universities it deemed politically incorrect into settling antisemitism cases despite flimsy or nonexistent evidence.
There is an important lawsuit being litigated in the Southern District of New York over the limits of free speech and academic freedom for faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Professor Tim Bakken, West Point’s longest-serving civilian law professor, is challenging new Trump Administration regulations that allegedly constitute unconstitutional prior restraints on academic publications and limit academic freedom and free speech.
The official charged with carrying out the Trump administration’s higher-education agenda has a particular diagnosis for what’s ailing colleges.
“We are here because the value of higher education is in question by too many — and at the center of that is our quality-assurance system,” Nicholas Kent, under secretary of education, said in a Tuesday interview. “It is undeniable that accreditors are failing institutions, they’re failing students, and they’re failing taxpayers.”
Anna Krylov
Heterodox at USC, Substack
Excerpt: On October 1st, nine schools—including USC—received a letter from the US Secretary of Education inviting them to proactively join the effort to improve “higher education for the betterment of the country.” The letter announces plans to offer a Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, an agreement that universities will be invited to sign.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: One of the Trump administration’s attempts to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses and in K–12 classrooms has been struck down by a federal district court judge who previously put the guidance on hold.
Judge Stephanie Gallagher declared in the Thursday ruling that the Department of Education broke the law when it tried to withhold grant funding from institutions that practiced DEI based on one of the president’s executive orders and a related guidance letter.
Matan H. Josephy and Laurel M. Shugart
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: A federal judge extended her halt on Donald Trump’s entry ban on holders of Harvard-sponsored visas until next Monday at a hearing where lawyers for Harvard and the federal government sparred over whether the ban is constitutional.
The extension of the temporary restraining order will keep incoming international students’ authorization to enter the U.S. in place until U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs decides whether to cement the pause in a preliminary injunction. Burroughs said at Monday’s hearing that she will issue an opinion within a week.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education has publicly called on Columbia University’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, to take action against the university’s alleged noncompliance with federal nondiscrimination laws.
In a Wednesday news release, officials wrote that Columbia was found to have acted “with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Officials said, “Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.” As a result of that finding, ED called on MSCHE to take action on the matter.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.
FIRE
Excerpt: West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order yesterday to eliminate certain diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in state agencies and organizations that receive state money. While the state may limit certain programs or activities of state agencies, the executive order is written so broadly that it applies to classroom instruction in higher education.
As such, the executive order violates the First Amendment and must be rescinded or amended to make clear that it does not affect what’s discussed in college classrooms.
Katherine Rosman
New York Times
Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.
The administrators are still employed by the university but have been placed on indefinite leave and will not return to their previous jobs.
PEN America
Excerpt: The end of June marks the conclusion of most state legislative sessions. One new educational gag order and one higher education autonomy restriction became law in June, with others in Ohio and Texas going down narrowly to defeat.
After reviewing these new laws, we examine an aspect of higher education governance that has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts and seems likely to figure centrally in next year’s legislative sessions: college and university accreditation.
by Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post
The Florida Board of Education has forbidden the teaching of gender identity and sexuality throughout all grades in K-12 public schools, extending a nearly year-old legislative ban on such lessons from kindergarten through third grade.
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.
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.”
Danielle Shapiro
The Free Press
Excerpt: Last night at Princeton, Jewish students were called “inbred swine,” told to “go back to Europe,” and taunted with gestures of the Hamas triangle by masked protesters. Sadly, slurs like these have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests at my college in the months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, but university president Christopher Eisgruber insists he is “proud of the campus climate at Princeton.”
This was a new low. At a place where we’re taught to respect and uphold the values of free speech, SJP went so far as to pull a fire alarm, literally silencing speech, and even bragged about it.
Irene Kim
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Department of African American Studies (AAS) held a Black History Month Forum called “What’s Behind the Attacks on DEI,” on Feb. 26, moderated by Professor Tera W. Hunter, chair of the department.
The four panelists — Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. GS ’97, Tera W. Hunter, Naomi Murakawa, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor — are all professors in the department.
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.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: Charlie Kirk was shot during an event at Utah Valley University today. Details of the incident are still unfolding.
Political violence is never an acceptable response to speech. Free speech allows us to settle our differences peacefully and is essential to a free and democratic society.
Our thoughts are with Charlie Kirk and his family.
On Friday, January 23, 2026, several students from Princeton University marched to the top of Capitol Hill, joining tens of thousands of Americans in the National March for Life. Originating just months after the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), the National March for Life inaugurated the first major public conversation on the sanctity of life and a constitutional protection of the unborn. Today, four years after the overturn of Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the march still serves as a platform for individuals to express their hopes and visions for the future of the Pro-Life movement.
Having experienced the tangible and transformative power of free speech evident in the march, four Princeton students have graciously agreed to share thoughts both about their participation in the march and also about the overall experience with pro-life dialogue on campus.
On February 10, 2026, PEN America, joined by a broad group of 36 organizational partners, wrote to the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University to request that they rescind two policies, passed in fall 2025, that have resulted in the censorship of academic courses across the institution, and the announced closure of the University’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program.
The letter explains that these policies are not only a threat to academic freedom, but, put simply, that “Censorship undermines the quality of education that faculty can offer students.” As recent news reports are making clear, these policies are limiting students’ access to education, particularly when it comes to course content related to race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Tal Fortgang ‘17
When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber spoke at Harvard on November 5, 2025, he expressed what to his detractors may have sounded like an epiphany. “There’s a genuine civic crisis in America,” he said, noting how polarization and social-media amplification have made civil discourse uniquely difficult. Amid that crisis, he concluded, colleges must retain “clear time, place, and manner rules” for protest, and when protesters violate those rules, the university must refuse to negotiate. As he warned: “If you cede ground to those who break the rules … you encourage more rule-breaking, and you betray the students and scholars who depend on this university to function.”
Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: In a recent op-ed for Time Magazine, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 ostensibly affirms the value of student protest. But reading between the lines, his piece is at best an ambivalent defense of campus activism, vacillating between qualified praise and condescension.
The piece suggests that student protests are just manifestations of misguided youthful zeal, and that, as a vehicle for social change, they’re always inferior to his ideal of rational discussion. Eisgruber describes student movements and protesters, by turns, as “naive,” “ill-considered,” “oversimplified,” and “irritating” — never as courageous, virtuous, or necessary.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: College students—particularly those who identify as conservative—are less likely to tolerate controversial speech than they were last year, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual survey.
For the 2026 edition of its free speech rankings, FIRE surveyed over 68,000 students from 257 colleges and universities in the U.S. In a question about six hypothetical speakers—three with what are widely considered conservative views and three with traditionally liberal beliefs—the share of students who said the speakers should be allowed to speak on campus dropped by at least five percentage points in all six cases.
