Excerpt: On July 4, 2020, a few hundred of my then-colleagues at Princeton University signed an open letter endorsing a number of student demands made in the name of “anti-racism” and proposing such alarming policies as the creation of a faculty committee to police “racist behaviors.” Four days later, I published a lone dissent in which I acknowledged the signatories’ right to express their views. I also suggested—and a month later, Conor Friedersdorf came to a similar conclusion—that most of them probably didn’t believe all the things to which they were putting their name or maybe hadn’t even read the document.
Jump to October 7, 2023. In the days after Hamas invaded Israel and committed unspeakable acts of brutality, I was pleasantly surprised that Princeton faculty didn’t issue another such letter. Perhaps, I thought, they had learned that it was unwise to support groups like Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which had scheduled a pro-Hamas “teach-in” for the same time as a previously announced vigil for the Israelis whom Hamas had slaughtered and issued a screed blaming Israel for Hamas’s evil.
Oliver Wu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 spoke about defending free speech on college campuses during a book talk at the new Princeton University Art Museum’s Grand Hall on Wednesday. The event was open to University students, faculty, and staff, but had limited spots. Eisgruber spoke for over half an hour before taking questions from the audience.
Eisgruber noted the tense climate for higher education under the second Trump administration. “American research universities are the best in the world, but today, they face unprecedented and withering attacks from our country’s own government,” he said. “Much of this attack is both unlawful and broadly unpopular.”
By Tal Fortgang ‘17
What is an Ivy League university? The simplicity of the question is deceiving. Everyone knows what Harvard is. Except increasingly, no one does – not the students who attend, and certainly not the administrators who shape the institution, thereby answering that question every day.
Isaac Barsoum
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: On Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, Sunrise Princeton, alongside the Princeton Progressive Coalition, organized a rally of more than 100 demonstrators. We called on the University to act as a leader by defending life-or-death climate research, divesting from weapons manufacturers to end the genocide in Palestine, protecting immigrants and international students, and safeguarding academic freedom in a time when rising authoritarianism threatens progress across the world.
As a lead organizer for this rally, I learned an important lesson: Princeton students care a lot about progressive change, and are willing to publicly display their support because they’re optimistic that their actions can make a difference on a policy level. They just feel like they’re too damn busy.