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Excerpt: Ronen Shoval, a 2022-23 associate research scholar with the James Madison Program and lecturer in politics at Princeton, faced opposition from students, faculty, and locals while on campus due to his affiliations with a right-wing Israeli movement some have said has similarities with fascism.
Shoval founded Zionist nongovernmental organization Im Tirtzu in 2006, though he told PAW via email that he severed ties with the group more than a decade ago. In 2013, a Jerusalem district court ruled the group had characteristics similar to fascist organizations, though in 2015, the nation’s Supreme Court dismissed that ruling.
Amelia Freund
My name is Amelia Freund and I am honored to be serving as President of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) this year. An Army brat hailing from the DC-Maryland-Virginia area, I am a member of the great class of 2028, the Butler College Class Council, and the Politics Department. In high school I read On Liberty by John Stuart Mill several times over in my philosophy courses, each time I found it engaging and inspirational. I was particularly drawn in by Mill’s defense of free speech. He believed that for an idea to be true, it must be continuously discussed and debated, requiring broad protections for civic discourse. His argument resonated with me a great deal, and has carried me to countless engagements with freedom of speech since then, both in and out of the classroom.
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.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: About three-quarters of the way into an interview with The Daily Princetonian, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 made a bold pronouncement: “American universities are the best that they’ve ever been.”
Eisgruber has been in the business of speaking up for universities since the beginning of the Trump administration, which has put unprecedented pressure on Princeton and its peer institutions. His new book, “Terms of Respect,” argues, as the book’s subtitle reads, “how colleges get free speech right.” Despite the perception of intolerance on American college campuses, Eisgruber writes, colleges still host thriving and robust discourse.
Seth Akabas '78
August 04, 2023
I can accept that the right to speech is broader than is the right to teach, but even the circumscription of the right to teach should be limited to egregious cases. For example, if Mr. Shoval had uttered such hateful lies as Arab people “harvest organs of” Israelis, have an “unquenchable thirst" for Israeli "blood,” and are “genocidal,” or if Mr. Shoval had denied the facts of the connection of Arab people to lands where they live as “fictional indigenity [sic]”, and justified that denial in overtly racist terms, such as how easily or not people are susceptible to sunburn – as an honoree of the Princeton University English Department in fact said about Jewish Israelis, and had never severed himself from or disavowed those statements, then a circumscription of his right to teach might be appropriate (even while defending his right to speak utter lies and hate). A more than decade old affiliation with an organization, which affiliation has been long severed, however, should not be a grounds for denying the ability to teach.