On December 5, leaders of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), including AFSA president and PFS co-founder Edward Yingling, participated in an important congressional roundtable on free speech on college campuses. AFSA participants also including John Craig, AFSA Treasurer; students from W&L and UVA who are very involved with AFSA members there; and Raj Kannappan of Young America’s Foundation (YAF) and a member of AFSA’s Cornell alumni group member. Other participants were from the Foundation on Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).
Republican House Members, including Rep. Greg Murphy, the organizer, Rep Virginia Foxx, the next chair of the Education and Labor Committee, and other free speech champions, led the discussion. This is the second of these annual free speech roundtables.
The link to the video of the Roundtable is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_AMvnjHq0I
Note: The Alumni Free Speech Alliance is a formal alliance of alumni free speech groups of which PFS was a co-founder. PFS co-founders Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor serve as president and vice-chair, respectively, of AFSA. AFSA has fifteen member alumni groups, including groups from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Stanford and UVA. It is growing rapidly as more and more alumni groups are forming for their universities.
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.