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.
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In a few minutes, all of you will walk out of this stadium as newly minted graduates of this University. Before you do, however, long-standing tradition permits the University president to offer a few remarks about the path that lies ahead.
In having a truly diverse group of students share their perspectives, Princeton makes known that there exists a home for every viewpoint. However, as much as I believe this claim to be true, there are unfortunately those who do not. It is easy to dismiss the Princeton administration and culture as entirely polarizing and ideologically biased. In fact, it is true that many here hold the same dominant perspective . But to focus on this fact alone, to rest our entire judgement on one such observation, runs the dangerous risk of neglecting the clear and persistent efforts of this University to encourage every student—even the conservative ones—to share the beliefs that he or she so earnestly pursues.
On April 15, I had the pleasure of hosting, on behalf of the Cliosophic Society, Ambassador John Bolton at Princeton’s Nassau Inn for a discussion entitled “The Room Where It Happened: National Security Decisions Under Pressure.” Bolton’s legacy as a leading professional in American foreign policy offered more than a glimpse behind the diplomatic curtain; it invited a critical examination of the processes and personalities that have shaped recent American engagement with the world.