Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reflects on path to the Supreme Court in campus lecture

September 11, 2025 1 min read

Isaac Bernstein and Justus Wilhoit 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ketanji Brown Jackson sat down for an hour-long conversation with Professor Deborah Pearlstein in front of a full house at Richardson Auditorium on Wednesday. Nominated to the Supreme Court in 2022, she discussed her historic path to the nation’s highest court, the challenges of public life, and the lessons that have guided her career.

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Class of 2029: Reject selective views of free speech

September 10, 2025 1 min read

Charlie Yale and Siyeon Lee
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Monday, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) — an alumni-organized nonprofit supposedly committed to reviving viewpoint diversity at Princeton by empowering a “nonpartisan community of alumni” — published a letter in The Princeton Tory titled “A Letter to the Class of ’29 from Princetonians for Free Speech.” 

Why is PFS, which claims to protect students regardless of political identity, publishing a letter to all first years in a journal that only appeals to a select few on this campus? Perhaps it’s because protecting speech that lies beyond the confines of conservatism was never in its interest at all.

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A Letter to the Class of ’29 from Princetonians for Free Speech

September 09, 2025 1 min read

Princetonians for Free Speech

Excerpt: Dear Princeton Class of ’29:

This letter comes to you from the alumni organization, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS). We have existed since you started high school four years ago. We were founded in response to a growing concern that Princeton has drifted from its core mission of the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and towards a narrow activism that threatens free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.

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Commentary: Christopher Eisgruber’s Moronic Inferno

September 08, 2025 1 min read

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. 

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Princeton must retire the Atatürk Professorship

September 04, 2025 1 min read

Greg Arzoomanian
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Ten years ago, Princeton’s Board of Trustees established a special committee to consider the usage of Woodrow Wilson’s name at Princeton. That work resulted in the ultimate removal of Wilson’s name from the School of Public and International Affairs, and the creation of a “Committee on Naming” of the Council of the Princeton University Community to consider similar future issues. 

One naming that especially deserves consideration has to be Princeton’s “Atatürk Professorship in Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies,” which is named for Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey and anti-Armenian figure that inspired Nazi ideology. Just as Princeton exempted Wilson’s name from celebration due to his racist ideologies, it must do the same for the Atatürk Professorship: It must be retired.

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Nuance in the Distraction Age: College Students Can Revive Quality Speech

September 03, 2025 3 min read

By Marisa Warman Hirschfield ‘27

“STUPID AND UGLY WINDMILLS ARE KILLING NEW JERSEY,” wrote President Trump in a recent Truth Social post. “STOP THE WINDMILLS.” A likely interpretation is that Trump blames wind power for New Jersey's 28% energy price hike. 

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