Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Daily Princetonian Editorial Board

Excerpt: Early Thursday morning, the Department of Public Safety arrested two graduate students for taking initial steps to establish encampments in McCosh Courtyard. Princeton authorized arrests within six minutes of the first tents being set up.

Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton students are preparing to set up their own “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” according to documents first obtained by the National Review and independently verified by The Daily Princetonian, following high-profile encampments at Columbia University, Yale University, and other college campuses that have resulted in student arrests. No tents have been erected in the Nassau Hall area — a focal point for previous sit-ins on campus — at time of publication. The documents did not specify a timeline for when the encampment might begin.

In a leaked press release, organizers reiterated previous demands for the University to “divest and dissociate with Israel,” as well as a call for broad transparency in the University’s research and investments. University officials have warned undergraduates that participation in an encampment or occupation may result in disciplinary action, including suspension and expulsion.

Keith Whittington
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Shafik’s actions in New York City may have repercussions across the country as students elsewhere hold their own rallies in sympathy with the protesters at Columbia. College leaders should be thinking hard about what principles will guide their own response to such protests and whether Shafik’s example should be a model.

Every college needs a set of policies balancing the need to provide ample opportunity for free expression on campus with the need to preserve the efficient and effective functioning of the university.

Chronicle of Higher Education
David Bell (Professor of History, Princeton)

Excerpt: No matter what you think of American academe, you still should not want Elise Stefanik to run your campus. Unfortunately, over the past six months, this canny and effective five-term congresswoman from New York, chair of the House Republican Conference, and a zealously servile supporter of Donald Trump, has maneuvered herself into a position of dangerous influence over higher education.

Her goal has not been simply to humiliate these educators, but to force them to accept her diagnosis of what is happening at their institutions, and to push them to change their policies. The consequences of her bullying became crystal clear last week at Columbia University.

Annie Rupertus and Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton tradition and a political protest clashed on Friday, April 19, as pro-Palestine demonstrators walked near the Class of 2026 Declaration Day celebration, where recently-declared students in black and orange sweaters posed with department banners behind the iconic Nassau Hall. Some paused amid the protest, while others continued taking photographs with protesters in the background.

The demonstration, which ran for over an hour and a half, was a show of support for the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, where students set up tents beginning Wednesday morning on the campus’ center lawn to demand Columbia divest from companies tied to Israel. On Thursday, Columbia President Minouche Shafik authorized arrests and suspensions of over 100 protesters at the encampment.

Anais Mobarak
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Last spring, my Arabic language instructor instituted a policy that non-Muslim students refrain from eating or drinking in class during Ramadan. When I objected to this rule, she told me that the problem with Americans is that we “care too much about our rights.” As such, I was very surprised to see her name appear on an open letter demanding that the administration “defend academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly” in the context of advocacy for “Palestinian liberation.”

Unfortunately, the recent controversy surrounding Charter Club has demonstrated that progressive voices on campus have failed to recognize the value of free speech beyond its usefulness as a political instrument. Thus, as a community, we must work to foster an ideologically-free understanding of free speech.