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February 3, 2025
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Whoa. January certainly was a month of explosive change for higher education! Three executive orders that could impact funding of universities prompted President Eisgruber’s January 28 letter, which rightly admits “there is much we do not know.” See the Daily Princetonians coverage of Eisgruber’s letter: Eisgruber says U. is “exploring measures” in wake of Trump orders, stops short of specific guidance.
Most importantly, take a close look at our special feature, written by PFS cofounder Ed Yingling, 2025: A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campus. It is a grand synthesis of the many ways 2025 could be a year of dramatic change at US Universities, change that could critically impact free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity at Princeton and elsewhere. Yingling’s article helps to make sense of the radical changes that lie in store.
2025: A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campus
By Edward L. Yingling, Cofounder
Princetonians for Free Speech, January 24, 2025
“...2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change. In fact the very broad and aggressive Executive Orders issued by the Trump administration guarantee that there will be significant changes. Individual advocates of campus free speech and academic freedom may believe some of these changes go too far or are counterproductive, and this outline does not attempt to judge the changes. The purpose of this article is to outline in one place areas where dynamic change will occur in 2025. It is not designed to be either comprehensive or rigorous in its analysis; rather it serves as a synthesis of the main areas of change, organized by constituency.”
On February 11 at 6:30pm EST, a debate will take place on campus sponsored by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) and funded by PFS and the Steamboat Institute. The proposition:Is the U.S.-Israel alliance a strategic asset for American foreign policy? Pre-register to attend in person, or watch the livestream on YouTube.
How Tiger Mom Amy Chua Beat the Woke Mob
A Conversation between Bari Weiss and Amy Chua, The Free Press, February 1, 2025
Jonathan Rauch: We Must Defend Liberalism
From Censorship in the Sciences, Interdisciplinary Perspectives, a University of Southern California conference, January 10 - 12, 2025
In annual letter, Eisgruber defends tax-exempt endowment, DEI, and institutional restraint
By Hayk Yengibaryan and Christopher Bao, The Daily Princetonian, January 30, 2025
From CAFH Leadership: Harvard's Settlements Are No Threat to Academic Freedom — Yet
By Jeffrey S, Flier, Eric S. Maskin and Steven A. Pinker, on behalf of theCouncil on Academic Freedom at Harvard, Harvard Crimson, January 30, 2025
The Settlement Is a Start — But Only a Start — To Restoring Harvard
By Laurence H. Summers, Harvard Crimson, January 27, 2025
‘Institutional Destruction': A Federal-Funding Pause Sent Shockwaves Through Higher Ed
By Jasper Smith and David Jesse, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2025
Trump Has Issued a Blitz of Executive Orders. Some Could Affect Higher Ed
By Jasper Smith, January 21, 2025, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Bias reporting systems were a nightmare on campus — and now they’re everywhere
By Greg Lukianoff, The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack, January 22,2025
The Year of the Chatham House Rule | RealClearEducation
By Solveig Lucia Gold ‘17, Real Clear Education, January 21, 2025
Many College Professors Say Their Academic Freedom Is In Decline, Study Finds
By Christa Dutton, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8. 2025
By Jay Shalin, City Journal, January 9, 2025
Danielle Allen, Princeton ‘93,James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and former director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.
From First Principles for the University with Danielle Allen and Jonathan Haidt, a conversation recorded by SAPIR Journal, and released on SAPIR Conversations on January 3, 2025.
“... I taught at the University of Chicago from 1997 to 2007, and then I went to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where I didn't do any teaching for those eight years. I came back to Harvard in 2015 to start teaching again. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. It was extraordinary. The single most important difference:The kids could not read. ... I had to throw out all the syllabi that I had used in 2007. Too much reading couldn't be done at Harvard.”
…[T]here's a terrific historian of science at Princeton named Graham Burnett, who has been working a lot on attention. Our attention is a muscle because we live in a world now where the questions of civilization are not about transmission in the same way that they were, because it's all out there, it's all in the cloud. We don't need learned people the way we used to need learned people. Learned people were the cloud once upon a time. As a learned person, I really regret that we don't need them anymore. Nonetheless, we still do need the transmission of civilization and culture, and … to recognize what this transmission is about. … [It] is about the caliber of argument. It is about how we take on points of view that are very different from our own.You cannot do any of that work – important work of civilization and culture – if you don't have a campus community with a huge diversity of viewpoints.”(emphasis added)
To PFS Subscribers, Members and Friends,
On March 10 the Department of Education’s office of Civil Rights sent letters to 60 universities, including Princeton. Theseletters warned of potential “enforcement actions” if institutions do not protect Jewish students.
On March 20, in reaction to the Trump administration’s threat to cut $400 million in Federal funding from Columbia University, 18 law professors with a range of views from liberal to conservative, signed a public letter in The New York Review arguing: “the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment-protected speech.” The next day, Columbia conceded to government demands. Other thanBrown University’s President Christina Paxson, who detailed what Brown would do under similar threats, Princeton’s President Eisgruber was a lone voice amongst the leadership of these universities – in The Cost of Government Attacks on Columbia, published by the Atlantic on March 19.
This week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, three of the 18 public letter signatories, all first amendment scholars, discuss what Columbia and other universities threatened with funding cuts should do. It is worth reading “It is Remarkable How Quickly the Chill Has Descended.” with Michael C. Dorf, of Cornell University; Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago; and Nadine Strossen, of New York Law School.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
In February the Trump administration’s focus on radical change in higher education continued unabated. The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights released a letter on non-discrimination policies. DEI programs are targeted, with sweeping mandates that have caused several universities to take preemptive action to avoid federal funding cuts.
To Princetonians for Free Speech Subscribers, Members and Friends,
Happy New Year! At PFS we are delighted to welcome our inaugural Executive Director; you can see below our introduction to Angela Smith. Our Special Feature includes two original articles by our PFS student writing fellows Marisa Hirschfield ‘27 and Khoa Sands ‘26. And nationally, we feature an event of particular importance to anyone interested in the state of academic freedom and free speech on America’s college campuses, held by the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. It is presented virtually as well as in person on January 31, 2025, and features Princeton professor and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci. See below for details.
And PFS momentum is building! As 2024 came to a close, over 1,200 hundred new subscribers signed up with PFS. Please help to build awareness by asking your alumni and other friends to join us HERE. And for those who may have missed it, here is our 2024 Annual Report.
