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March 31, 2026
A Special Feature
Can universities be reformed? Princeton’s Professor of Mathematics Sergiu Klainerman is a pessimist. In the absence of powerful external pressures, reform from within is “very close to zero” due to what he sees as the deep corruption of the universities’ core mission.
Klainerman was born in Romania and graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1974. He earned his PhD in Mathematics at NYU in 1978 and has taught at Princeton since 1987. A MacAurther Fellow (1991) and Guggenheim Fellow (1997) he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1999 "for his contributions to nonlinear hyperbolic equations."
Klainerman presented his bleak perspective on the state of higher education in an address at the recent opening of the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom, a new institution dedicated to the study of civics.
“As everybody but [Princeton’s President] Eisgruber knows, the telos of the modern university is no longer the search for Truth, wherever it leads, through the promotion of excellence and individual merit. It is instead something else altogether, a tenuous compromise between that old telos and pursuit of social justice through the mantra of DEI.”Klainerman’s full remarks were published this month at Heterodox Stem on Substack. See the extract below under Quote of the Month.
Viewpoint Diversity
Last month PFS published an original article, The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech: Vewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities. Looking at data over time we found an almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities. The article received a great deal of attention from our readers. More broadly, the subject of viewpoint diversity has become a hotly contested topic in higher education reform circles. Every scholar and every university president seems to endorse the idea, but there is little agreement as to what it means.
This month a new book starts to fill that void, providing a necessary resource at a critical time. Viewpoint Diversity, What It Is, Why We Need It and How to Get It,edited by John Tomasi and Bernard Schweizer, published on March 9 by Heresy Press, brings together a formidable line-up of leading thinkers to delve into the meaning of viewpoint diversity and its importance to the future of higher education in these polarized times. The contributors to this volume do not all agree with each other – that is a strength of this exploratory, first-of-its-kind collection. We at PFS are looking forward to Volume Two.
See the articles below by two of the book's contributors, co-editor John Tomasi, President of Heterodox Academy, and Tyler Vanderweele, Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, Harvard University.
The Heterodox View of Viewpoint Diversity
By John Tomasi, excerpted from Viewpoint Diversity: What it is, Why we Need it and How to Get It.
This is a heterodox, knowledge-tracking approach to viewpoint diversity. It recognizes that group opinions, even of experts, can sometimes go badly wrong. While firmly committed to disciplinary methods and standards of evidence, this heterodox approach also reflects a form of intellectual humility appropriate to scholars, who should be ready to recognize that, despite all their degrees and qualifications, they sometimes have things to learn from people who live and work and form opinions outside the ivory tower.
Responding to Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity
By Tyler Vanderweele, Public Discourse, March 3
The culture of self-censorship, cancellation, and lack of exposure to viewpoints has adversely affected the university. The increasing ideological skew of the faculty is largely responsible. Universities need to address these issues to help restore their truth-seeking mission.
Student Corner
The High Cost of Free Speech: A Princeton Student’s Perspective
By Alexcis Johnson ‘26
Articles of Interest
Campus cancellations approach record high
By Sean Stevens, Expression, March 26,2026
FIRE’sCampus Deplatforming Database tracks efforts to stop public expression on college campuses — disinviting speakers, canceling performances or film screenings, removing art, or disrupting events while they are happening. In just the first three months of this year, there have been 70 such attempts. Even worse, 65 of those attempts succeeded — the highest success rate we’ve ever recorded in any year with 10 or more attempts.
U.S. Colleges show systemic bias – Against Conservatives
UW–Madison points to bias in hiring, speech and punishment
By Nate Honeycutt, Expression, March 20
Anew survey of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, released this month by the school’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, offers a clear look at how ideological imbalance shapes the campus climate at a flagship public university. Read alongsideFIRE’s 2024 faculty survey, it tells a familiar story — just with sharper numbers.
Podcast of the Month
He Wanted to Teach Western Civilization. So He Quit Harvard.
Historian James Hankins argues that understanding the history of the Western tradition is the only way to preserve civilization.
“I don’t think that western civilization should be taught in a triumphalist way. (Ie. we are the best, the rest are inferior to us.) No, that is wrong. … [And] I’m not saying that we should indoctrinate people into a Western view of things. I’m saying that people [living in] this country should understand the country and should want to participate in the country, should try to understand it, to see what the strengths and weaknesses are.”
And see his recent article Why I’m Leaving Harvard in Compact Magazine.
Quote of the Month
Professor Klainerman likens what is needed to achieve higher education reform to “the process of denazification pursued by the occupying powers of West Germany after World War II.” Here Klainerman explains what he means by “denazification.”
“This was in fact a process of restoration, in that, once the cadres of the Nazi regime were purged and a new constitution was adopted, the country recovered its sovereignty, that is, the freedom to shape its own destiny.
Can such a process take place within our university system? I am a skeptic hoping to be proved wrong. The fundamental difficulty is that the process cannot be localized to the university system itself, but, just as in the case of denazification, it must be extended to the full cultural environment of the country. This is, of course, where the comparison breaks down, for there is no authority such as the Allied Control Council in Germany between 1945 and 1949, to impose something akin to denazification.
In the absence of such an authority there remains the hope that, given appropriate leadership, and sufficient time, conservatives could replicate the extraordinarily successful march through the institutions achieved by the progressive Left in the last 75 years. This can only be done by pursuing every possible means, including legislative and judicial action, donor leverage, regental authority, the creation of centers of excellence, new universities, new academies, new cultural institutions, new media, or the use of technology, such as AI, to decentralize the elementary educational system and make it more responsive to parents. There are signs, such as this very event of the opening of the Center for Intellectual Freedom here in Iowa, that such a process is already taking place. Among other such developments one can mention the experiment going on at theUniversity of Austin, the newAmerican Academy of Sciences and Letters, or the remarkable success ofThe Free Press, as an example of the new media. The dysfunction is global, requiring an ’all of the above’ approach.”
As more people of good faith and moral courage are fed up with the current pathologies of our cultural and educational elites and take steps to fight them, not only by demonstrating the intellectual superiority of conservative ideas but also, through effective organization and political action, I see no reason why such a process could not eventually succeed, hopefully in less time that it took the Left to achieve its present dominance of the cultural space.”
From Can the Universities be Reformed?
By Sergiu Klainerman, Heterodox Stem, Subtack, March 22, 2026
Support PFS
Princeton should be a place where ideas are freely debated and students and professors can discuss controversial topics without fear. Preserving that environment requires a persistent presence pushing back. That’s PFS. PFS stands as the only independent organization of alumni and friends dedicated to holding Princeton University accountable on free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. Our 2025 PFS Annual Report shows our impact; please consider a gift by clicking HERE. Every dollar defends free speech at Princeton!
In PFS Supports Two Student and Faculty Events that Advance Free Expression, Executive Director Angela Smith highlights PFS support for two important on-campus events that happened in February, one organized by students, the other by faculty.
“Free speech and open inquiry are not abstract ideals – they are the lifeblood of a healthy university community. At Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), we strive to advance those principles through practical, tangible support for students and faculty who put them into action. As such, we are pleased to tell you about two recent events at Princeton, supported by PFS, that reflect this mission in powerful ways.”
Read more about these events, why PFS supports them, and why you should support PFS.
And read coverage of these two events in the Student Corner below, written by our writing fellows Annabel Green ‘26 and Joseph Gonzalez ‘28.
February 2, 2026
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
2026 has started with a bang. “Viewpoint diversity” is in the news. What is its role in protecting the knowledge-generating and truth-seeking mission of America’s universities? Please see our Special Feature, an original article by PFS’s Edward Yingling and Leslie Spencer, The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech: Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities.
Also see an important new book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It, forthcoming next month from Heresy Press. It is a collection of essays by some of the country’s leading heterodox thinkers who confront the rise of orthodoxy on both the left and the right.
And our Quote of the Month is from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It? by the President of Dartmouth Sian Leah Beilock, who makes an urgent call for university leaders to take action now to “reform ourselves.”
Happy New Year from PFS!
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
We’d like to take this moment at the end of an eventful year at Princeton and throughout the country, to acknowledge two national organizations that pursue higher education reform in important and different ways, both of which are critical to PFS’s success. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), whose impact on free speech and campus discourse policies at over 30 campuses nationwide cannot be underestimated. Collaborating with FIRE on Princeton student surveys and campus reform policies has been invaluable to our growth and impact. The other is Heterodox Academy (HxA), the leading non-partisan membership organization for faculty, staff and students, whose campus community network has now reached over 80 campuses in the US and UK.
