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June 2, 2026
PFS at Reunions 2026
On Sunday, May 24, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) hosted a breakfast at the Nassau Inn — and despite dreary skies outside, the energy inside couldn't have been brighter. About 70 alumni, current students and other free speech supporters turned out for what proved to be an engaging and inspiring morning.
PFS leadership set the stage with organizational updates from Co-founder Ed Yingling '70, President & CEO Todd Rulon-Miller '73, and Executive Director Angela Smith — including the exciting news that PFS has grown to over 26,000 email subscribers (20,000 of whom are Princeton alumni). This represents remarkable growth from just 1,400 two years ago, showing a momentum that was on full display during this packed event.
The heart of the program belonged to the students.
Amelia Freund, an undergraduate from the class of ‘28, joined Myles McKnight ‘23 and Danielle Shapiro ‘25, two recent graduates, on a panel that offered candid, first-hand perspectives on campus life. They covered the challenges of navigating the faculty and administration, what advocating for free speech on campus entails, the progress they think has been made and where shortfalls still exist.
Shapiro recounted organizing and attending an April 2025 event at McCosh Hall featuring former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, where demonstrators shouted down the speaker, pulled a fire alarm to end the event, and hurled antisemitic slurs at Jewish attendees outside. She argued that the severity of the protester’s behavior and tactics undermined the attendees’ right to listen. Post-event, Shapiro personally spent over two hours with Princeton administrators detailing her experience and identifying the disruptive students involved. Even so, Princeton declined to discipline any of the students responsible and allowed seniors to graduate without consequence for their violations of university rules. PFS’s letter to President Eisgruber sent in the immediate aftermath of this event stressed the importance of enforcing university rules as well as First Amendment protections.
The panel also took aim at the media landscape students navigate when advocating for free speech on campus. The Daily Princetonian, panelists noted, leans heavily left in its editorial outlook, and students who champion free speech, viewpoint diversity, or dissenting perspectives routinely find it difficult to get their voices published there. They argued that the resulting gap in coverage leaves a distorted picture of campus discourse and makes the already uphill work of advocacy even harder.
One standout moment came from McKnight, who, along with a classmate during their time at Princeton, had the courage to approach the Administration directly and advocate for a robust free speech discussion at freshman orientation. Their persistence paid off: not only was the programming adopted, but it has also become a fixture of the orientation experience. So compelling was his case that the Administration invited him to address the entire incoming class on the subject — a remarkable testament to what one motivated student can achieve.
A Q&A and open discussion followed, with many lively comments and questions, including from the distinguished academic, columnist and book author Walter Russell Mead, who had delivered the keynote at the James Madison Program’s Reunions event. His participation added notable depth to the conversation.
It was a wonderful morning in Tiger Town with engaged alumni, student voices and a passion for free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity leading the way.
Students' Corner: Year-end Reflections
A Review of Princeton Preview: A student reflects on how Princeton actively encourages viewpoint diversity at the Annual Admitted Students’ Day
By Abigail Readlinger ‘27
A Princeton Senior’s Thoughts on the Purpose of Education
By Annabel Green ’26
Marriage, Kids, and the State: Can Government Help?
By Alexcis Johnson ‘26
These articles were written by PFS writing fellows. Our writing fellowship gives students hands-on experience, mentorship, and opportunities to build their portfolios. We are currently accepting applications for the Fall 2026 semester. Please spread the word! Interested Princetonians should apply here.
Articles of Interest
Something Big is Happening on Campus
There’s a lot going right at universities, if you are only willing to see it.
By David Brooks, The Atlantic, May 17
Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches
Universities should protect graduation ceremonies from partisan division.
By John Tomasi, Free The Inquiry, May 19
At commencement ceremonies, the institution is the host, and invited speakers communicate with the symbolic imprimatur of the institution. When speakers use this platform to advocate their own political preferences — whether on immigration, foreign policy, social justice, or politics — they are not simply expressing their personal views. Intentionally or not, they are attaching their views to the institution and, by extension, to the graduates. Disclaimers that the speaker’s views are solely their own don’t prevent the audience from perceiving the invitation itself as a form of endorsement.
2026 Graduation Season Sees Speaker Cancellations
By Johanna Alonzo, Inside Higher Education, May 13
Campus deplatforming attempts surpass 100 for the year and it’s only May 7
By Sean Stevens, Expression, Substack May 7
N.Y.U. Students Object to Graduation Speaker Jonathan Haidt, Who Calls Their Generation ‘Coddled’
Jonathan Haidt, a professor, says that colleges shield students from challenging ideas. But student leaders said he does not represent their values.
The New York Times, May 13
Pay Attention
Essential Advice for the Class of 2026
By Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, May 14
Editor’s Note:On Thursday, May 14, 2026, Jonathan Haidt—a contributing writer atThe Atlantic and a social psychologist at New York University—delivered this commencement address at NYU. His selection prompted objections from a small group of student leaders. We are reproducing his speech in full, so that readers may judge it for themselves.
What Jonathan Haidt actually said at NYU — and what The Coddling of the American Mind actually argued
Responses to seven arguments against me, Jon, and our book from people who didn’t seem to read it.
By Greg Lukianoff, The Eternally Radical Idea, May 18
Quote of the Month
David Brooks
Author, columnist and Presidential Senior Fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs
The humanistic ideal has been replaced in some departments by the activist ideal. The purpose of the professor is to indoctrinate students so they can resist the structures of oppression. The activists naturally focus more on power and social systems than on the subjective inner experience of an individual heart, an individual soul. Politics, rather than the pursuit of truth, goodness, culture, or beauty, becomes the cause that gives life meaning.
Political radicalism once seemed exciting, but now it just makes parts of academic culture dreary. I used to love going into the Seminary Co-op bookstore at the University of Chicago or the Harvard Coop bookstore in Cambridge, both of which feature the latest academic books. Now there’s much less on those sales tables I’d want to buy. It’s the same ideological story, the same jargon, applied to different subject areas: oppressor/oppressed, transgression, deconstruction, intersectionality—the aging Foucault-inspired monoculture. Students have learned to manipulate this hustle. You don’t have to work on your soul in order to be counted as a good person, you just parrot the approved progressive attitudes on your way to Goldman Sachs. Roughly 88 percent of students at the University of Michigan and Northwestern admit to researchers that they lie in their papers and pretend to be more progressive than they really are in order to get a better grade.
...
All through history, in civilizations all over the world, peoples have sought to pass down the best of their own way of life from generation to generation, to orient those around them toward the good life, to inculcate virtue, and to aim each other toward some ultimate purpose. That our culture dropped the ball on all of that is just plain weird. Now I constantly meet people who are unfamiliar with the humanist tradition. Sometimes when I ask professors how they help their students find meaning, they admit bluntly:I wasn’t trained for that; I would have no clue how to do it.
The student hunger never went away. The social need never went away. And now, the tide is turning. If you are a Fox News watcher who thinks that the universities are simply woke hothouses filled with Maoists plotting revolution, your views—which were always exaggerated—are out of date. Leaders are adapting. Professors are rediscovering their sense of mission. There’s a ton of good stuff happening on campus these days, if you’re only willing to see it.
From Something Big is Happening on Campus
By David Brooks, The Atlantic, May 17
Support PFS
Princeton should be a place where 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 the 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!
PFS’s featured editorial this month is Yale Issues clarion call for change, joining other leading universities. Where is Princeton? We put Yale’s report in the context of the growing consensus amongst a widening circle of University Presidents that President Maurie McGinnis is correct. University leaders must take responsibility for their role in reaching this critical point. President Eisgruber is not among this list of reformers.
If you want to know more about why Princeton is not leading this movement to restore trust in higher education,link here to a comprehensive Five-Part Review of President Eisgruber’s book, Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, written for PFS by Tal Fortgang ‘17.
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.
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.
