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December 1, 2025
Dear PFS Subscribers and Friends,
This month we are proud to present our 2025 Annual Report. It includes a message from our founders, financial summary, highlights of our projects and initiatives for the year, and our list of Top Ten recommendations for Princeton’s leadership to help restore a culture of free speech, open debate and viewpoint diversity, and put Princeton’s free speech principles into practice. We are pleased to present this summary of our year as you plan for your year-end charitable giving. Alumni must not be bystanders in our university’s future. Please spread the word about PFS by sharing the link to the Annual Report with your fellow alumni or on social media. We cannot do this alone.
A Special Feature
Articles of Interest
We start with two articles that discuss grade inflation, the first by our regular contributor Tal Fortgang ‘17. The second is the National Association of Scholars’ assessment of Harvard’s Grade Inflation Report, sent to all Harvard Faculty and Students last month.
Ivy League Universities Still About Education? A Closer Look at Harvard and Princeton
By Tal Fortgang ‘17, Princetonians for Free Speech, November 19, 2025
Easy Come, Easy Go: The Grade Inflation Report
By Kali Jerrard, National Association of Scholars, November 4, 2025
The Charlie Kirk purge: How 600 Americans were punished in a pro-Trump crackdown
By Raphael Satter and A.J. Vincens, Reuters, November 19, 2025
‘We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed
By Ariel Kaminer, Sian Beilock, Jennifer L. Mnookin and Michael S. Roth
New York Times, November 18, 2025
Universities Can't Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity
This is what we wish the critics of the concept on both the left and the right would understand
By John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt, Inside Higher Ed, October 29, 2025
Conversations of the Month
Kidnapped and Held Hostage by Hamas, an evening with Moran Stela Yanay
Princeton University’s Chabad, streamed live on November 20, 2025
Moran Stela Yanai was abducted from the Nova Music Festival on October 7th, 2023. Throughout her 54 days in captivity in Gaza, Moran says that the only thing that kept her going was her faith. Special thanks to Princetonians for Free Speech and BICEP.
Robert P. George and the Great Campus Vibe Shift
As progressive orthodoxy weakens, academe’s most influential conservative warns of growing illiberalism on the right.
By Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 24, 2025
Turning the Tide, A Candid Conversation with Professor Robert P. George
Moderated by Ed Yingling ‘70, PFS Co-Founder
Rebuilding Debate: What The Harvard Crimson Taught Us About Free Expression at Harvard
Tommy Barone and Jacob M Miller, two former Chairs of the Harvard Crimson Editorial Board in conversation with John Evangelakos of Harvard Alumni for Free Speech
Student Corner: Self Censorship at Princeton
Quote of the Month
“Sadly, too many today – including government officials, university administrators and faculty, and even traditional-media leaders – have lost faith in free speech as the primary instruments for the pursuit of truth, and instead support the top-down imposition of ideological orthodoxy.
Free speech is the essential means to the end of any idea – conservative or liberal. Supporting free expression offers a chance to fact-check your views through debate – the “right to hear,” as Strossen and Lukianoff point out, echoing Frederick Douglass in his timeless speech, “A Plea for Free Speech in Boston.”
But there are even more “selfish” reasons for endorsing free speech. When you defend the right to speak freely, you are protecting your right to express yourself by agreeing to respect others’ rights to do the same. …”
From the forward toThe War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech – and Why They Fail By Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, Forward by Jacob Mchangama
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.
