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By Leslie Spencer ’79 

A group of Princeton faculty have come together to create The Princeton Council on Academic Freedom. It mirrors the new faculty groups at peer institutions, like the academic freedom councils at Harvard and Columbia, Faculty for Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Vision for a New Future. 

Princetonians for Free Speech editorial

In an April 29 editorial, Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) laid out how the target on Princeton’s back on free speech, academic freedom, and antisemitism issues has been growing ever larger. Yet Princeton’s leadership continues to say publicly that everything is just fine at Princeton. Now something has happened that blows the cover off Princeton for everyone to see inside, and the repercussions will be very serious. It is untenable for Princeton’s leadership to continue to live in its bubble, seemingly divorced from reality, and to continue down the path of refusing both to admit there are problems and to take basic steps to address them.

Today, an article was published in Real Clear Politics, “Princeton Fails to Enforce Its Rules on Free Speech, Antisemitism”, written by Danielle Shapiro, who just graduated from Princeton in May. We will not repeat everything in her piece, but everyone interested in Princeton should read it. It is devastating, and the issues she raises will not end there. Her brave actions as a whistleblower will lead to story after story on this matter and will severely tarnish the reputation of Princeton. (Ms. Shapiro is on the board of PFS.)

Why is 27 percent of Harvard’s total student body foreign when there are hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans who could fill those spots instead?

Of all the questions raised by the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement on Thursday that it would no longer issue visas to foreign students at Harvard (a move that has now been temporarily blocked by a judge), that’s the one that is the most existential. It forces us to ask: What—and who—are American universities actually for?

by Princetonians for Free Speech

On April 4, we published a Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) editorial entitled “Princeton in the Crosshairs,” in which we discussed the multiple attacks on universities being launched by the Trump Administration and listed reasons why Princeton was now likely to become a major target, much like Columbia and Harvard have been. In the few weeks since we published that editorial, there have been very important developments, involving universities in general and Princeton specifically. The bottom line is that Princeton is noweven more in the crosshairs, with investigations and lawsuits coming from several directions. Yet Princeton still does not admit it has problems and will not take the most basic steps to address them, steps that other universities are increasingly taking.

By Khoa Sands ‘26

The idea of decline has always held a certain allure to historians and politicians alike. The high prophet of this declinism was Oswald Spengler, whose 1918 book The Decline of the West has become a motivating treatise for the American New Right. For these modern-day doomsayers, the United States is predestined to ruin, beset by internal crises of spiritedness and domestic politics as well as external threats of rising challengers to the US-led world order. These concerns are not unfounded – a revanchist China will be the largest geopolitical crisis of the twenty-first century and any casual observer of American politics can attest to the sorry state of domestic politics in America today.

Excerpt: On July 4, 2020, a few hundred of my then-colleagues at Princeton University signed an open letter endorsing a number of student demands made in the name of “anti-racism” and proposing such alarming policies as the creation of a faculty committee to police “racist behaviors.” Four days later, I published a lone dissent in which I acknowledged the signatories’ right to express their views. I also suggested—and a month later, Conor Friedersdorf came to a similar conclusion—that most of them probably didn’t believe all the things to which they were putting their name or maybe hadn’t even read the document.

Jump to October 7, 2023. In the days after Hamas invaded Israel and committed unspeakable acts of brutality, I was pleasantly surprised that Princeton faculty didn’t issue another such letter. Perhaps, I thought, they had learned that it was unwise to support groups like Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which had scheduled a pro-Hamas “teach-in” for the same time as a previously announced vigil for the Israelis whom Hamas had slaughtered and issued a screed blaming Israel for Hamas’s evil.

September 18, 2023

Dear President Eisgruber and Board of Trustees:

With the beginning of a new school year at Princeton, we are writing to you on behalf of Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) to reiterate our strong support for Princeton becoming a leader on free speech and academic freedom issues and to inform you of our efforts to assist in achieving that goal.

By Harrison Blackman ’17

Princeton Alumni Weekly

In many ways, Marisa Hirschfield ’27 represents the typical high-achieving Princeton student. A history major, Hirschfield writes for the Triangle Club and is interested in filmmaking and public interest law. Like many Princetonians, she identifies as politically progressive.

But where Hirschfield’s resume diverges from many of her classmates is that she serves as a writing fellow for Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), a nonprofit founded by Stuart Taylor Jr. ’70 and Ed Yingling ’70 that seeks to promote free speech and academic freedom on campus. At Princeton, the free speech issue has been contested for the past several years but mostly involved conservative students who felt that they were being silenced or bullied for their views.

Stuart Taylor Jr., president of "Princetonians for Free Speech" and an RCP contributor, joined Tom Bevan, Friday on the RealClearPolitics podcast, to talk about the Trump administration’s decision to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to Princeton.

They discuss this piece by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe in City Journal: "Princeton’s War on Civil Rights"

Continue reading & watch

By Christopher F. Rufo

City Journal

Amid the ongoing showdown between the Trump administration and the Ivy League, one university president has positioned himself as a leader of the academic resistance: Princeton’s Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to Princeton as part of its investigation into racial discrimination and anti-Semitism at the New Jersey campus. Eisgruber, though, was defiant, telling the New York Times that he’s “not considering any concessions” and calling for other university presidents to follow his lead.

Read entire article

Last Friday, the following letter was sent to President Eisgruber from the Princetonians for Free Speech Executive Committee regarding further action after the protests and event disruption that occurred on April 7th in McCosh Hall, and preparatory measures for upcoming campus events:

by Ed Yingling '70

Washington insiders believe it is very likely that a significant increase in the tax rate on university endowment income will be enacted this year. They cite the need for additional tax revenue to offset the Trump tax cut agenda and the antipathy of many Republicans to what has been happening on campuses for the last two years. They also focus on the fact that then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill in the last Congress imposing a 35 percent tax on endowment income.

By Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In its May 2 article entitled “A decade later: a split legacy for Eisgruber,” the Daily Princetonian erred in saying that “Edward Yingling ’70 and Stuart Taylor ’70, co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech” (PFS) argued that Eisgruber’s decision to fire then-professor Joshua Katz would “destroy Princeton’s acclaimed free speech rule” — making the free speech rule one that would protect only a small subset of the speech that the rule’s language and intent clearly do protect.

Leslie Spencer ‘79
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: On Jan. 18, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 released his “State of the University” letter entitled “Excellence, Inclusivity, and Free Speech.” The core of his remarks defended the course that Princeton has steered in pursuit of excellence and ever-increasing inclusivity through many decades and into these turbulent times.

Khoa Sands ‘26

Elite academia has been dominated by the question of free speech and free expression over the past year. 2024 has seen the explosion of pro-Palestine campus protests, throwing institutions into disarray. At Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, and other universities, administrators struggled to respond as activists occupied campus and harassed other students. Scenes of chaotic fighting at UCLA were played on televisions across the country. 

By Leslie Spencer
Princetonians for Free Speech

It’s no surprise that the University of Chicago has made by far the biggest, boldest and most serious move of any university in the country to confront the crisis of free speech and academic freedom at American universities.  Chicago ranks #1 on FIRE’s survey for a reason. On October 5-6, the University of Chicago launched a new permanent entity, the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, with a ground-breaking inaugural event bringing together the country’s leading lights on the state of free speech at American universities to examine what the problem is, how we got here, and what might be done.

August 9, 2023

Summers are not the fastest of times on campus. But the current summer recently brought a major development on the free expression front: the proposal by Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and others of an important new academic free speech-free expression document: Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry.