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Excerpt: After a news story last week that the University of Michigan was paying private investigators to spy on pro-Palestinian student protesters, the school quickly ended its contracts with the surveillance firm.

Now the university says this Orwellian practice has ended, but the chill on student speech will likely remain for some time.

Josh Moody 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Department of Education has publicly called on Columbia University’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, to take action against the university’s alleged noncompliance with federal nondiscrimination laws.

In a Wednesday news release, officials wrote that Columbia was found to have acted “with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Officials said, “Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.” As a result of that finding, ED called on MSCHE to take action on the matter.

By Stuart Taylor, Jr., President of PFS

Since the University of Chicago paved the way in 1967 with its Kalven Committee Report, some 30 other American universities and colleges have followed suit by insisting on “institutional neutrality” on political and social issues, while alsoaffirming their commitment to the academic freedom of faculty and students in the face of suppression from internal and/or external entities.

Sarah McLaughlin
FIRE

Excerpt: American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines.

Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat.

Hope Perry ’24 and Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: The Class of 2025’s Class Day celebration on Monday, May 26, was met with an overwhelmingly positive response even after a movement to condemn the choice of wellness podcaster Jay Shetty ’25 as the keynote speaker.

Students had objected to Shetty because of allegations that he has engaged in plagiarism. The New York Times bestselling author and former monk told members of the class that they should focus on their own purpose and happiness rather than the opinions of others.

Eboo Patel
Persuasion

Excerpt: In 2020, Steven Wilson, former education adviser to the governor of Massachusetts, was condemned as racist and fired from his job for writing an essay on the educational philosophy underlying the network of charter schools he founded. 

What exactly did Wilson do wrong? According to The New York Times, some younger staff at the Ascend schools considered his essay “racially traumatizing,” likely because it directly criticized the progressive educator Tema Okun’s profoundly destructive idea—as expressed in her popular 1999 workbook on “Dismantling racism”—that linear thinking, objectivity and respect for good writing are features of “white supremacy culture.”

Rose Horowitch 
The Atlantic

Excerpt: No one would be surprised to learn that an elite university has a plan to counteract the structural barriers to the advancement of a minority group. Johns Hopkins University’s latest diversity initiative, however, has managed to put a new spin on a familiar concept: The minority group in question is conservative professors.

Several elite red-state public universities have recently established academic centers designed to attract conservative scholars. And institutions that haven’t sought out conservative faculty may soon find new reasons to do so. The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard hire additional conservative professors or risk losing even more of its federal funding. 

Katie J.M. Baker
New York Times

Excerpt: In late April, the Heritage Foundation dispatched a team to Israel to meet with power players in Israeli politics, including the country’s foreign and defense secretaries and the U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee.

New Reunions policy information regarding free expression

Excerpt: As we enter this celebratory time, please be reminded of the University’s principles and policies related to free expression. Our Statement on Freedom of Expression  guarantees our community “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn,” while also noting that members of our community “may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.”

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As President Trump’s broadside attacks on higher education continue, few institutions have shown a willingness to push back publicly. But behind closed doors, the sector has already pumped millions of dollars into federal lobbying efforts this year to plead their case in Washington.

An Inside Higher Ed analysis of federal lobbying data shows that some of the universities in Trump’s crosshairs have dramatically increased spending this year compared to the first quarter of last year, hiring advocates on the Hill to represent their interests to lawmakers.

Lee Jussim and Robert Maranto
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Now, thanks to the Trump administration’s—in our view questionable—policies regarding academia in general and elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard Universities in particular, policies that many plausibly view as political vengeance for leftist activism, higher education is rapidly approaching fear equity: The presidential right has joined the campus left in using intimidation to punish those whose speech they dislike. Now, everybody in academia gets to be afraid of being canceled, or at least having their grants canceled.

Is it possible that the new fear equity, with both left and right afraid to speak their minds, may be a necessary precondition to pave the way for a free speech renaissance?

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed 

Excerpt: The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.

John Warner
Academic Freedom on the Line, AAUP

Excerpt: As one of the small number of non-academics among the fellows of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, I’m continually impressed with how much my fellow fellows from academia know, and how deeply they’ve thought about issues in their areas of expertise. 

As we see in the Q&A below, the present crisis in higher ed has both deep and broad roots, and, in my view, acknowledging and addressing these roots are the only way to move forward toward a system of post-secondary education that is accessible and oriented around the interests of free people in a democratic society.

Dan Mangan 
CNBC

Excerpt: The Trump administration on Monday announced investigations into Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review after a report that the prestigious legal journal was selecting articles for publication based on their authors’ race and not merit.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration and Harvard feud over the administration’s demands that the Ivy League university adopt a series of changes, including dismantling its DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — programs, and screening international students for ideological red flags.

James Piereson
City Journal 

Excerpt: The Trump administration is trying to fix what ails American universities by freezing billions of dollars in pledged research grants due to be paid to Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and other prominent institutions, on the grounds that the schools have not done enough to counter anti-Semitism on their campuses or have evolved into left-wing hothouses with little diversity of opinion.

The Trump administration has tried to influence institutions by freezing payment of federal funds, but there is a more effective way to do this—one less likely to cause mayhem in scientific programs and medical schools and less prone to being overturned by the courts: Trump should use the leverage of prospective grants to induce institutions to abide by federal law and begin reforming their internal operations.

Tal Fortgang 
Civitas Institute, The University of Texas at Austin

Excerpt: The Trump administration and the leadership of Harvard University are both posturing as principled heroes taking a stand against an unscrupulous enemy. The federal government has appointed a task force to combat anti-Semitism, the most apparent manifestation of corruption at progressive-captured institutions, most notably elite universities. Harvard, for its part, has roared back.

Each is right, in a way – and each is wrong. Accordingly, each party has a leg to stand on in this showdown, but each seems to use that leg only to misstep.

Benjamin Weinthal 
Fox News 

Excerpt: Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz called on his alma mater, Princeton University, to dismiss a former high-level Iranian regime official because he is allegedly making students feel unsafe amid recent outbreaks of antisemitism at the New Jersey university.

The ex-official for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at the university, is under pressure on many fronts from congressional representatives, Princeton students and experts on antisemitism.

Marisa Warman Hirschfield ‘27
Princetonians for Free Speech 

Excerpt: On April 22nd, Yechiel M. Leiter, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., delivered a lecture entitled “The Demonization of Israel and the Rise of Anti-semitism” to approximately seventy-five attendees in McCosh 10. The event was co-sponsored by Chabad, the Center for Jewish Life, B’Artzeinu, and Princetonians for Free Speech. Around twenty P-safe officers and Free Expression Facilitators populated McCosh courtyard in advance of the talk. Every entrance was monitored by security, and fences were set up outside the lecture hall as boundaries for protestors. I attended in my capacity as a Writing Fellow for PFS.

Hope Perry ‘24
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: A judge for the United States District Court for Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order, pausing the Department of Energy’s proposed grant cuts to universities across the country, including Princeton.’’ 

The American Association of Universities — a group that includes Princeton, MIT, and Harvard — filed a suit against the Department of Energy April 15. The temporary restraining order today means that the Department cannot modify or cut funding pending a hearing.

Matt Lamb 
College Fix

Excerpt: Taxpayers will no longer subsidize a Princeton University program that induces “climate anxiety” among K-12 students, according to the Trump administration.

The Department of Commerce “announced that nearly $4 million in funding is ending to Princeton University,” according to an April 8 news release. The decision followed “a detailed, careful, and thorough review of the Department’s financial assistance programs against National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s…current program objectives.”

Luke Grippo 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: Congressional Republicans have launched an investigation into the financial aid practices of all eight Ivy League universities, including Princeton, accusing the universities of collectively raising the tuition prices. The probe follows broader scrutiny of higher education from the federal government, and it comes as Princeton officials have said they are committed to protecting financial aid.

The letter requested wide-ranging documents related to University admissions, financial aid, and communications between University administrators and college application-assistance websites such as the College Board and the Common Application. The University has until next Tuesday to release these documents to the committee.

Douglas Belkin and Meridith McGraw
Wall Street Journal 

Excerpt: The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern, according to a Trump administration official.

The federal government is investigating both schools for alleged civil-rights violations, as part of a rapidly expanding crackdown on elite research universities across the U.S. The latest funding at issue relates to grants and contracts with the departments of agriculture, defense, education and health and human services.

Douglas Schleicher
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: In thinking about the complex problem of academic freedom, the Princeton community must take care to avoid false dichotomies that could be harmful and restrict free speech. One such dichotomy is the idea that we can have either controversial academic inquiry or allow those impacted by that inquiry to speak up and be heard — but not both. 

In a guest contribution published on Thursday in The Daily Princetonian, Joan Scott falls into this precise trap. While defending the right to host this past Friday’s conference, entitled “The Anti-Zionist Idea: History, Theory, and Politics,” she simultaneously seeks to delegitimize and silence Rabbi Gil Steinlauf ’91 for expressing concern about its framing and impact, suggesting that his advocacy on behalf of Jewish students is somehow a threat to academic freedom rather than an exercise of it.

Jonathan Turley 
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: Three-fourths of Princeton students told one survey that they believed it was appropriate to shout down or deplatform speakers with opposing views.  That mistaken view of shout-downs as a form of free speech is obviously still prevalent on campus after a group of protesters stopped a discussion with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The question is whether Princeton will do anything about it or whether, when it comes to free speech, it will prove to be a mere paper tiger.

Princetonians for Free Speech have struggled to restore free speech on campus and they have had some success. However, this is an obvious test of that commitment. While some protesters wore masks, most did not. Any students who went inside the event to prevent Bennett from being heard should be suspended. Any faculty involved in such action should be terminated.

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal 

Excerpt: President Trump keeps flexing the government’s power over elite universities, with Cornell and Northwestern the latest to have federal funds withheld. After Princeton received the same treatment last week, it’s now facing a test of its principles. On Monday students disrupted a campus talk by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Princeton’s rules of conduct, drawing from the University of Chicago’s statement on free speech, say students “may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject.” Who pulled the fire alarm? Who was yelling antisemitic taunts at Jewish students? If they were students, why would Princeton want them?

Ross Marchand 
FIRE

Excerpt: Great news: UConn School of Medicine administrators are going scalpels down on the school’s attempt to forcibly transplant politics and ideology into its incoming student body. 

In 2022, UConn finalized its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to “actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.” Most recently, UConn required the incoming class of 2028 to pledge allegiance not simply to patient care, but to support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Kian Petlin, Devon Rudolph, and Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: A speaker event with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday was interrupted at various points, with approximately 20 protesters walking out of the event, an extended disruption by an individual who does not appear to have an affiliation with Princeton in the middle, a subsequent fire alarm interruption, singing by the event’s attendees at the end, and yelling between protesters and event attendees in the courtyard after. 

Meghana Veldhuis
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: In light of recent scrutiny on higher education by the U.S. federal government, on April 2, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom (PCAF) held a roundtable discussion in McCosh Hall titled, “Should Universities Engage in Politics?”

The discussion was moderated by Princeton politics professor Frances Lee. University of Chicago philosophy professor Anton Ford, Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy ’77, and Yale politics professor Keith Whittington all shared their opinions on the role that Princeton and other universities should generally play during a time of turmoil in higher education.  

Ilya Somin
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: The Trump administration has been detaining and trying to deport immigrant and foreign students for their First-Amendment protected speech. That includes even speech that does not actually support terrorism, as in the case of a Tufts graduate student detained for an anti-Israel op ed that, however flawed, does not endorse Hamas terrorism, or indeed even mention it. Such detention and deportation is an assault on freedom of speech, and violates the First Amendment, which has no exception for immigration restrictions.

Thomas Tao 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: For too long, we have willfully ignored the rationale behind the antagonism that many of the 77 million Americans who re-elected Trump feel for academia. Now, more than ever, we must listen to the public on what we think are closed debates and be open to research spurred by those new ideas.

Luke Grippo and Irene Kim 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: An hour after the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting on Monday, March 24, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 addressed the Princeton town community to address the state of higher education, the University endowment, and ways to maintain collaboration between the town and the University. 

The Princeton Town Hall Meeting is an event held annually by members of the Princeton Council in collaboration with Eisgruber, with the goal of facilitating open communication between the University and the town.

Elisabeth Stewart and Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: Princeton will freeze most faculty and staff hiring, citing uncertainty around federal funding and a potential increased endowment tax, according to a memo sent to faculty and staff Wednesday morning. The letter, from Provost Jennifer Rexford and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright, follows many other universities adopting hiring freezes in response to funding uncertainty. It represents the University’s most significant response to date to recent federal actions.

Christopher L. Eisgruber
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world.

The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.

Jacob Mchangama
Persuasion

Excerpt: When asked on Wednesday about the arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for his pro-Palestinian protest activities last year, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan resorted to a common refrain often used to justify egregious censorship.

But this doesn’t give the government a blank check to punish Khalil for his speech, however distasteful. The First Amendment does not have an exception for hate speech, and for good reason.

Don Moynihan
Can We Still Govern?, Substack

Excerpt: Normally I record the classes I teach. It gives students who miss class a chance to catch up. I also make space in my classes to talk about what is happening in government right now. A couple of weeks ago, students asked we keep the discussions, but stop recording the class. They worried about any record of their words that might be viewed as criticism of the current administration, and somehow weaponized against them.

It’s a small example of how fear is creeping into American life.

Rose Horowitch 
The Atlantic

Excerpt: If the Trump administration’s goal was to sow chaos among America’s colleges, it has definitely succeeded. Last month, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to universities explaining the agency’s view that, because of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down affirmative action, any consideration of race—not just in admissions, but in hiring, scholarships, support, “and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life”—is now illegal. 

The reaction from universities could best be described as “panicked bewilderment,” Peter Lake, a law professor at Stetson University, in Florida, told me.

FIRE

Excerpt: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of an LGBTQ+ student organization to block a new policy from the Texas A&M University System that bans drag performances on its 11 public campuses — a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: On President Donald Trump’s first day back in the White House, he issued an executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government. Its sweeping language forbids DEI “mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities,” and orders the termination of all DEI positions—hundreds if not thousands of roles. Trump and his allies are also trying to curtail DEI in corporations that contract with the state, colleges that get federal funds, and more.

The ambition of these anti-DEI efforts mirrors the earlier, heavy-handed push, including by the Biden administration, to embed DEI practices into almost all of America’s most important institutions. It also underscores just how widely and variably the term DEI is now used across society.

Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Thirteen pro-Palestinian protesters are set to head to trial to face trespassing charges in municipal court on April 14, almost exactly one year after occupying Clio Hall last spring.

The trial, which is expected to last three days, was scheduled at a virtual hearing on Jan. 14, after it became clear that the parties could not agree on a proposed plea deal.

Jerry Zhu and Frances Brogan 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: On Wednesday, The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos ’86 announced on X that the Post’s opinion pages would shift to focus on content about “personal liberties and free markets,” and that opposing viewpoints would be “left to be published by others.” While he invoked freedom, he made it clear that columnists at the Post would no longer be allowed free expression. 

As the head editors of the The Daily Princetonian Opinion section, we were deeply disturbed by this move. At the ‘Prince,’ we see publishing an ideologically heterogenous range of important and interesting arguments, backed by credible evidence, as essential to the newspaper’s responsibility to our community.

John K. Wilson 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: On Feb. 14, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued an extraordinary Dear Colleague letter ordering all colleges and schools, public and private, that receive federal funds to implement massive changes and repression of free speech within 14 days. As the letter repeatedly warned and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency posted, “Institutions which fail to comply may face a loss of federal funding.”

The Feb. 14 letter is a full-fledged attack on affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion. It is also one of the worst attacks on academic freedom by the government in the history of American higher education.

Ian Bogost
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Jennie Bromberg was somehow still exuberant last weekend about her future career in public health. In January, she interviewed for a competitive Ph.D. program in epidemiology at the University of Washington, one of several to which she has applied. “I loved them. It was amazing,” she told me by phone while on a walk with her Australian shepherd. But the email that arrived from UW shortly after she got home was not the acceptance letter that she’d hoped for. Nor was it even a rejection. Instead, it said that she’d been placed in grad-school purgatory.

The Trump administration has frozen, slashed, threatened, and otherwise obstructed the tens of billions of dollars in funding that universities receive from the government, and then found ways around the court orders that were meant to stop or delay such efforts.

Samuel J. Abrams
American Enterprise Institute 

Excerpt: Well over a decade ago, when I started teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, I realized that many of my faculty colleagues were anti-Semitic. Because I am visibly Jewish and refuse to denounce Israel, I have been hazed; I have been called a “white skinned Taliban” by a senior professor. I was told that I was part of a colonial, genocidal Jewish people. I have had swastikas drawn on my office door. Somehow, I was expected to do more work than other colleagues to earn their support for promotion. It became clear that my Jewish faith and heritage was a problem for large numbers of professors on campus.  

Christofer Robles
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: This Saturday, Princeton will confer the Woodrow Wilson Award, the University’s prestigious alumni prize for public service, to Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan ’81. The name of this annual honor is yet another reminder of the University’s predilection for praising its most polemic figures. 

But there is no need to abandon uncomfortable history, nor is there any merit to overly defending the depraved. The University must commit to truth, representing its history and its icons more honestly. And as it does so, we need to flood the Princeton canon with more monuments to Princeton’s unsung heroes.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: Over the past couple of months, I’ve explored how (despite numerous, contradictory, and ridiculous accusations to the contrary) FIRE has been able to remain non-partisan even in an era punctuated by intense partisanship. I also tried to turn that reflection into advice for others on how they can do the same.

John Warner
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Together, we should be clear on what President Donald Trump is trying to do to higher education.

Destroy it. Whatever public rationales he or his administration release, the intent of his actions is clear, so if we’re going to discuss responses to those actions, we must remember, always, that Donald Trump is trying to destroy higher education.

National Association of Scholars Press Release

Excerpt: The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has launched a new report, Waste Land—The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism. The report details the Department of Education’s (ED) long and controversial history, its weaponization by bureaucrats and policymakers over the years, and its current state of affairs. A key question explored in this report is one asked by many—what does ED actually do?

AAUP Statement 

Excerpt: Aside from this resolution on divestment, the AAUP has never determined that the neutrality of institutions is either necessary for, or incompatible with, the principles of academic freedom. For more than a half century, we have instead chosen to emphasize the complexity of the issues involved, the dangers that can attend either approach, and the necessity of making institutional decisions with an eye to their effects on academic freedom and shared governance. This statement reaffirms that long-standing approach.