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Heather Mac Donald
City Journal

Excerpt: Yale University has announced its next president: Maurie McInnis, the current president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an art historian specializing in slavery and Southern culture. McInnis concluded her introductory video with an exhortation: “Most importantly, I will encourage us to ask ourselves what change we wish to see in the world and how we might best accomplish that. I can’t wait to begin!”

Uh-oh. McInnis may be eager for Yale to change the world, but the rest of us should be wary of the prospect.

Lawrence D. Bobo
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Having witnessed the appallingly rough manner in which prominent affiliates, including one former University president, publicly denounced Harvard’s students and present leadership, this first question must be answered: Is it outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business? And does the broad publication of such views cross a line into sanctionable violations of professional conduct?

Yes it is and yes it does.

Ryan Ansloan
FIRE

Excerpt: Over the last academic year, the University of Pennsylvania has experienced fierce protests, congressional hearings, and outcry from students, faculty, and donors that resulted in the shortest tenure of a president in the history of the private, Ivy League university. Now, in the shadow of that turmoil, Penn seems prepared to abandon its storied commitment to free expression.

Nadine Strossen
Persuasion

Excerpt: The current Supreme Court term includes a cluster of cases that could well shape the future of online free speech. These cases invite the Court to determine the power of both government officials and social media platforms concerning “content moderation” policies, which in turn define platform users’ speech rights.

Given the unparalleled importance of these platforms for all manner of communication—personal, professional, and political—meaningful free speech rights depend on the platforms’ policies. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Court’s rulings over the next weeks may well determine the shape of speech online for years to come.

Megan McArdle
Washington Post

Excerpt: After a decade of ever-escalating commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, elite campuses are reversing course. It's amazing to watch such an abrupt volte-face. What’s even more amazing is how far things went beforehand and how long the correction took to arrive.

Such double-think regimes are vulnerable to what economist Timur Kuran calls a “preference cascade in reverse”: As people realize their neighbors share their skepticism, they start voicing their true opinions, an effect that dominoes until the whole regime collapses.

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.

The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group, which advised leadership to not “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

Christopher Bao and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Two seniors will have their degrees held in relation to the pro-Palestine walkout at Eisgruber’s annual Reunions address in Richardson Auditorium last Saturday, May 25. They will still be able to attend Commencement on Tuesday, May 28. At least one other student — an underclassman — is also under investigation in relation to the disruption of the address.

Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) posted on X at 6:32 p.m. on Monday, May 27 that “at least two Black seniors are having their degrees withheld” for participation in the walkout, and claimed that “they were not given any disciplinary warnings” throughout the protest.

Philanthropy Roundtable

Excerpt: Throughout commencement season, colleges and universities around the country continue to grapple with how to handle a new wave of protests, encampments and even violence as pro-Palestinian activists disrupt campus life and engage in antisemitic behavior. As a result, the responses from higher ed administrators are under intense scrutiny as they make decisions on how to deal with protester demands, campus safety and the rights and freedoms of students and faculty.  

Philanthropy Roundtable encourages donors to continue supporting higher education to help advance the reform it desperately needs. In this piece, we discuss one such strategy: by supporting an existing academic center or founding a new one, donors can engage in effective and high-impact grantmaking to improve the intellectual environment at universities.

Elisabeth H. Daugherty , Mark F. Bernstein ’83, Carlett Spike, Brett Tomlinson , Peter Barzilai s’97 , Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Pro-Palestinian groups escalated their protesting on Saturday by painting graffiti, dying Princeton’s Fountain of Freedom red, and interrupting President Christopher Eisgruber ’83’s annual Q&A with alumni by chanting, shouting, and holding up hands covered in red gloves and red paint. They also made their presence known at the P-rade Saturday afternoon, chanting and carrying signs.

Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The protest season at universities usually crescendos just before commencement: The weather is balmy and most term papers are done, but what student or professor would wish to stay around campus during summer break if they did not absolutely have to? This year, the protests have taken an uglier turn, as encampments have sprouted up. The demonstrators—most of them students, many not, often masked—are calling for divestment by their universities from companies based in or doing business with Israel. Some of the protesters see this goal as an interim step toward the destruction of the state of Israel.

Carlett Spike, Peter Barzilai s'97
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: The 13 Princeton students who were arrested during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus are unlikely to face penalties greater than probation, the University said in a statement Monday night.

The students will be able to participate in end-of-year activities and graduation, according to the statement. Hours earlier, faculty members voted 154-136 in favor of granting amnesty to the students at a special meeting held at Richardson Auditorium.

PFS original content
Khoa Sands ‘26

Excerpt: Last week, The New York Times published an article Why Antiwar Protests Haven’t Flared Up at Black Colleges Like Morehouse. As President Biden prepared to give the commencement address at Morehouse, students remained sharply divided about his presence on campus. Like many colleges in the country, students are angry about the ongoing Israel–Hamas War in Gaza, and the role of the United States in supporting Israel. However, as The New York Times reports,

While anger over the war remains palpable at Morehouse and other historically Black colleges and universities, these campuses have been largely free of turmoil, and tensions are far less evident: no encampments, few loud protests, and little sign of Palestinian flags flying from dorm windows.

Guest Contributors
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: We, the undersigned faculty of Princeton University, write to you about a matter of deep and urgent concern. On Friday morning, May 3, eighteen Princeton students began a hunger strike, eating nothing and drinking water only sparingly. These students’ blood pressures had dropped and their bodies had begun to consume their own tissue. One of the students was rushed to the hospital on the evening of Wednesday, May 8. As of today, on day nine with no food, thirteen students have broken their hunger strike. Seven more students have begun a hunger strike.

Our students escalated their protest tactics in this way because the University administration — which is beholden to President Eisgruber ’83 and the judgment of your Board — had been unwilling to communicate with them.

Abigail Anthony
National Review

Excerpt: On Wednesday, I posted a screenshot taken from the “Black Princeton” group chat consisting of students and alumni. The image shows that undergraduate Kennedy Primus enticed people to join the pro-Palestinian protest on campus with the promise of bagels, and further reassured new recruits that there were “masks, hats, and umbrellas available for anyone who is concerned about their identity being revealed.”

Then, she requested help for an “urgent need”: “PLEASE send me videos of our protestors looking peaceful! Our lawyer says that these are desperately needed.”

Abigail Shrier
The Free Press

Excerpt: A police officer who pulls over speeding black motorists—and only black motorists—isn’t protecting “law and order.” He’s engaging in invidious discrimination. So too the university administrators who suddenly discover they are free speech absolutists only when student protesters call for the death of their Jewish classmates.

Cole M. Crittenden
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: I am both a graduate alum of Princeton as well as an administrative staff member who worked in the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School for a decade. Although I am not a faculty member, I served for an extended period as the acting dean of the Graduate School during my time as a staff member there. It is from this unusual perspective that I write to convey my dismay at the actions taken by a group of protestors towards Graduate School staff in Clio Hall on Monday of this week.

Nonviolent and peaceful protests have a place on college campuses; such protests are an important exercise of freedom of speech and expression. However, when expression turns into mob activity that threatens and displaces staff who play no meaningful role in the matters of interest to the protestors, it crosses a line.

We the undersigned write in anger and disappointment to express our disgust with the rash of pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses across the United States. Purporting to stand for the well-being of Palestinians, these demonstrators denounce Israel and embrace Hamas, and in many cases Hezbollah as well, both among the most evil organizations on the planet. In deference to the first amendment we are not calling for the authorities to silence the protests, but demand instead that they draw the line at preventing and punishing violence and harassment.

Eric Spitznagel
Free Press

Excerpt: The recent wave of violent protests and arrests at elite universities like Yale and Columbia have only confirmed for Scott Katz that he made the right decision to attend Elon University. The North Carolina college, where he is currently wrapping up his sophomore year, is a long way from his hometown of Lafayette Hill, the predominantly liberal Philadelphia suburb where the average home costs $610,000.

Katz, who is Jewish, says the antisemitism that’s increasingly visible at colleges nationwide—especially in the Ivy League, and other elite institutions like Stanford and Berkeley—hasn’t even touched his campus.

Christopher L. Eisgruber
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Confrontations at Columbia, Yale, and other campuses around the country have highlighted the importance of “time, place, and manner” regulations to universities’ academic and educational missions. Because the enforcement of these rules is essential to our community as well, I wanted to offer some observations about their role at Princeton and their relationship to other free speech principles.

Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Princeton students are preparing to set up their own “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” according to documents first obtained by the National Review and independently verified by The Daily Princetonian, following high-profile encampments at Columbia University, Yale University, and other college campuses that have resulted in student arrests. No tents have been erected in the Nassau Hall area — a focal point for previous sit-ins on campus — at time of publication. The documents did not specify a timeline for when the encampment might begin.

In a leaked press release, organizers reiterated previous demands for the University to “divest and dissociate with Israel,” as well as a call for broad transparency in the University’s research and investments. University officials have warned undergraduates that participation in an encampment or occupation may result in disciplinary action, including suspension and expulsion.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: This month, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an eminent scholar of race and civil rights, published an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in academic hiring. “I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” he wrote. “The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince.” But a “contrasting perspective” on diversity statements that the Crimson published argued that “furor over diversity statements in hiring is a red herring.”

But people who see the flaws of the status quo should not be seduced by the illusion that tweaking how DEI statements are solicited or scored is a solution. In fact, interviewing Hall, the ostensible reformer in the Harvard Crimson debate, left me more convinced that abolishing DEI statements is the best way forward.

Katherine Knott and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik carefully and repeatedly condemned antisemitism over the course of a nearly four-hour appearance before Congress on Wednesday. She denounced the speech and actions of some pro-Palestinian professors and student protesters. She made clear under questioning that she considers the oft-changed slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to be antisemitic, though she noted that other people don’t hear it as such.

But judging from the responses she received from Republicans on the House education committee, none of that might be enough to keep Shafik or Columbia—or its faculty members—from further Congressional scrutiny.

Thomas Buckley
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: This year, 27 seniors declared their candidacy for Young Alumni Trustee (YAT). The high number of candidates is hardly a surprise: As members of the 40-person board of trustees, Young Alumni Trustees have significant influence over the University’s governance, budget, and $34 billion dollar endowment.

Disallowing the YAT candidates from campaigning on issues abridges their freedom of speech and stifles campus discourse, issues that President Christopher Eisgruber and the University care a lot about in every other context — just not this one.

Miriam Waldvogel
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the University on Wednesday, April 3 regarding antisemitism on campus following a January complaint from Zachary Marschall, the editor-in-chief of the conservative website Campus Reform.

“Based on our familiarity with events on our campus and other information available to us, we are confident we are in full compliance with the requirements of Title VI,” University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian. “Based on the complainant’s published description of the complaint, we know that he is not a member of the University community and that his complaint appears to be premised on chants at protests.”

Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Alumni are banding together at Northwestern to protect free speech.

Just weeks after Northwestern President Michael Schill announced the creation of the Advisory Committee on Free Expression and Institutional Speech, the newly formed Northwestern Free Speech Alliance has released an open letter asking the university to adopt a strong free expression statement and commit to institutional neutrality.

Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Banished, Substack

Excerpt: This is snake eating its own tail territory. A standard definition of "privilege" (one of DEI's core concepts) is disavowed because it conflicts with "inclusion" & "belonging." What happened here is, alas, entirely predictable, now that institutions have embraced such expansive definitions of “inclusion,” making grand promises to create campus environments where “any individual or group feels welcomed, respected, supported and valued” at all times.

Also note the wild concept creep in effect here regarding what counts as harm. A short riff on “privilege” is so “hurtful” that it demands a formal apology! And ultimately ends with a resignation.

Michael Casey
Associated Press

Excerpt: Two Jewish students filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accusing the university of allowing antisemitism on campus that has resulted in them being intimidated, harassed and assaulted.

The lawsuit mirrors similar legal actions filed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, including at Columbia University, New York University, Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. In the MIT lawsuit, the students and a nonprofit that fights antisemitism, StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, accuse the university of approving antisemitic activities on campus and tolerating discrimination and harassment against Jewish students and faculty.

Erec Smith
Journal of Free Black Thought, Substack

Excerpt: On March 7, 2024, FBT President Erec Smith testified before Congress about DEI in higher education in an address to the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development. We present a transcript of his remarks, with hyperlinks, below. A video of his remarks is available.

Alecia Taylor
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Republicans made the case in a congressional hearing on Thursday that campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts promote discrimination, echoing lawmakers at the state level who are working to restrict such practices.

Republican politicians and other critics increasingly argue that DEI can be racist and sexist because its model sorts identity groups based on physical characteristics and historical privilege, creating a system that pits the “oppressors” against the “oppressed.” Thursday’s hearing, held by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, continued that line of attack — with discussion dominated by conservative voices opposed to DEI.

The Editorial Board
Cornell Daily Sun

Excerpt: College students are losing sight of why democracy matters. At Cornell, where censorship is becoming the norm, it’s no wonder why. When people get robbed of opportunities to participate peacefully in what the late civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble,” that disillusionment quickly alchemizes into rage and disdain.

That’s what makes the University’s Interim Expressive Activity Policy so backward, depraved and ultimately dangerous — it fans those flames of resentment. On Jan. 24, the administration unilaterally implemented a set of draconian guidelines to redefine what acceptable protest on campus looks like.

Jim Martin
The News & Observer

Excerpt: Recently, all Davidson College student-athletes were required to watch a film entitled, “I’m Not Racist, Am I?” Its provocative message disavows “The Dream.” Regardless of what you think, say or do, it insists that if you’re white, you are racist. If you’re of color, you cannot be racist. In their lexicon, “racist” is just a synonym for “white.”

Oddly, some activists believe this fiction. They want to indoctrinate America’s youth for the noble goal of eliminating racism. Great. Then why insist upon bogus definitions that evoke only insult and injury? How can racism be eliminated if some of us remain melanin challenged? Their Cynical Race Theory is malicious and unworkable.

The Economist

Excerpt: Thoughtful insiders acknowledge that, for some years, elite universities, particularly those within the Ivy League, have grown dangerously detached from ordinary Americans, not to mention unmoored from their own academic and meritocratic values.

University boards appear especially weak. They have not grown much more professional or effective, even as the wealth and fame of their institutions has soared. Many are oversized. Prestigious private colleges commonly have at least 30 trustees; a few have 50 or more. It is not easy to coax a board of that size into focused strategic discussions. It also limits how far each trustee feels personally responsible for an institution’s success.

Bill Hewitt
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Too many of Princeton University’s leaders have sought to run and hide from their duties. In response, I have filed a three-part petition for the Feb. 19 public Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting. The purpose of this petition is to enlist the CPUC’s authority to bring an end to ongoing flights from responsibility by certain decision-makers at Princeton who have failed to sufficiently address my previous formal grievances.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: When members of N.C. State University’s College of Education faculty voted to express “no confidence” in the university’s chancellor and provost last weekend, it was a first in the university’s history. But the largely symbolic vote reflects greater tensions on campuses across the UNC System, as faculty say they feel locked out of high level decision-making by administrators and political appointees.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: The article below, by the President of Princeton, just appeared in the Atlantic.  (Christopher Eisgruber has been Princeton’s President for 11 years.)  The title clearly implies that college diversity (and the implication is “racial diversity”) is not at all in conflict with excellence

It’s hard to imagine how the Atlantic could accept an article whose arguments are explained by the conflation of causation with correlation, as well as with cherry-picked examples or recent trends in grade inflation and selectivity. But let’s look at the argument.

Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The Daily Princetonian released its 2023 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) report last week, which publicly shares internal statistics on staffers’ identities, feelings of inclusion within the ‘Prince’ community, and satisfaction with the extent of ‘Prince’ coverage.

This report, which includes a multitude of analyses on the problems the ‘Prince’ faces and goals for improvement, could be read as suggesting that the utmost priority of internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts is to increase the diversity of staffers. This would be a poor takeaway from an interesting and insightful report, and leave the paper open to common criticisms that shallow DEI programs face.

Suzanne Nossel
Boston Globe

Excerpt: There is no quick fix or silver bullet solution to what ails our campuses. The issues making headlines and agitating quads — with students and faculty afraid to voice opinions and political debates waged through shouts and intimidation rather than reasoned inquiry — can’t be solved with a few high-profile gestures.

University leaders need to think big. Concerns over the unmooring of free speech, academic freedom, and ideological diversity on campus can only be addressed through campuswide transformation. Such change is possible: Universities have successfully adapted to coeducation and the drive toward environmental sustainability, to cite but two examples, with sweeping changes. Now universities need to make a similarly sustained and concerted effort to restore cultures where open exchange can thrive.

John K. Wilson
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Last week, the Catholic University of America (CUA) fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg one week after she invited doula Rachel Carbonneau to address her class, Psychology 379: Lifespan Development. Doulas coach women during the birthing process, and Carbonneau discussed helping “birthing persons” deal with having abortions and assisting transgender men. One student called the discussion “really upsetting” and turned over a recording to the right-wing website The Daily Signal, which ran a Jan. 26 story with the headline: “SHOCKING: Catholic University Brought in ‘Abortion Doula’ Who Coaches ‘Pregnant Men’ Through Giving Birth.”

CUA immediately declared it was “appalled” by Carbonneau and banned her from speaking on campus, and then over one weekend, CUA completed their investigation and dismissed Goldberg.

Victoria Davies
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Following a Jan. 25 letter from the free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Princeton updated the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for No Communication Orders and No Contact Orders (NCOs) a day later on Jan. 26. The new FAQ page reflects the Dec. 2023 change in NCO policy, which narrowed the circumstances under which NCOs can be obtained.

Caitlin Flanagan
The Atlantic

Excerpt:  If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point—usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex—the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. “What’s different about College X,” she’ll say confidently, “is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.”

Jeannie Suk Gersen
New Yorker

Excerpt: On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the university’s president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory. The week after Gay stepped down, two congressional committees demanded documents and explanations from Harvard, on topics ranging from antisemitism, free speech, discrimination, and discipline, to admissions, donations, budgets, and legal settlements.

Some at Harvard might say this is a crisis sparked by external forces: the government, donors, and the public. But it developed long before Gay became president and won’t end with her fall. Over time, Harvard, like many other universities, has allowed the core academic mission of research, intellectual inquiry, and teaching to be subordinated to other values that, though important, should never have been allowed to work against it.

Stephanie Saul
New York Times

Excerpt: Campus protests are not usually aimed at a single person. But last week at the University of Pennsylvania, professors staged a rally targeting Marc Rowan, the New York private-equity billionaire. A Penn alumnus and a major benefactor of the university, Mr. Rowan deployed his formidable resources in a relentless campaign against Penn’s president, M. Elizabeth Magill, leading to her resignation in December.

But it was what happened next that spurred the protest. Mr. Rowan sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus. Amy C. Offner, a history professor who led the protest, called the document a proposed “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the university.”

January 25, 2024
Christopher L. Eisgruber
Office of the President
Princeton University
1 Nassau Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Sent via U.S. Mail and Electronic Mail (eisgruber@princeton.edu)

Dear President Eisgruber:
FIRE and the Anti-Defamation League write to express our collective concern about Princeton University’s improper use of no-contact orders to censor students.

John O. McGinnis
Law & Liberty

Excerpt: The resignation of Claudine Gay provides a window into many pathologies of elite universities—antisemitism on campus, the prioritization of DEI over merit, and plagiarism among academics. But it also reflects their poor governance.

Governance at elite universities is insular, unaccountable, and marred by conflicts of interest that prevent it from being focused on the historic mission of the university, encapsulated on Harvard’s coat of arms: seeking truth. Many nonprofits face similar structural difficulties that create a gap between the performance of their leadership and the fulfillment of their mission, but elite universities face added difficulties.

Excerpt: A war is raging over “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Opponents and supporters of DEI have very different ideas about what it is. “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism,” hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman tweets. “Good businesses look where others don’t, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed,” businessman Mark Cuban counters.

Both men have a point. Some of what happens under the DEI banner is truly objectionable, even illegal—hiring, promotion and admissions standards under which race trumps qualifications, training sessions that create a hostile environment for whites. But as companies, universities and other organizations weed out these practices, they should be careful that the parts of DEI that the majority of us agree on don’t become collateral damage.

Justus Wilhoit and Rebecca Cunningham
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 released his eighth annual State of the University letter on Jan. 18. In the letter, he addresses recent public discourse surrounding the conflict in Israel and Palestine, distinguishing the University from peer institutions. He also emphasizes freedom of speech, commitment to diversity, and pursuit of academic excellence.

“The campus climate at Princeton has been healthier than at many of our peers,” Eisgruber wrote. “That is a credit to faculty, students, and staff who have searched for ways to communicate civilly about sensitive issues, to support one another, and to comply fully with Princeton’s policies that facilitate free speech in ways consistent with the functioning of the University.”

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: Dan Kalb, an Oakland City Council member, is an ardent environmentalist and liberal politician. He was considered ideal to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, on the environment . . . until students found out that Kalb is also a supporter of Israel.  Kalb was reportedly disinvited this month by Natural Resources Professor Kurt Spreyer after students objected and threatened a protest.

Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In Claudine Gay’s resignation letter from her role as president of Harvard University, published in the New York Times on January 2, she expresses hope that the Harvard community remembers her short term as one characterized by “not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education.” But in her op-ed, published a day later, she claims that her resignation was the result of the work of “demagogues” to “undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.”

Though Gay paints her removal from office as a tactic to stop such a campaign from gaining further traction, her refusal to admit any guilt and the Harvard Corporation’s failure to note any particular reason for the resignation suggests that her presidency should be defined by a clear abandonment of the tenets to which she and Harvard claim to have committed.