Latest News and Commentary: Princeton

Excerpt: Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) published a notice on their website on April 19 claiming that the University’s Committee on Conference and Faculty Appeal (CCFA) had upheld an appeal regarding a complaint initiated by eight University faculty members about the University’s treatment of Joshua Katz. The complaint argued the University had unfairly targeted classics professor Katz by including a segment about his controversial statement on the first-year orientation website To Be Known and Heard.

PFS editors' note: This article in the Daily Princetonian covers the very important unanimous ruling by a faculty appeal committee that upholds a complaint filed against university administrators in the Katz matter. There are two important points left out of the article. First, Professor Klainerman has publicly stated he received a copy of the ruling directly from Professor Schwartzbauer, the appeal committee chair. Second, the appeal committee also found that the doctoring of the quote in question from Professor Katz by Princeton Administrators, which President Eisgruber dismissed as a "mistake," did, in fact, alter the meaning of the quote and should be investigated as to whether it violated Princeton rules.

Excerpt: “Beware of the left-wing mob.” It’s an oft-repeated slogan among proponents of free speech on college campuses around the country and certainly at Princeton. The Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), the organization dedicated to the promotion of free speech on this campus, made it the focus of its signature event this year, “Mob Rule: The Illiberal Left’s Threat to Campus Discourse.” POCC brought in some high-profile speakers for an interesting panel discussion, but unfortunately the event’s headline performer—the so-called left-wing mob—failed to show.

I think that the event and the absence of the “mob” bring to light a key flaw in campus free-speech rhetoric: its dependence on enemies to legitimize itself.

Excerpt: Princeton University’s Board of Trustees recently approved the extension of Christopher L. Eisgruber’s presidency by at least five years, citing a record of accomplishment. The board also praised Eisgruber for his “outspoken defense of free speech and academic freedom.”

Those who know the president’s enthusiastic embrace seven years ago of the principles of free expression, first formulated at the University of Chicago, may find this plausible. Yet in the past two years, he and his administration have taken positions and actions that plainly go against the so-called Chicago Principles. Which is why the most respected campus free speech organization in the country, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), ranked Princeton a dismal 135 out of 154 in its most recent free speech rankings of colleges and universities.

Excerpt: National attention has recently come to Princeton University, often rated the nation's best, over the prolonged odyssey of its distinguished classics professor Joshua T. Katz. Katz got into trouble in the wake of George Floyd's death, when he pushed back against faculty demands for "anti-racist" initiatives, including special financial and professional perquisites for Princeton faculty members "of color."

The controversy has caused Katz serious harm. His career-long professional conduct has been placed under a microscope. He has lost professional opportunities. He and his academic work have been publicly maligned. As an accused racist, he is unemployable in virtually any other academic context, and in many related professions.

It is critical to understand that the controversy over Princeton University’s recklessly false, continuing, institutional reviling of Professor Joshua Katz as a racist since early 2021 is about much, much more than the fate of a single professor.

It is about a concerted effort by President Eisgruber and his subordinates, now enabled by the Board of Trustees, to carve the heart out of Princeton’s acclaimed free speech rule by denying its protection to any professors or students who are savaged and defamed for their speech by the University itself – the most powerful entity to which the rule was intended to apply.

Excerpt: The Academic Freedom Alliance released a public letter to St. Olaf College  calling on the college to reaffirm the academic freedom of religion and philosophy professor Edmund Santurri.

Santurri has long served as the director of the Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf. The Institute encourages inquiry and debate into contemporary political and social issues and seeks to present "diverse ideas" to the campus community on controversial issues relating to politics, markets, and society. As part of its programming, the Institute sponsors public lectures, and in recent years it has hosted lectures by a range of speakers, including David Brooks, Glenn Loury, Alice Dreger, Michael Sandel, Bari Weiss, and Bryan Caplan. Unsurprisingly, such speakers discussing such topics sometimes generate controversy on college campuses, and controversies have sometimes swirled around the Institute.

Excerpt: The right to read all books goes beyond the personal feelings one may have for certain books, or whether or not one “agrees” with certain books. It is the very process of agreeing or disagreeing with ideas presented in a book — recognizing the dynamics of the issues books present and understanding their role in different contexts — that is important to have. Similarly, the way we frame these issues when teaching these books to others is also significant.

Excerpt: Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York University professor Ulrich Baer, and Amherst University professor Stefan Bradley spoke on free speech in the classroom and institutional racism on college campuses at a panel on Tuesday, April 19, at Richardson Auditorium.

Excerpt: A new episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast from the Academic Freedom Alliance is now available. Subscribe through your favorite platform so you don't miss an episode. In this episode I talk with David Rabban about controversial public speech by professors and the scope of protection that such speech should have and does have under common university policies.

According to knowledgeable sources, the Princeton Committee on Conference and Faculty Appeal, comprised of 9 faculty members, issued on Tuesday a strongly worded rebuke to a high-ranking official’s summary rejection of a formal complaint seeking an investigation into attacks on the University’s official website portraying Professor Joshua Katz as a racist.

The committee’s detailed letter was in response to an appeal by Professor Sergiu Klainerman of the official rejection. Professor Klainerman's original complaint, joined by seven other Princeton faculty, was that unnamed officials had violated University regulations in using the website to discredit Professor Katz, by smearing him as a racist for a controversial 2020 article criticizing certain race-related demands by activist faculty members.