https://princetoniansforfreespeech.com/ Skip to main content Princetonians for Free Speech Search [ ] [Search] Menu Main navigation * Home * About Us * Princeton's Free Speech Rules * Contact Us * Letters to the Editor * Editorials * Archives Words of Wisdom: Great Thinkers on Why Free Speech Is Vital Jonathan Rauch Jonathan Rauch, 2016 "The greatest idea in the history of human civilization is the idea that we are better off, personally and as a society, if we not only tolerate but actively protect speech and thought that is wrong-headed, offensive, bigoted, seditious,... more Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, 1860 "Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thought and opinions has ceased to exist." William Brennan Justice William Brennan, Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967) "[A]cademic freedom... is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the ... more Constitution United States Constitution, first amendment "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people... more Ruth Bader Ginsburg Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2012 interview "A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom." Donald Downs Donald Downs, 2020 "Punishing evil or bad thoughts amounts to thought control, which is the quintessential First Amendment sin and a hallmark of an authoritarian or totalitarian state. It is no accident that polities that coerce their vision of a new and... more George Washington George Washington, 1783 "If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill, On Freedom, 1859 "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the... more President Obama President Barack Obama, September 2015, comments at high school town hall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa "The purpose of college is not just... to transmit skills. It's also to widen your horizons, to make you a better citizen, to help you to evaluate... more Justice Louis Brandeis Justice Louis Brandeis, concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 1927 "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced... more Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, 1860 speech "No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. . . the great moral renovator of society and government. . . . Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thought and... more Henry Steele Commager Henry Steele Commager, 1954 "The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the... more Jonathan Rauch Jonathan Rauch, 2013 "History shows that the more open the intellectual environment, the better minorities will do.... [G]ay people know we owe our progress to freedom of speech and freedom of thought.... The best society for minorities is not the society... more Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall, Police Dept. of City of Chicago v. Mosley (1972) "The First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content." John Lewis John Lewis, 2017 "Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings." George Orwell George Orwell, 1945; Preface to Animal Farm "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Ira Glasser Ira Glasser, 2020 interview "[A]fter [a] panel discussion [at a prestigious law school], person after person got up, including some of the younger professors, to assert that their goals of social justice for blacks, for women, for... more James Madison James Madison, 1788 speech "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin, 1722 "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." Margaret Chase Smith Margaret Chase Smith, 1950 speech against McCarthyism "The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation... more Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "We read of tortures in jails with electric devices, suicides among prisoners, forced confessions, while in the outside community ruthless persecution of editors, religious leaders, and political opponents suppress free speech--and a... more Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, written in latter half of 1950s "If someone wants to see and experience the world as it 'really' is, he can do so only by understanding it as something that is shared by many people, lies between them, separates them,... more Nadine Strossen Nadine Strossen, former ACLU president, 2018 "In the long run, an open airing of discriminatory ideas, and an ensuing debate about them, may well be more effective in curbing them than censorship would be." Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie, 1990 "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." View all quotes Why Free Speech and Academic Freedom are Endangered at Princeton Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of democracy and essential to learning. Yet surveys show that many university students not only do not understand the significance of free speech, they actually oppose it. Academic freedom is fundamental to the concept of a university. Today, both freedoms are under attack at universities across the country, often by active, well-organized groups of faculty and students. Princeton is no exception. Continue reading>> Join Us Today If you are a member of the Princeton community who is concerned about free speech and academic freedom, we urge you to subscribe to updates today by clicking on this link. Others are also invited to subscribe. Subscriptions are free. Subscribers receive email updates when new material is posted, when we schedule events, and when there are important developments regarding free speech at Princeton. Subscribe now Latest News and Commentary Princeton View all... Featured March 29, 2021 Fighting Back, At Last: New activist groups are responding to the spread of illiberal tendencies on campus and beyond By Jonathan Rauch Persuasion Excerpt: Stuart Taylor Jr. was never an activist. Never founded a group. Never ran a nonprofit. But recently, the journalist became so alarmed about attacks on open expression at his alma mater that he founded Princetonians for Free Speech. Joining him was another newcomer to free-speech activism, Edward Yingling, a heavy-hitting Washington lawyer and former president of the American Bankers Association. "Professors and students are getting isolated and picked off and harassed, and no one is supporting them," Taylor said. "There's nobody pushing back." The group is not much more than a website for now, but it plans to come to the public defense of Princeton students and faculty who say something unpopular and find themselves on the wrong end of a harassment campaign or an investigation. It also plans to track free-speech trends and ensure that alumni are kept abreast of developments on campus. "We hope we're starting something that would lend itself to replication on other campuses," Taylor said. Other new groups and journals with similar missions include The Academic Freedom Alliance, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, or FAIR, Counterweight, The Free Speech Union, and American Purpose. Click here for link to full article March 22, 2021 How Free is Speech on the American College Campus? Recorded interview of Keith Whittington by Tim O'Brien By Tim O'Brien, recorded interview Excerpt: Princeton professor and author Keith Whittington joins Tim O'Brien to talk about the current state of not-so-free-speech on the American college campus and Keith's role in the new and growing Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA). Keith explains the growing fear among professors and instructors that the smallest thing they say or do could ruin their careers. They could be canceled for using the wrong story or word to illustrate a point while teaching a class. Something they say or do could be perceived by some students as a triggering factor for some negative emotion. If you do a quick Google search, you'll find stories where educators were called out by students for perceived lack of sensitivity to certain issues. Stories like those have created a growing concern among educators that something has to be done to turn the tide. Click here for link to full article Featured March 22, 2021 On The Illogicality Of Princeton's Coronavirus Restrictions By Matthew Wilson The Princeton Tory Excerpt: The 2,887 Princeton students who returned to campus this semester have faced a harsh new reality as they attempt to navigate the University's pandemic-related restrictions and many of its seemingly absurd regulations. Student press outlets have seen their coverage curtailed and have been prevented from producing print publications--censorship in all but name--and students of faith have had to watch in disbelief as the University shamelessly encourages non-socially-distanced sexual activity, offering contraception and sex toys to students, while simultaneously claiming that social distancing guidelines render it too dangerous to allow prayer, worship, and Mass in the Chapel. To me, this dichotomy accurately encapsulates Princeton's response to COVID-19 thus far: hypocritical, absurd, and logic-free. Click here for link to full article View all... National View all... March 29, 2021 'A Hotly Contested Issue' By Colleen Flaherty Inside Higher Ed Excerpt: A Christian professor of philosophy who was reprimanded for refusing to refer to a trans student as a woman can pursue his lawsuit against Shawnee State University in Ohio, a federal appeals court said Friday. Shawnee State "punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue," the appeals court said. "And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment." The case stemmed from a 2018 class in which the professor, Nicholas Meriwether, called a trans woman "sir." Meriwether said no one informed him of the student's preferred pronoun. After class, the student "demanded" to be called "Ms.," like other female students, and threatened to have him fired if he didn't, Meriwether claimed. The university also rejected a compromise proposed by Meriwether. His lawyer said that the case "forced us to defend what used to be a common belief -- that nobody should be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep their job." Click here for link to full article Featured March 28, 2021 Commentary: Discrimination 101: Professor rips exiling of 'Whiteness' on campus By James Varney Washington Times Excerpt: Once upon a time, Aaron Kindsvatter relished the scholarly world, which he found to be a fascinating marketplace of ideas with liberal leanings. Those days are gone. Now a tenured professor of counselor education at the University of Vermont, he finds himself in a surreal, totalitarian environment. Faculty and administrators want him exiled because he has taken a stand against what he saw as pigeonholing of people according to skin color. "Please stop reducing my personhood to a racial category in your teach-ins," he asked in the first of three videos he made this month that embroiled him in a campus fury. "I feel that I've been pushed into a corner by the University of Vermont," he declared in a March 8 video. "The problem is there is a new kind of discrimination on campus that's going on, and I think everyone is afraid to talk about it. This discrimination is against 'Whiteness.' Click here for link to full article March 26, 2021 Commentary: Our Vietnam-era predecessors needed free expression and so do we By Robert McCoy Cavalier Daily Excerpt: I encourage University [of Virginia] leftists with qualms about free speech to look to your Vietnam-era predecessors in the New Left movement who opposed the censorship of unpopular speech because their speech was once unpopular. We should maintain their commitment to the First Amendment because, as University history proves, the left has skin in the game, too. Antiwar speech has historically consigned many leftists to the ideological minority, if not a jail cell, like Charles Schenck and Eugene Debs. The first University leftists to oppose the presence of U.S. troops in Vietnam knew this well. To challenge the University's commitment to freedom of expression is to forget that our once-unpopular New Left predecessors fiercely demanded it. Recalling their values and success, we need to do the same. Click here for link to full article View all... This website (c) 2020 by Princetonians for Free Speech. Articles (c) by their respective rights holders.