BY JOAN W. SCOTT The AAUP received a request for correction of statements in this report regarding Princeton University’s policies on faculty meetings. On August 7, 2026, the text of this post was updated to clarify the university’s policies. Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber has carefully curated his public reputation as a defender of free…
BY KEITH E. WHITTINGTON It is not every day that a government minister writes to an American university president demanding that a book be immediately removed “from the curriculum of any of its courses” and that the institution “conduct a thorough review of the academic materials” used in its classes. But such is the demand…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On May 23, the Princeton Board of Trustees voted to fire tenured professor Joshua Katz on the recommendation of a dean and the president, and with the approval of a faculty committee. Katz’s defenders claim that he is being persecuted for his extramural utterances calling a black student group a “terrorist…
BY JOHN K. WILSON This week, the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) wrote a letter to the president of Princeton, asking him to censor a campus website in order to protect a conservative professor’s hurt feelings. This letter is not a defense of academic freedom; it’s an attack on academic freedom. And the AFA is not…
BY JENNIFER RUTH It sounds like a bad joke. The Department of Education (DOE) has apparently launched an investigation into Princeton University. Why? Because President Eisgruber said that racism is embedded in the university structures and its history. “Based on its admitted racism, the U.S. Department of Education is concerned Princeton’s nondiscrimination and equal opportunity…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Last week on Academe Blog, John Wilson argued that one idea proposed by Princeton faculty members who wrote a July 4 letter calling for anti-racist reforms is misguided. The signatories ask Princeton administrators to “constitute a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON More than one hundred professors at Princeton have signed a letter proposing reforms in the wake of Black Lives Matter. The letter contains a lot of good ideas (which I suspect is what the signers support), but unfortunately it also has one particularly bad idea: “Constitute a committee composed entirely of…
BY KEITH E. WHITTINGTON Guest blogger, Keith E. Whittington, is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and the author of Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech. The spring semester got off to a somewhat rocky start at Princeton University when a number of students walked out of a class…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Rick Seltzer reported recently in Inside Higher Education on a complex decision by Princeton University to settle litigation with neighboring homeowners who argued that the University was a profit-making institution and therefore subject potentially to millions of additional dollars in taxes annually. Arrangement Doesn’t Settle Issue of Tax Exemption The arrangement…