Princeton’s Mixed-Up President Discards Free Speech and Demonizes Its Defenders
Tablet | Sergiu Klainerman
Princeton mathematics professor, Sergiu Klainerman, argues that Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, holds two irreconcilable beliefs: 1) a belief in academic freedom and 2) a belief that a university’s main goal is to advance social justice. By attempting to remain true to both, Klainerman warns that Eisgruber risking being “in the middle of an unfolding tragedy that threatens the foundations of higher education in the United States…”
“Ignoring the disappointing, and often tragic, lessons of past historical experiments with social justice imposed by heavy-handed bureaucratic means in places like the former Soviet Union, my native communist Romania, or contemporary China, Princeton’s president believes that the university can have it all: social justice, free speech, and an academic commitment to excellence in the search of knowledge.”
The piece, describing the public castigation of Princeton’s Classics professor Joshua Katz (featured on Princeton’s To Be Known and Heard “wall of shame” as a racist for his Quillette article), takes a broader view on what is happening under Eisgruber’s leadership:
“He [Katz] had to be punished as an example to us all not to interfere with the university’s plans to remake itself as an ideological factory for the production of ‘anti-racist social justice.’ Historically, that is not the mission of Princeton University nor any other great university.”
Related: Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice
