How Princeton University Hijacked a Free-Speech Event

P rinceton University President Christopher Eisgruber recently published a book with an undeniably contrarian title, Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right. In his promotional media tour, he appeared on an NPR podcast hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti. During their discussion, Chakrabarti challenged Eisgruber by questioning whether universities have consistently promoted free expression. As an example, she cited that the class of 2025 at Princeton was required to watch an orientation video in which a classics professor argued that free speech is a merely instrumental good to be used in service of “anti-racist social justice.” She asked whether this video amounted to the university “sending a message” that some speech and ideas are acceptable while others are not, to which Eisgruber responded as follows:

“You know, that was one video that was shown as part of an orientation in one year with a number of different faculty on it expressing viewpoints with which students could engage. I disagree with Professor Padilla Peralta, about the things that he said about free speech, but part of what we do is expose students to different viewpoints that they’re going to agree or disagree with. What we’ve done actually in the wake of that particular video, and that orientation, was to create an orientation around free speech that we give every year, where I actually lecture to the students about the importance of free speech and the importance of civil discussion and respect. So I think that’s a better way of starting students off with a discussion of free speech. And we make mistakes. Sometimes we learn from those mistakes. . . . From my standpoint, that was not a particularly good orientation video. I think we’re doing a lot better now.” (Emphasis added.)

With such a response, Eisgruber implicitly credits his administration by obscuring the origins of this particular orientation event, thus allowing himself and the university to appear as virtuous guardians of free expression who detected a problem and developed a solution. But that is inaccurate. I know because I helped design the event in question.

A fellow conservative undergraduate and I fought relentlessly to reform freshman orientation. In 2021, we co-authored a letter that illuminated how the freshman-orientation programming was strikingly ideological and failed to acknowledge — let alone defend — opinions that lean conservative. For example, we were required to attend an LGBTQ+ event that distributed a handout claiming “trans women are women” and “there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.” Of course, there was no requirement to hear members of the Anscombe Society, a campus club that supports traditional sexual ethics. Unfortunately, a new student who disagrees with the presentations during orientation is faced with two options: Express a controversial opinion and be ostracized at the onset of his college experience, or remain silent and thus appear to be a believer in the orthodoxy. Leaving insufficiently progressive opinions unmentioned during orientation prompts students to perceive such views as invalid and unwelcome on campus, even though our institution’s policies expressly protect viewpoint diversity.

Our 2021 letter, which was signed by nearly 50 undergraduate students, began as follows:

The First Year Residential Experience (FYRE) innocently began with introductions of names and hometowns, then slowly devolved into ideologically divisive lectures and panels. The intentions of such events were not to assimilate us into our new surroundings, but to promote an orthodoxy prevalent on campuses across the country. We write to express our disappointment with the freshman orientation program, which mandated attendance at what were essentially indoctrination sessions teaching students to think a certain way.

The purpose of freshman orientation should be to familiarize students with the campus and its various centers, organizations, and resources. Ideally, FYRE would be a procedural effort to make substantive learning an uncomplicated experience. However, since the University has undertaken a divergent mission to immediately present incoming students with sexual, moral, and political guidance, the institution should at least expressly commit to presenting a broad range of perspectives and arguments on such topics. Additionally, should the University maintain the mandatory status of events, the compulsory attendance should be applied and enforced across the ideological spectrum.

We sent the letter to President Eisgruber, along with other senior staff members of the university, and it led to meetings with administrators (for which Eisgruber was never present). Although the university’s proper role does not include the responsibility to provide sex education to students, let alone supply them with unspecified “sex toys” as it did in 2020, we knew it was unrealistic to demand cutting most orientation events. Instead, a select few students who signed the letter took a more strategic approach. We noted that orientation consisted of events that familiarized students with school policies, such as a module on reporting sexual misconduct, yet there was no programming that mentioned the school’s free-expression policies. Accordingly, we developed a lecture-style event that would inform students about the University of Chicago Free Speech Principles that Princeton formally adopted in 2015. (Critically, the session would also be mandatory, just as orientation’s hours of DEI propaganda were required.) Although I loved the idea that each undergraduate would walk out of the event as a newly converted academic-freedom enthusiast, my pragmatic goal was simply to educate students about their free-expression rights on campus — and in turn, embolden students to share their views by equipping them with the institutional knowledge to recognize and fight any violations that might occur in their four years. Maybe, just maybe, the freshmen would even feel confident enough to express contrary opinions in other orientation sessions.

As a result of the undergraduates’ initiative and many meetings, the orientation event “Free Expression at Princeton” debuted in September 2022 for the class of 2026, during which two undergraduates and Eisgruber delivered speeches. My good friend Myles McKnight spoke and presented students with an admirable challenge: “Embrace discomfort. Remind yourself constantly of your own fallibility. Presume nothing, and acknowledge that you will be faced with opportunities to either enhance our culture of truth-seeking or to harm it. The choices you make in such circumstances will define what sort of Princetonian you are, so make them carefully.” (His full remarks are here.) Overall, the event was substantive and productive; freshmen heard defenses of free speech as essential to a properly functioning university, learned about the institution’s policies, and recognized examples of open discourse flourishing on campus.

Initially, I was immensely proud and considered the event to be a rare victory. After all, how many conservative students can say they actually prompted their institution to undertake a sizable change in such politically contentious areas as free speech and viewpoint diversity? I was optimistic that the event would have significant downstream effects on the campus culture, and indeed, some fruitful outcomes were immediately obvious. For months afterward, students debated the merits of the event in our campus newspaper, which represented open discussion in action. I heard individually from students who said that the event discouraged self-censorship and inspired them to voice unpopular views, in part because knowing the free-speech policies offered a degree of reassurance and protection. Unfortunately, in the midst of all this positive feedback, I failed to see the problem: Our event was too successful, and it became a liability for Princeton.

The university castrated the event the following year. The subsequent iteration of the free-expression session featured Eisgruber and Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Then-Princeton undergraduate Matthew Wilson called the event an “embarrassment” in National Review, explaining that Romero “repeatedly urged [students] to embrace progressive ideas and badly misrepresented the importance of free speech by rooting its value in its ability to advance socially progressive causes.” When asked about “cancel culture,” Romero said that it has a “positive” element because “we shouldn’t put up with,” for example, “heteronormativity” and “the patriarchy that’s just bludgeoning people’s gender identities.” So, in plain analysis, the event designed to distill institutional policies and promote academic freedom in a nonpartisan fashion became yet another progressive indoctrination campaign, betraying its initial aim and actually suppressing free speech by defending only the types of expression that satisfy left-wing activists.

So I write now to correct the record. Eisgruber suggests that his administration developed the event because it saw the need for improvement, but it was actually the product of dissatisfied (and overwhelmingly conservative) students who saw the freshman-orientation programming for what it was: a prolonged, institutionally enforced ideological hazing that established a moral tone on campus by compelling students to hear progressive opinions without rebuttal, while any dissenting views were stigmatized as incorrect — and thus impermissible — by virtue of their being undefended. Ultimately, Eisgruber wants to portray the annual orientation event as an example of how free expression is secure on his campus, but he avoids acknowledging that the event emerged precisely because the university’s freshman orientation promoted a left-wing agenda and stifled any contrary beliefs. Even worse, the free-expression event is now another weapon to deter criticisms of the left.

I stand by every single word in the 2021 letter. Moreover, I still believe that our event was a great idea for promoting an important value. However, after seeing the university corrupt the session to undermine open discourse, and after hearing President Eisgruber claim credit while pretending that the event still serves its initial purpose, I worry that what I deemed a massive victory was actually a massive mistake. It is disheartening and frustrating to see our worthy efforts subverted, then misrepresented in service of a false, self-aggrandizing narrative. I have been given a hard lesson in Conquest’s Second Law: What is not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing. And, if permitted to expound upon the law, I would say that devolution into leftism occurs on a shorter time scale than anticipated. I am hesitant to say that I wholly regret our initiative, but I do regret being so stupidly naive, so enthusiastically optimistic, and so unwaveringly zealous to have ever thought that Princeton University could be reformed for the better — especially under Christopher Eisgruber.