The timing of these new rules is rather suspicious.
The timing of these new rules is rather suspicious.
P rinceton University recently adopted censorial regulations in an apparent attempt to stifle bad press and restore its sparkling reputation. A governing body voted in November to approve broad restrictions on recording without the express consent of all participants: “Princeton prohibits the installation or use of any device for listening, observing, photographing, recording, amplifying, transmitting or broadcasting sounds or events occurring in any place where the individual or group involved has a reasonable expectation of being free from unwanted surveillance, eavesdropping, recording or observation without the knowledge and consent of all participants subject to such recordings.” Although the “reasonable expectation” of privacy suggests it is permissible to record events with a decently sized audience, the university will also ban recording if “it has been explicitly stated that recording is not permitted,” no matter the size of the event. (The phrasing is vague; it seems that any person who is present, not only an event’s organizers, can veto recording.) Rather tellingly, the new regulations further prohibit the “transmission and/or distribution” of any such materials, an obvious effort to stifle communication between university members and journalists. Put succinctly, Princeton hung a giant “NO TATTLETALES” sign on its front gates.
On a practical level, the ambiguous policies leave many questions about enforcement and punishment. Will an off-the-record event require participants to relinquish their phones and computers at the start? If a journalist unaffiliated with the university obtains recordings from a Princeton student and reports on their contents, will there be an investigation that inspects the devices of every individual who attended the event in question? Does an infraction amount to a nasty line on your transcript, a failed grade, an expulsion, or something else entirely? Perhaps answers to these inquiries will be revealed through a series of disciplinary rulings.
Yet the motivation for these new policies, not the technical details of their practical application, should be the object of scrutiny. Princeton University justifies the restrictions on the grounds of protecting privacy and proprietary information, further suggesting that recording without consent is incompatible with the flourishing of “free inquiry and free expression.” Since I’m an academic-freedom enthusiast, I’ll readily concede that restrictions on recording might improve the culture of free expression on campus; students may have increased willingness to express controversial views in class, or ask a daring question during an event, if they know their comments will not be documented verbatim. Yet there are less restrictive means available to promote free inquiry. A defensible approach would be simply to ban recording during any programming for academic credit (a lecture, seminar, lab, and so on). An additional measure can be passed, similar to what exists at Harvard Law School, that prevents attributing an in-class statement to a particular individual; such a standard might foster an intellectual environment where students and faculty alike are emboldened to express unpopular views they do not necessarily hold for the purpose of a lively debate. In any event, Princeton’s new policies are far more expansive than necessary to facilitate open discourse or protect privacy.
However, Princeton’s primary concern likely is not enhancing academic freedom, maintaining the privacy of its members, or securing intellectual property. Indeed, the timing of these new rules is rather suspicious. As the Daily Princetonian student publication notes, this new rule comes months after I reported on Princeton’s mandatory “DEI training” for dormitory supervisors — an article with damning quotes from audio recordings that had been sent to me. Of course, I am not responsible for all of Princeton’s bad press in recent years; plenty of controversies on campus were recorded by students and shared widely on social media, then boosted in a range of publications. An unmistakable source of unfavorable footage for universities was the encampment-style protests, wherein aggressive students and faculty abandoned academic duties to express their support — sometimes violently — for terrorism. (Notably, at many institutions, these documented infractions went largely unpunished.) It is difficult to believe that Princeton’s sweeping regulations on documenting speech are in service of academic freedom or “free inquiry” when the prohibition on recording seemingly applies to large non-academic events. And, after all, it has been non-academic activities like the encampments that have attracted the most negative attention in recent years.
While academic freedom at Princeton is abysmal, secretly recording in-class activity is not a source of the problem; if it were, then the university could reasonably defend regulations narrowly tailored to academic settings. By contrast, Princeton’s reputation as a respectable institution is threatened by video and audio documentation — so it isn’t surprising that the restrictions apply outside of the classroom. Ultimately, Princeton’s new policies represent the anxiety of its administrators, who are aware that its progressive students, faculty, and other employees are political liabilities. The university is attempting to craft an insurance policy, allowing its members to behave mischievously under the guise of “privacy” and then deny any allegations due to the lack of audio or visual evidence. Henceforth, accusations can be summarily discarded as hearsay or simply the innocent mishearing of remarks.
Of course, an alternative approach would be to stop hiring nutty progressive teachers or featuring guest speakers whose qualifications are invariably laughable. For example, rather than preventing a student journalist from reporting on embarrassing pseudo-intellectual events, it would behoove the university to avoid inviting guests like a “queer-trans-feminist river scientist” who previously performed as a “salmon oracle.” (Yes, Princeton really held an event called “Underflows: Queer and Trans Among Rivers,” and yes, I wrote about it — but if I were still a student today, I presumably would get in trouble for publishing the exact same story.) Make no mistake that the new policies are a version of the Chatham House Rules on steroids, amounting to the following confession: We, the university, host illiberal activity that threatens our prestige, but we will stifle the ability to document it because of our alliances with the progressive causes in question.