A Case Study in Civil Discourse

Regarding free speech: Although the University has what I consider to be a very good statement about free expression (speech), it does not seem to carry through to students, professors, and administration. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in partnership with College Pulse, rated Princeton No. 169 out of 203 of America’s largest and most prestigious campuses in order from top (No. 1, the University of Chicago) to bottom (No. 203, Columbia).

Regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI): Over the 60 years since I graduated, tuition and expenses have outpaced the rate of inflation mainly because of increased college administration costs and the availability of student loans. For the last 20 years, however, Princeton has provided grants, not loans, which reduced the cost for many. Nevertheless, the University is stuffed with nonacademic office workers, including several dozen (or more) intent on developing and enforcing diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout. Google “DEI Princeton” to learn about the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and all of the many DEI deans, assistant deans, assistants to the deans, associate deans, directors, assistant directors, etc. in multiple areas of the University.

Therefore, I hope that Princeton will “lower the heat” on DEI and reduce the tremendous overhead. And at the same time, “increase the heat” on implementing free speech for all. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to have all students, professors, administrators, and other employees sign a statement, perhaps annually, concerning the “Free Speech and Expression Code,” and another statement concerning the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Code,” just like the Honor Code which we signed after each exam. This would place the responsibility on each individual to live up to the codes. If someone is accused of violating the codes, they will get due process. This would be a more effective way to go about implementing free speech and DEI vs. the overburdening and high cost of what is being done now.

Like CNN’s notorious and frequently lampooned mischaracterization of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots as “mostly peaceful protests,” I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry at President Eisgruber ’83’s proud assertion that “I believe we have [civil discourse] on most American college campuses.” I suppose that those weasel words “I believe” and “most” give him some wiggle room, but could anything be further from the truth? Is he living in a parallel universe where conservative speakers — indeed, anyone who dares defy the intolerant progressive orthodoxy that pervades so much of academia, at Berkeley, Pitt, San Francisco State, and on and on — were not blocked from speaking, not assaulted, intimidated, or “disinvited,” where MIT Professor Robert van der Hilst does not say, “Freedom of speech goes very far but it makes civility difficult,” and Professor Phoebe Cohen at Williams does not dismiss the “idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism [coming as it does] from a world in which white men dominated,” and where Dorian Abbot delivers his (totally apolitical) lecture on “Climate and the Potential for Life on Other Planets” at MIT? It could be that Princeton and the University of Chicago, among the nation’s preeminent institutions, are a little better than the rest, but generally the furious and violent suppression of opposing opinions continues. As activism degenerates into fanaticism, as propaganda and indoctrination replace reliable information and thoughtful analysis and debate, this has always been the case. 

In response to the English department’s invitation to Mohammed El-Kurd to speak on campus notwithstanding El-Kurd’s history of antisemitic rants, Center for Jewish Life Rabbi Gil Steinlauf ’91 asked the department “whether such rhetoric would be tolerated if it targeted other groups.” In the President’s Page, President Eisgruber ’83, like the department presumably, either had no answer to Rabbi Steinlauf’s question or chose not to provide one. The answer obviously is “no.” It simply is unimaginable that any academic department at Princeton would invite a speaker with a history of comments and writings about others even slightly comparable to those of El-Kurd about Jews and Israel. Said otherwise, however reprehensible and untrue, anything goes under the rubric of free speech on campus when it comes to Jews and Israel. But free speech on campus has distinct limits when it comes to other groups. 

Initially I was aghast, despite the great rise of antisemitism, the English department would be insensitive to the feelings of Jews at Princeton and choose Mohammed El-Kurd to be the Said lecturer (President’s Page, April issue). El-Kurd repeated Medieval lies about Jews and expressed his desire to dispose of all Israelis. President Eisgruber ’83 never denounced the choice but merely praised the genteel response of the audience.

Then I realized that I have been subjected to antisemitic behavior at Princeton. My planned Gilded Age American Jewish Art Exhibit was cancelled by the librarian Anne Jarvis and President Eisgruber because two of the distinguished artists had been Confederates [see editor’s note]. One did a bust of Lincoln and Franz Liszt. Recently, Firestone Library and previously the University Art Museum feted a self-acclaimed antisemitic poet Amiri Baraka, who wrote, “I got the extermination blues Jew boys” and claimed Israel was responsible for 9/11.

In 2017, I donated a Professorship of American Jewish Studies. The gift agreement says that the professor “shall be a tenured member of the faculty whose research and teaching focus is American Jewish Studies.” To my knowledge, the holder of that chair has not taught courses on American Jewish studies. Would this have happened if the chair had been in Italian or Greek studies?

A symposium to celebrate my 15th publication about Gilded Age Jewry, which the University Press asked to distribute, was shown at the American Jewish Historical Society because Eisgruber declined my offer to hold it at Princeton.

Ironically, I have made some 13,000 gifts and held nine exhibits at Princeton.

Editor’s note: Eisgruber disputed this point in an April 2022 interview with PAW, saying that the issue was not whether Princeton would display controversial art but rather “how that art gets displayed and who has the editorial control.” Read more in a story from the May 2022 issue.

President Eisgruber ’83 stated very well in PAW’s April issue (President’s Page) the case for diverse guest speakers like the young poet-journalist Mohammed El-Kurd who spoke in February about the plight of Palestinians. Eisgruber decried the narrow acrimony voiced in Fox News reviews and on social media. On the facing page was a pertinent letter by Princeton alumnus Michael Goldstein ’78. It is particularly distressing that Michael surpasses the sensationalist media by presuming that El-Kurd not only hates all Jews — many no doubt in the audience packing 10 McCosh Hall — rather than specifically Zionists and West Bank settlers, but also that El-Kurd “would like to exterminate” him and his two Princeton alumni sons.        

It’s a pity that neither Michael nor I was present in the hall to experience the tone of the discussion as well as to hear El-Kurd’s complete presentation. I hope that faculty of sociology, religion, poetry, and psychology will publicly speak (a panel?) on alternatives to Michael’s fearful yet arrogant response to media reports. I hope that Michael and others such as campus Zionists will gain experiences that may empathetically challenge their insulated convictions.

I enjoyed reading President Eisgruber’s “A Case Study in Civil Discourse” in the April issue of PAW. Having been on the fence regarding the controversy over free speech at Princeton and anywhere, for that matter, it now occurs to me that the simple and reasonable solution is to let both sides speak when ultra-sensitive matters are broached. As we do for our State of the Union address each year. Simple, equitable, and nonconfrontational.