President Eisgruber ’83 Criticizes ‘Smear’ Attacks on Higher Education

He says in the State of the University letter that damage from a December congressional hearing “has been significant”

President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has released his annual state of the University letter.

President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 is calling for Princetonians to “stand up more broadly for the excellence of America’s universities and for free expression.”

John Emerson

By Julie Bonette

Published Jan. 18, 2024

3 min read

In his annual State of the University letter released Jan. 18, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 chastised “nakedly partisan jeremiads” and “centrist voices” who have been attacking the reputation of American higher education, particularly since last month’s contentious congressional hearing during which three college presidents dodged questions about antisemitism and calls for genocide.

In the 12-page letter, Eisgruber agreed with New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg who said the former presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gay and Liz Magill, respectively, and the president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, “walked into a trap” when they spoke at a Dec. 7 U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing where they were questioned about heightened tension on college campuses since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. “[B]ut walk into it they did. The damage has been significant … ,” Eisgruber wrote. Following the hearing, the House Education and Workforce Committee launched an investigation into antisemitism claims at all three schools, Gay and Magill resigned, and critics’ claims that colleges and universities embrace antisemitism grew even louder.

Those increasingly vocal attacks are wrong, Eisgruber wrote, and many have “a clear target: they aim to stoke animosity toward diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.” Eisgruber affirmed that antisemitism and anti-Arab and Islamophobic hatred are unacceptable at Princeton, but said the University should not trust any official, including himself, “to decide which ideas, opinions, or slogans should be suppressed and which should not.”

He echoed previous comments in calling for “Princeton and its peers [to] confront a challenging political landscape” by protecting freedom of speech while simultaneously promoting inclusivity and a sense of belonging.

“Even when arguments are wrong, listening to and rebutting them can deepen our understanding of our own positions, strengthen our capacity to defend them, and help to educate others,” Eisgruber wrote.

Princeton’s Rights, Rules, Responsibilities bars speech that is unlawful, defamatory of a specific individual, threatening, harassing, an invasion of privacy or confidentiality, or speech “that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University,” but Eisgruber wrote that speech that is simply offensive is “never grounds for discipline at Princeton.”

Several times in the letter, Eisgruber cited and dismissed a CNN video by journalist Fareed Zakaria that alleged American higher education institutions have been neglecting excellence to pursue diversity and inclusion goals.

“America’s leading universities are more dedicated to scholarly excellence today than at any previous point in their history, and our commitment to inclusivity is essential to that excellence,” Eisgruber wrote. He detailed at length Princeton’s efforts to diversify the student body over the last century and acknowledged past wrongs, such as “antisemitic quotas” and the absence of Asian and Asian American students in the 1950s.

While recent conflicts at some colleges, such as Columbia University, over the Israel-Hamas war have led to violence, Eisgruber credited Princeton faculty, students, and staff in noting this has not been the case at the University. Eisgruber further stated that student protests “have played an essential role in drawing attention to issues” such as those faced by marginalized groups.

In closing, Eisgruber urged Princetonians to “stand up more broadly for the excellence of America’s universities and for free expression” while also championing “the radical idea that in college and in our society, people of all backgrounds and identities should feel themselves to be at home” on American college campuses.

1983 Academics Administration

2 Responses

Michael Goldstein ’78

7 Months Ago

An infamous anniversary approaches at Princeton. On Feb. 7, 2023, Mohammed El-Kurd gave a speech full of antisemitic and anti-Zionist incitement on the campus. Princeton was well aware of El-Kurd’s notorious antisemitism, yet insisted on inviting and paying him, defending it on free speech grounds.

Princeton has never acknowledged how much it paid Mr. El-Kurd, but his university speaking rate is reportedly up to $10,000. Arizona State University’s undergraduate student government “approved nearly $10,000 … to pay El-Kurd’s speaker fee,” according to the Phoenix New Times. At the ASU speech, El-Kurd said, “If you heckle me, you will get shot.”

After El Kurd’s presentation at Princeton, Chabad Rabbi Eitan Webb told him, “I would like to thank you very much for giving a masterclass on how to be an antisemite.”

I am a member of the Princeton 1746 Society for significant donors. But I ended my contributions to Princeton after the University defended El-Kurd’s presentation and other acts of antisemitic incitement on free speech/academic freedom grounds. I am not the only Princetonian who has paused their contributions.

In the year since Mr. El Kurd’s speech:

An antisemitic pogrom of rape, kidnapping and murder was launched by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 240 others.
The attack and the war that Israel launched against Hamas in response has resulted in a wave of antisemitism on Ivy League campuses and in America’s streets.
More than 1,600 Princeton alumni signed a letter sent to university administrators asking that the University does not become “a hotbed of antisemitism.”
Two of eight Ivy League Presidents resigned, largely due to their inadequate response to the Oct. 7 massacre and at a subsequent Congressional hearing.

And what of Mr. El-Kurd himself?

At a rally in London on January 13, El-Kurd said, “We must normalize massacres as a status quo.” While Mr. El-Kurd later said that he misspoke in that instance, he also added that “Zionism is apartheid, it’s genocide, it’s murder, it’s a racist ideology rooted in settler expansion and racial domination, and we must root it out of the world.”

Mr. El-Kurd was investigated by the London police. Members of Parliament called for his deportation, to which he responded with obscenity. Is such incitement to violence the “free speech” that President Eisgruber ’83 constantly defends?

Is Princeton proud of this infamous episode? I know El-Kurd is.

Kevin R. Loughlin ’71

7 Months Ago

Many academics were dismayed at the performance of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn before Congress in December. The Stanford president also had issues that caused him to resign last year. These events prompted me to order and read The Human Nature of a University by Robert F. Goheen ’40 *48 and Lessons Learned: Reﬂections of a University President by William G. Bowen *58.

President Goheen’s book is a distillation of his speeches, reports, and other papers and was published in 1969. This compendium is ﬁlled with his acquired wisdom. It came as no surprise to me, nor will it to many others, that early in this volume, referring to the challenges facing a university, the classicist Goheen recalls that, “Heraclitus’ favorite images were the bow and the lyre. The tension of the bow, the strain put on its opposite ends gives the arrow force to carry ﬁrmly to a mark. In playing of a lyre, harmony results only where there is contrast — where there is interplay among tones at variance with one another.” In his concluding paragraph, Goheen reminds the reader, “Nevertheless, born as it is of our society, the American university must not surrender its role as foregazer and critic — as searching mind and probing conscience — of that society.”

Almost a half century later, in 2011, another Princeton president, William G. Bowen, published his reﬂections on university leadership. With an insight similar to Goheen, Bowen recalls the words of E.M. Forster, who applied the words of the Greek poet Cavafy to describe the role of a university in society to be “at a slight angle to the universe.” President Bowen follows this introduction with a cogent analysis of the challenges he faced as Princeton president and concludes, “Failings and shortcomings notwithstanding, we do well to protect and strengthen these venerable institutions that have nurtured and inspired us over the centuries.”

Leadership is integral to the success of countries, corporations, hospitals, and universities. These books by Goheen and Bowen should not only be read by university presidents seeking guidance, but by all academics in leadership positions. As Princetonians, we are the direct beneﬁciaries of the collective leadership of presidents Goheen, Bowen, and others who have led our university so successfully through turbulent times and continue to ensure it remains, “the best damn place of all.”

Editor’s note: The writer is a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School.