Academic Freedom Undermined by Omission

Universities are under increasing pressure; many believe they have lost their sense of purpose. Universities have two main missions: create new knowledge and prepare the next generation with the skills needed to confront future problems, many of which we cannot predict. To achieve the latter requires that faculty teach students to assess data and sources of information, to weigh arguments, and to identify cognitive biases. 

A recent Princeton course description illustrates how academic freedom can be undermined by omission. The course description for Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide (spring 2026) does not challenge students to think about complicated religious and geopolitical issues. Rather, the course description inverts the truth by omission. It makes the claim, as a statement of fact, rather than as a disputed accusation, that there is an “ongoing genocide in Gaza.” Consequently, it adopts the false Hamas narrative as an undisputed fact. It omits any mention of Hamas’ terrorism and repression, its use of civilians as human shields, as well as the genocidal Hamas charter. Additionally, when it mentions the Holocaust, it omits that from the beginning (note the Hitler-Jerusalem Mufti meeting in 1941) that Jews, who were the victims of that genocide, were accused as perpetrators. 

Academic freedom means a professor may research, publish, and speak publicly about what they wish. As stated by Louis Menand in a recent New Yorker article, it does not mean they can say whatever they want in the classroom to indoctrinate students. Our job as faculty is to teach students “how to think,” not “what to think,” particularly at a time when access to information (and misinformation) is so prevalent. The mischaracterization of the conflict in the Middle East, failure to address the role of Hamas, and misuse of the term genocide all indicate the goals of the course: brainwashing Princeton students against Jews and Israel. Princeton needs to act to prevent the foreseeable harm to academic freedom and to vulnerable members of the Princeton community that this course creates in its censorship by omission of inconvenient truths.