Kudos to PAW for covering this important story, and for providing a link to the civil complaint itself. All those inclined to dismiss the Trump administration’s aggressive legal posture on campus antisemitism as mere political opportunism should read it. Princeton’s anti-Zionist encampment movement was relatively muted compared to some other schools, yet even here egregious double standards to the disadvantage of Jewish and Zionist students were manifestly applied. I know of no other alumni magazine which has the independence and, perhaps, courage necessary to publish stories which make the university look bad — and look bad it does.
There is one detail in the complaint, not mentioned in this PAW article, that should be particularly galling to Princeton alumni and students. In the lobby of McCosh, the student health center (and a campus “safe space,” if there is any), after getting treatment for injuries allegedly suffered the previous day at the hands of Chief Strother, Piegaro was detained by a different Public Safety officer and escorted off campus, leaving him scrambling for a place to sleep — not only without Piegaro having been notified of a “persona non grata” order, but without the order having even previously been issued. The ad hoc, arbitrary treatment described in the complaint smacks of institutional retaliation, an impression strengthened by the fact that in the aftermath of this incident Princeton not only failed to discipline Chief Strother but rather bestowed upon him its highest employee award.
This is not a partisan issue. Rather than leading the national academic resistance to Trump, President Eisgruber should look closer to home and consider that, as the complaint charges, implicit bias against a minority group, bad behavior by Public Safety officers, and the existence of a thin blue line of coordinated Public Safety testimony, injustices which liberals have long sounded the alarm on, may have found a home on campus.
Kudos to PAW for covering this important story, and for providing a link to the civil complaint itself. All those inclined to dismiss the Trump administration’s aggressive legal posture on campus antisemitism as mere political opportunism should read it. Princeton’s anti-Zionist encampment movement was relatively muted compared to some other schools, yet even here egregious double standards to the disadvantage of Jewish and Zionist students were manifestly applied. I know of no other alumni magazine which has the independence and, perhaps, courage necessary to publish stories which make the university look bad — and look bad it does.
There is one detail in the complaint, not mentioned in this PAW article, that should be particularly galling to Princeton alumni and students. In the lobby of McCosh, the student health center (and a campus “safe space,” if there is any), after getting treatment for injuries allegedly suffered the previous day at the hands of Chief Strother, Piegaro was detained by a different Public Safety officer and escorted off campus, leaving him scrambling for a place to sleep — not only without Piegaro having been notified of a “persona non grata” order, but without the order having even previously been issued. The ad hoc, arbitrary treatment described in the complaint smacks of institutional retaliation, an impression strengthened by the fact that in the aftermath of this incident Princeton not only failed to discipline Chief Strother but rather bestowed upon him its highest employee award.
This is not a partisan issue. Rather than leading the national academic resistance to Trump, President Eisgruber should look closer to home and consider that, as the complaint charges, implicit bias against a minority group, bad behavior by Public Safety officers, and the existence of a thin blue line of coordinated Public Safety testimony, injustices which liberals have long sounded the alarm on, may have found a home on campus.