The May 2025 edition of PAW spent a number of pages describing President Eisgruber’s defense of academic freedom with regard to the broader ongoing issue of federal grant funding to elite American universities. One can take issue with the federal government’s tactics, but there is no denying there is a structural issue that has been festering for far too long in many academic departments that needs to be addressed. The article describing how Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s event was disrupted by illiberal anti-Israel activists, followed by the profile on Professor Max Weiss, who appears to take pride in masquerading propaganda as scholarship, helps to drive this point home. Naftali Bennett's governing coalition included the Arab Ra'am political party, which characterizes itself as Islamist and is associated with the southern branch of the Islamist Movement in Israel. Let that sink in. Mansour Abbas, the head of the Ra'am party advocates extensively for Arab citizens of Israel as well as Palestinians, and demonstrates a commitment to coexistence that is absent from the rhetoric of erasure and implied violence of the campus activists who disrupted the event with Naftali Bennett. It should be met with incredulity to believe that the anti-Israel, totalitarian activist cohort knows and understands how to solve Mansour Abbas' challenges better than he does. It should be Princeton's goal to defend academic freedom and take the brave steps needed to encourage thought, reasoning, and analysis with students able to access multiple perspectives and sources, rather than indoctrination in a shallow, narrow political agenda with regard to Middle East studies. If professors Robert George and Cornel West can do so in their symposium on political thought, then it is absolutely possible to bring sanity back to campus in other disciplines.
The May 2025 edition of PAW spent a number of pages describing President Eisgruber’s defense of academic freedom with regard to the broader ongoing issue of federal grant funding to elite American universities. One can take issue with the federal government’s tactics, but there is no denying there is a structural issue that has been festering for far too long in many academic departments that needs to be addressed. The article describing how Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s event was disrupted by illiberal anti-Israel activists, followed by the profile on Professor Max Weiss, who appears to take pride in masquerading propaganda as scholarship, helps to drive this point home. Naftali Bennett's governing coalition included the Arab Ra'am political party, which characterizes itself as Islamist and is associated with the southern branch of the Islamist Movement in Israel. Let that sink in. Mansour Abbas, the head of the Ra'am party advocates extensively for Arab citizens of Israel as well as Palestinians, and demonstrates a commitment to coexistence that is absent from the rhetoric of erasure and implied violence of the campus activists who disrupted the event with Naftali Bennett. It should be met with incredulity to believe that the anti-Israel, totalitarian activist cohort knows and understands how to solve Mansour Abbas' challenges better than he does. It should be Princeton's goal to defend academic freedom and take the brave steps needed to encourage thought, reasoning, and analysis with students able to access multiple perspectives and sources, rather than indoctrination in a shallow, narrow political agenda with regard to Middle East studies. If professors Robert George and Cornel West can do so in their symposium on political thought, then it is absolutely possible to bring sanity back to campus in other disciplines.