Princeton President on Kirk, Trump, and That Buzzy ‘Atlantic’ Headline

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In this episode

As president of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber is among the highest-profile college leaders to publicly criticize the Trump administration for its attacks on higher education. He is a defender of the sector, arguing that colleges are far better at upholding free speech and more welcoming of diverse viewpoints than critics would suggest. The recent killing of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, has energized a national debate about the state of free speech on college campuses — both for conservatives like Kirk, and for faculty who have been sanctioned for speaking ill of Kirk in the wake of his death. None of this, though, changes Eisgruber’s fundamental view that colleges, for the most part, are actually quite good at facilitating tough conversations at a particularly polarized moment. It’s an argument Eisgruber lays out methodically in a new book, Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right.

Related Reading

• Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, by Christopher Eisgruber (Basic Books)
• With Charlie Kirk’s Killing, a New Chapter of the Campus Speech Wars Has Begun (The Chronicle)
• The Elite-University Presidents Who Despise One Another (The Atlantic)
• At Yale, Painful Rifts Emerge Over Diversity and Free Speech (The Chronicle)

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Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling This is College Matters from The Chronicle.

Christopher Eisgruber How do you have an inclusive conversation when you’ve got people brought together from lots of different backgrounds? Is it OK to wear a Halloween costume that effectively makes fun of somebody else’s background? Or if we’re trying to create a set of circumstances at college where people respect one another and feel respected and included and can speak up, is that a problem?

Jack Stripling In the long-running debate over free speech on college campuses, the recent killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk qualifies as an earthquake. For those who have long argued that colleges are hostile toward right-leaning viewpoints, Kirk’s fatal shooting during a campus speaking engagement provided a powerful piece of symbolic evidence.

Arguably not since the 1960s has the debate over free speech on college campuses felt quite this white hot. And that’s just one reason that Christopher Eisgruber is such a compelling figure at this pivotal moment. As president of Princeton University and a scholar of constitutional law, Eisgruber has thought deeply about campus speech issues. And this week he’s released a book on the subject: Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right.

Today on the show, we’ll talk with Eisgruber about the Kirk shooting, the state of free speech on college campuses, and his deep concerns about the Trump administration’s targeting of colleges — including his own.

Jack Stripling Christopher Eisgruber, welcome to College Matters.

Christopher Eisgruber Thank you, Jack. It’s great to be with you.

Jack Stripling You’ve just published a book on free speech, and I want to talk to you about that. But we’re speaking at a very tense moment in the country that’s tied to this issue. As you know, on September 10, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a campus speaking engagement. For people who are concerned about campus speech and campus safety, this really is the nightmare scenario.

Has this event changed your views at all about the state of free speech on college campuses? Or would it have changed your book in any way if it happened before you published it?

Christopher Eisgruber Look, the killing of Charlie Kirk is obviously a horrible tragedy. It’s a matter of great sadness for his family, for the many people who knew him and were affected by him and for our country. With that said, Jack, I don’t think it changes the principles that I talk about in Terms of Respect. Those are basic principles about free speech and about our commitment to equality and how those two things work together that matter to our country and to our college campuses, whatever happens. So there are going to be changes as we go forward to some of the practical circumstances that colleges face. All of us have had to raise our game around things like security at events in the past. And I expect that’s going to become even more fraught in the future. But the basic things that I say in the book about the need for colleges to be committed to free speech, about the needs to be committed to diversity and inclusivity, about how those work together to create a speech environment on campus and the need for all of us to be civil and respectful, that’s all true still. And the other thing I would add, Jack, is that a lot of what I focus on when I talk about the existence of a civic crisis in America — not just on college campuses, but affecting college campuses — this is one more really sad and tragic data point in that.

Jack Stripling Your book goes through a number of different examples, but a lot of them have a similar flavor, which is there is some hot button issue on a college campus. Someone says something perhaps impolitic. What is an institution to do? Obviously, just to stick on Kirk for another second, one of the things we’ve seen in the wake of this tragedy is colleges feeling pressured to respond when people on the campus say something perhaps impolitic about Kirk’s tragic death. Generally speaking, do you see it as a problem if professors are fired or sanctioned for saying things about Kirk in this case?

Christopher Eisgruber Well, absolutely, that’s a problem, right? Academic freedom has multiple components to it. Your freedom to do scholarship, your freedom to teach as you wish, and a freedom of extramural speech that is important. I think we have to be very concerned whenever we see people fired because they are making controversial comments. Now, one of the things I say in the book is we need to be careful when we talk about any specific controversy to make sure that we understand what the facts of that controversy are. But Jack, I think you’re absolutely right. We have seen in the wake of this event some relatively rash, I would say, actions where people seem to be punished for speech that whether you agree with it or not and whether you think it was appropriate or not was within the ambit of free speech. So yes, absolutely, we need to be worried.

Jack Stripling Let’s shift to your book, which ties directly to this conversation that has flowed from the Kirk tragedy. Your book, Terms of Respect, makes a nuanced argument about speech on college campuses, and you cite a few examples that might be described as infringements on speech. By and large, though, my takeaway from your book is that you fundamentally disagree that there’s a major or systemic free speech problem in higher education today. Do I have that right?

Christopher Eisgruber That’s correct, Jack. Look, I say there’s a civic crisis in the United States today, and colleges are not exempt from it. And, on the contrary, we have a special responsibility to be making sure that meaningful, robust conversation about difficult topics is taking place on our campuses because that’s so central to our mission. So in some ways that crisis makes it hard for all Americans to talk to one another is especially important to colleges.

But I think colleges have gotten a bad rap insofar as people claim that there is a crisis that is unique to those campuses or that there is something wrong with the way students today approach free speech. I don’t think that’s true. And as you note there are a number of cases that people point to where things went terribly wrong. And I talk about things like the Judge Duncan’s speech, Judge Kyle Duncan’s at Stanford Law School, or the event involving the political scientist Charles Murray and Allison Stanger at Middlebury College. But those events get repeated again and again in commentaries about what happens at college campuses. And these are.

Jack Stripling These are instances in which students shouted down the speaker or wouldn’t let them talk, right?

Christopher Eisgruber Absolutely at Stanford, Kyle Duncan got shouted down and administrator intervened in a way that was actually not helpful and seemed to suggest there was some legitimacy to the shouting down. And I would note that after that, Jenny Martinez, who was at the time the dean of the law school and sent out a letter that was a very good letter about the importance of free speech. But that event was an embarrassing event. And it is a data point about something going wrong on a college campus. And at Middlebury College with Charles Murray and Allison Stanger. There was an event where they were not only shouted down and prevented from continuing their conversation but physically assaulted and injured as a result of what happened there. So those are utterly unacceptable, right? And the level of incidents like that at college campuses should be zero. And we should be concerned anytime something like that happens. But having said that, 99.8 percent of what goes on on college campuses are conversations that matter, that don’t have those kinds of disruptions. And that’s taking place at a time when there’s a real inability of Americans generally to talk to one another across political lines. So I think what’s going on is much better than what people give colleges credit for.

Jack Stripling Fair enough. And at risk of opening the door to some pretty wonky stuff with you here, Chris, one of the recurring themes in your book is that a lot of our national disagreements over speech aren’t really about censorship at all in your view. They’re a debate over what you describe as the norms of civility. Can you talk about the difference between the norms or civility and censorship and why that’s important?

Christopher Eisgruber Yeah, one of the big themes of the book is that we need to understand what free speech is for. You can have a lot of free speech and not have any civil discussion. If everybody is talking and mocking and insulting one another, there’s plenty of free speech, but there’s no real civil discourse. What we need have on college campuses and in America is a constructive discussion where people are able to talk to one another across differences. And some of the controversies that people get very excited about, as you say, Jack, are not about censorship. They’re about the terms of respect. They’re about the rules that allow people to talk to one another respectfully across differences.

So one example that I go into in some detail in the book is a pretty famous one about Halloween costumes and a message about Halloween costumes at Yale back in, I think around 2015. So the administration sends out a message saying, look, think carefully before you put on a Halloween costume that mocks somebody else’s culture. Erika Christakis, who is one of the heads of college, I think at Silliman College, sends out a message in response to students saying, well, whatever happened to the freedom to be offensive in college? The students get very upset and say, or some students do, and say this is our home, but you’re not taking seriously the real harms that come from offensive speech. Eventually they call for the Sillimans to be removed as masters of the college.

Everything that I’ve described so far is an exercise of free speech, not an interference with it. It is an argument about what it means for people to be respectful for one another. How do you have an inclusive conversation when you’ve got people brought together from lots of different backgrounds? Is it okay to wear a Halloween costume that effectively makes fun of somebody else’s background? Or if we’re trying to create a set of circumstances at college where people respect one another and feel respected and included and can speak up, is that a problem? You can take various positions about that, but none of that’s about censorship. It’s about what it means for us to be civil to one another. It’s an important argument, but it’s an entirely legitimate argument within the American tradition of free speech.

Jack Stripling I’m so glad you brought up the Yale case because I think a lot of people do remember it. And again, as you say, it’s sort of this warning that went out to students, hey, before you put on a feathered headdress or a turban or blackface, think about the real impact that might have on people’s cultural heritage, how it might be received, whether you might be photographed and later regret it, that sort of thing. But the Yale case may not be about censorship, but I do think it is — part of the vociferous response, particularly from conservatives — was that it was seen as an example of rampant political correctness on college campuses, which is imposed in the name of cultural sensitivity or even DEI, as we would talk about it now. You can say, well, the Yale deans were just offering some sage advice: Think before you act. We’re not saying what you can or can’t wear. Are they not endorsing or inculcating a sort of hypersensitivity among students, saying you’re right to be offended or even emotionally wounded by someone’s costume? That seemed to be as much what the outrage was about as whether this was a clear-cut First Amendment case.

Christopher Eisgruber So, first of all, I think it’s important just to be clear about what the issues are, right? Not about free speech, but about civility and what it means. And people can disagree about that. But Jack, let me offer a different perspective on what’s going on with that. I don’t think any of us want to give offense unnecessarily to other people. Part of learning to have civil discussions is learning to be polite and not give offense. Certainly if I were in a situation where something that I was doing that I thought might just be in jest would give offense to others who come from a background different from mine, I would want to know about that. I would the opportunity to think about that.

As I say in the book, there are politicians. I think about Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, both of whom were photographed during their younger years in blackface who might’ve appreciated a heads up from somebody saying, think about what this means to other people. From my standpoint, it’s actually a pretty good thing that there are lots of jokes that people used to tell that were offensive to and exclusionary toward people of minority backgrounds that we just don’t say anymore. And from my standpoint that’s better because we’re looking for a set of circumstances where people coming together from a lot of different backgrounds can feel respected and feel the respect they need to be able to speak up. But the other thing I say in the book is this, you can disagree with me about that position, right? And say, well, somehow that just doesn’t matter to inclusivity, it doesn’t if some people are offended and maybe there are some people who don’t care about that. Those are arguments that are consistent with free speech. And part of what we need to recognize is that those arguments are gonna go on on a college campus and in America. And we got a lot of them right now coming from both sides.

Jack Stripling I feel like bringing up Kirk here makes some sense because this is one of the things that sort of happened in the fallout there is he has been held up I think by the right as a champion of free speech. But if you talk to people on college campuses, they would say, this is a person who added some noxious tenor to our speech on campus. And that in and of itself was a problem. Have you thought about that at all?

Christopher Eisgruber Jack, I think there are lots of perspectives here about the Kirk episode that are relevant to what you and I are talking about and interesting connections to what happened at Yale. So first of all, the two things that you just said about Kirk can both be true, right? He can be a proponent of free speech and a vigorous proponent of free-speech and I think he was. And it’s also possible that he could be saying some noxious things about other people. And what I say in the book is that colleges and our country have a responsibility simultaneously to protect free speech and to respond if noxious things about other people in some other way than censorship.

And let’s go back to the, I think it was the first or second question you asked me about Kirk, where you mentioned that people were being fired for saying disrespectful things about him. Firing is wrong. But there’s a real argument about what it means to speak respectfully about another person. Now we’re seeing some of these arguments raised from the other side in effect, that is the other side of the political spectrum, where people are saying, hey, it’s important to be respectful of this man who has been horribly murdered. And it’s to be respectful, for example, of conservative opinions and positions on campus. And we’ve seen over the past year lots of arguments about how important it is to be respectful of Jewish students or proponents of Zionism on campus. That claim about respect is really important because we should be respectful of one another.

Jack Stripling Stick around, we’ll be back in a minute.

BREAK

Jack Stripling You are a product of higher education in a lot of ways. I think you’re a fan of higher education in its best form. Fair to say, you’ve been a defender of it.

Christopher Eisgruber I am a champion of higher education. I believe in it. It’s been important to my life. I think it’s been important to our country. I think we should be proud of what higher education does.

Jack Stripling What I’m curious about though, is when I read your book, I think it makes a very cogent and nuanced argument. And it’s, I should tell people, it’s a very accessible book, even though it gets into a lot of interesting legal history. But when I look at it, I think, you know, some people might look at this and say, this is kind of letting higher ed off the hook. And let me unpack that a little bit. You flag a couple of these isolated cases that are problematic. We’ve talked about them already, Charles Murray at Middlebury, the Stanford incident. But you say, students shouldn’t occupy buildings or break rules during protests. But if they do, you think colleges should probably punish them lightly. You don’t really think that people on college campuses self-censor more than Americans do generally. And I know that you came at all these opinions after real rigorous study. But are you concerned at all that you might be going a little too easy on this sector because you’re a fan?

Christopher Eisgruber No, Jack, I think I know the sector well, and that is why I believe in it. But let’s be clear, I’m not the only person who believes in what we’re doing in higher education, right? Our universities and colleges in the United States are magnets for talent. They’re magnets for talents from around our country. They’re magnets for talent from around the world. People dream about coming to this country and coming to our great universities and colleges in order to get an education. Those colleges and universities lead the world in terms of the kinds of contributions that they make to scientific research and to the humanities. They produce a fabulous return on investment, both in economic and in non-economic terms.

And so I actually think there’s something a bit odd that people run down these colleges and universities that do such extraordinary things for our country and for the people who are a part of them by pointing to some of these incidents that are kind of on the periphery of what happens at colleges and universities.

Jack Stripling Well, and you’ve been, I think, I wouldn’t say necessarily unique, but you’ve be among a small group of college presidents who I think have been very vocal during this second Trump administration about the importance of higher education and the degree to which you see it under threat given the Trump administration’s posture toward the sector. In March, you wrote a much-discussed piece in The Atlantic saying that what was happening in higher education relative to the Trump administration is quote, “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.” It’s strong language. As you know, the Trump Administration has threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from universities if they don’t capitulate to its demands related to antisemitism and other issues. We’re seeing NIH funding stripped for research related to things the Trump administration doesn’t like, like vaccine hesitancy. What’s at stake at this moment in your view?

Christopher Eisgruber I believe it’s important for me to speak out, and I hope other university leaders will join me in speaking out, on behalf of the mission of these extraordinary institutions of which we are a part and the benefits that those institutions provide to America and have provided to America. When you ask what’s at stake in all of this, what’s at stake is a federal government compact with America’s public and private universities that has produced tremendous advantages for the American people over a period of 70 years. And as part of that compact, the federal government has simultaneously funded research that is in the interests of the American people and respected the academic freedom that is critical to the excellence of our institutions. That’s what has helped to make these institutions the best in the world. And I’ll note, I don’t think this is about one political side versus another. I don’t think it’s about being for or against the administration. The Trump administration and the president himself have said they are in favor of gold standard science. They have said, they have priorities in fields like quantum science, artificial intelligence, fusion energy. We are going to lead as a country. America is going to lead if and only if we continue to have that productive partnership …

Jack Stripling We didn’t see prior administrations, Chris, withholding hundreds of millions of dollars from institutions saying, do what we want.

Christopher Eisgruber No we didn’t. Jack, that is why I’m speaking out.

Jack Stripling: I thought you were saying everybody does a little bit of this.

Christopher Eisgruber No, no, no. I’m not saying that. You accurately quoted me. And I believe this is the greatest crisis that we’ve seen for American higher education since the Red Scare. That’s correct. But I firmly believe that there are common interests that ought to unite Americans. And I hope we’ll bring the Trump administration together with American universities around an agenda that should matter to this country.

Jack Stripling [00:20:39] How does this feel like the Red Scare? What specifically is happening that calls that to mind for you?

Christopher Eisgruber First of all, there are two pieces to that, right? One is just the breadth of the attack on American institutions of education, which, Jack, you summarized a few moments ago, right. This is extraordinary in terms of the kinds of funding that has been put at risk. I think there has been a disregard for due process in the kinds of measures that have been adopted. I will say, and I think every American university president would affirm, it’s really important for all of us to be concerned about antisemitism. It’s important for us to be taking steps to make sure that our Jewish students and all of our students flourish on campus. And it’s important for the government to be holding universities and colleges to account around that. But there are legal processes that have to be adopted and followed and that are laid out in the law. And the abandonment of due process is a concern, again, to that leads me to say that this crisis is the worst that we’ve seen in 70 years.

I also think there’s an effort here, and this is another connection to kind of control or change what it is that is being done as a matter of scholarship or what kinds of speech are allowed on university campuses. Some of the disturbing actions that we have seen taken recently with regard to faculty members’ speech are a part of that. Laws coming out of the states and to some extent reflected in federal orders as well about particular kinds of teaching around critical race studies or diversity and inclusion or transgender issues are an example of that. So I think in both of those respects, with kind of the breadth of the attack and the kind of effort to demonize some of the teaching and scholarship that’s going on on campus, you see connections to the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Jack Stripling Yeah, and certainly, we’ve talked about this on this show with those state laws that are related to certain course content, feels like sort of a normalization of that type of government intervention, which feels very new to me as somebody who writes about this stuff.

Christopher Eisgruber And I would say, Jack, very wrong as a kind of intervention. Again, at the state level and at the national level, the autonomy of universities and their ability to decide what kind of scholarship their faculty will do, the freedom of scholars to make that decision, the freedom to decide what they’re gonna teach and the freedom to make decisions about whom they’re going to admit and whom they are going to hire, those things are essential to excellence.

Jack Stripling Yeah, I think there are some conservatives who are probably a little bit surprised to see how much the Trump administration wants to get involved in the affairs of private universities. Let’s talk a little about Princeton specifically. I did a little research today, Chris, and I haven’t heard much in a while. So the Trump Administration in April froze $210 million I think of Princeton’s funding. What’s the status of this? What’s this situation?

Christopher Eisgruber About half of those grants were restored in August and the other half remains suspended.

Jack Stripling What’s the stated justification for this?

Christopher Eisgruber The stated justification that we had was very terse. We received a communication from the Department of Energy and also I believe from the department of defense with regard to a subset of the grants that had been made to Princeton saying that they had been suspended, that was the word, pending review of their consistency with federal regulations, statutes, the Constitution of the United States and executive orders and policies.

Jack Stripling Any mention of antisemitism? That’s been a reason that’s cited.

Christopher Eisgruber Not in the suspension notices that we received. There were quotations from unidentified persons said to be affiliated with the administration in some newspapers saying this had something to do with antisemitism. But Princeton University has never received any communication from the federal government to that effect. And in August, we received equally terse — but I will say very welcome — communications saying that about half of those grants had been restored at this point. And Jack, these are grants for the most part dealing with things like quantum science or material science or artificial intelligence. Areas that as I’ve stressed to the government are areas of shared priority for Princeton University and the American government. So, again, my hope is that we can find ways to go forward and I’m glad that half of these grants were restored.

Jack Stripling Other universities have gotten lists of demands, for example. Have you gotten anything like that?

Christopher Eisgruber We have not received any list of demands and we have not made any deals.

Jack Stripling Are you at the negotiating table with the federal government about this?

Christopher Eisgruber We’re not talking about any deals. What we’re doing is talking about why there’s a shared interest in pursuing research that both we and the Trump administration have identified as priorities for the American people.

Jack Stripling Is there a red line for you though, Chris? Is there something that has been floated out there for other institutions or in this conversation that you’re saying not at Princeton?

Christopher Eisgruber Jack, there are many red lines for me, right? I don’t believe that the government should be monitoring how departments are organized, how courses are taught or whom we can admit to the university within the limits established by law.

Jack Stripling OK. OK. So I want to ask you about higher education, broadly speaking, in response to all of this. No one would expect that all institutions would speak with one voice on this as much as I think that some faculty are sort of hungry for a united front. But there was some interesting reporting in The Atlantic, I’m sure you’re familiar with, which describes something of a fissure between you and the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis. And I want to ask you a little bit about that to the extent you’re comfortable talking about it. There’s a provocative headline you probably saw, “The Elite-University Presidents Who Despise One Another.” I suspect you don’t agree with that characterization, which we can talk about.

Christopher Eisgruber No, I don’t agree with that characterization, Jack. And I’m sure the other presidents in that article don’t agree with it.

Jack Stripling I don’t think they do. We’ve talked to them.

Christopher Eisgruber And yeah, and in fact, there’s nothing …

Jack Stripling Let me talk about the substance.

Christopher Eisgruber Yeah, let’s talk about the substance because Jack, I think there’s nothing in the article to support the headline. And I bet the reporter would agree with that, by the way. Anyway, go ahead.

Jack Stripling I didn’t write the headline …

Christopher Eisgurber Neither did I.

Jack Stripling But it was much discussed. But the gist of the article is that at a panel of the AAU [Association of American Universities] that you threw some shade at these guys. And I want to know, is it accurate that you think these men have helped to perpetuate the idea that higher education is out of touch or illiberal? Did you convey that? What’s the truth here?

Christopher Eisgruber Well, look, if there’s an off the record meeting and I make a commitment to treat it as off the record, I take that pretty seriously.

Jack Stripling Fair enough.

Christopher Eisgruber I think everybody should. So here’s what I will say is first of all, I think it’s a good thing for people to have discussions where they disagree. That’s where we started this conversation. And I think my counterparts and I can have very respectful conversations about different opinions about some of the issues you and I have been discussing or about the trajectory and positions of higher education more generally. So, and that’s the way I tend to talk to my counterparts and the way that they talk to me.

Here’s the other thing I would say is that I’m very appreciative of the way higher education presidents have worked together during this very difficult period. And we agree on a whole lot more than we disagree about. And those agreements are about lots of the things we discuss, I think they’re about academic freedom, about excellence, about the importance of federal funding, about things like indirect cost recoveries. And we work together around all of those issues. So the idea that, hey, look, people are working together and sometimes when they work together, they have hard discussions about things they disagree about, I don’t think that should be particularly a newsworthy item. And I think it misses what’s most important there, both looking backward and looking forward.

Jack Stripling Well, let’s talk about what is most important. So you don’t need to betray confidences to answer this, I don’t think. There’s a gossipy element to this that I will admit is titillating and interesting to me as a reporter. The people involved, you’re all presidents from well-known institutions and maybe you don’t see eye to eye on something really important, like how we’re gonna respond to the biggest threat since the Red Scare to higher education. That’s interesting to me …

Christopher Eisgruber Yeah, but we can see eye to eye, Jack, on 90 percent of how we’re gonna respond, which that may or may not be interesting to you as a reporter, but it should be interesting to people who care.

Jack Stripling It is interesting to me. It is interesting to me, and I think we’ve talked a lot about that. I think most presidents would agree with a lot of what your book says. But part of the problem that your book articulates is that there’s an inaccurate perception of higher education that it’s some kind of an illiberal disaster. And I know you don’t agree with that.

Christopher Eisgruber That is very inaccurate. But yes, I think even the people who might make the argument might make it a little differently than that, Jack, but go ahead.

Jack Stripling That’s an extreme example of this. Do other college presidents bear any responsibility for the perpetuation of that idea — that higher education is out of touch and really needs an attitude adjustment, and that the Trump administration is right to be giving it?

Christopher Eisgruber I have a lot of respect for what all of my fellow college presidents do. That is, everybody who is a college president, first of all, has a job that was a pretty tough job, even as of 10 years ago. When you’re going through a crisis, it becomes an almost impossible job to do. All of us have a responsibility to execute that job within the context of the particular mission of our institution, which differs from institution to institution, and with regard to the particular circumstances that affect us. And those are gonna differ, too. So I regard my fellow university presidents as allies in all of this.

I think more of us need to speak up for the things that we care about and that we’re proud of with these institutions. When I sit down and talk to people, whether they agree or disagree with me about the particulars, they are proud of what happens at their institution, just about without exception, right? That’s why you do one of these jobs and you throw yourself into it. And I think we’ve been through a period where universities have allowed other people to tell stories about us and to define us with those stories, and we haven’t done what we should to speak up and tell our own stories.

Jack Stripling Why do you think more people aren’t? Are they scared?

Christopher Eisgruber Look, there are people who are worried about, you know, if I speak up, some people will ask what will happen as a result. Will there be a backlash off of that? So people will worry about that. But Jack, I think we’re also talking about a longer run kind of phenomenon. There are a lot of things that you can do in a university president’s job. Sometimes it gets to be a kind of, what, a natural reaction to say, well, look, I don’t wanna stir things up. People start to worry. We were talking earlier about self-censorship, right, in a divided society, about whether or not you’re gonna offend people about speaking up. There are a lot of pressures these days. I think often misstated or exaggerated saying, look, presidents ought to be neutral about things. As you know from the book, I think that’s the wrong way to characterize our obligation to stay out of politics. And sometimes it leads to a sense, OK, what that means is we oughtn’t to be speaking up even for these values that are critical to our institutions. So I don’t wanna do much more to try to diagnose it. I just, I would welcome other allies telling the story that we should all be telling.

Jack Stripling Let me ask about you and not other people.

Christopher Eisgruber Yeah. OK. That’s fair. That I probably can answer.

Jack Stripling OK, fair enough. You have kind of put your neck out there a little bit though. Has anyone on your board or within your cabinet said, Chris, chill out, man. You’re putting a target on us.

Christopher Eisgruber Actually, no. We have at Princeton right now a tremendously unified community. Overall, Jack, what I can tell you is that people are appreciative that we as an institution, that I as a president are speaking out right now about a university of which this community is tremendously proud. So there’s a lot of unity around value here. I think one thing I would say that kind of surprised me, because I lost some sleep about this before I wrote The Atlantic article that you mentioned. You know, I knew I was taking risks to some extent for myself. I also appreciated I was a risk for the community. And I didn’t know how people would respond and I didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do. What really struck me was after that piece came out, how many people from all over the faculty, from the alumni body, from the board were talking to me about how proud they were of being a part of this community and how much it mattered to them.

I had, and this is a rare experience for a university president, I had undergraduates shouting to me across the quadrangle, expressing their appreciation for the fact that we were speaking up and saying some things. And I think one of the things you need to do as a university leader and that this has enabled me to do, is to say to your community, this is what we stand for. If the community disagrees, you got a conversation going on there. But it’s important for leaders to be explicit about what they believe. Because as I said, I think leaders are proud of their institutions. They should be proud of their institution and their institutions and their communities wanna hear that pride expressed from their leaders.

Jack Stripling I think most of what I heard was the type of stuff you heard on the quad. Let’s make some Eisgruber T-shirts. I mean there was a lot of excitement around somebody from an Ivy League institution taking a bold stand. The only whisper I heard that I will ask you about is, well, you know, Princeton doesn’t have a med school. They don’t have all the NIH funding. They don’t have as much to risk as some of these other institutions. What do you say to that?

Christopher Eisgruber What I would say to that is to say, first of all, yes, we have, I think, a particularly strong model in a lot of different ways. We also have some advantages that I agree helped me to be able to speak out on these issues. And that’s part of the reason when you asked an earlier question, I said, look, I respect what all of my fellow university presidents are doing. They deal with different missions. They deal with different circumstances. They deal with different constraints. Those are tough kinds of jobs to have and tough issues that they have to negotiate. So you asked me why I did what I did and how our community is responding. That’s the answer I gave you. I respect the fact that other communities may have to approach matters differently.

Jack Stripling I suspect that your general counsel or government affairs people are the ones who are on the phone here. But can you talk to anybody in the Trump administration? Do you? And say, hey, what’s happening here?

Christopher Eisgruber We have conversations with people in the Trump administration.

Jack Stripling What about you specifically, though?

Christopher Eisgruber Yes. Yes, I have. You know, Jack, I’m not gonna go into details, right? Because again, I feel like I’m having conversations with folks. Those are private conversations. I can give you one example though. Secretary Wright, the secretary of energy, made a visit to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory about a month ago now. Secretary Wright and I sat down. We had a terrific conversation about shared priorities and what the Trump administration wants to do to preserve and extend American leadership in science. So we’re gonna have lots of conversations with folks. I think it’s really important to keep open channels of communication going.

Jack Stripling You know, I think that we are living in interesting times, as they say. And I think there will be books written about this. You probably will write a book about this someday. I’m curious as somebody who takes the long view how you think history will evaluate the way higher education responded to this moment.

Christopher Eisgruber Oh, Jack, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I guess in some way, I feel like what I can think about in this moment is what should our response be to this? How should I be thinking about it? What should we do as an institution? I think we are in an important historical moment. As a baseball fan, I think we’re probably still in the first three innings of that important historical moment. I can’t pretend that I can see the future and I’m not gonna figure out what that book will say. Maybe I’ll write one 30 years from now, Jack, but I can’t figure it out in the moment.

Jack Stripling Alright, well, let’s talk again before the bottom of the ninth. How about that?

Christopher Eisgruber OK, let’s do that. I enjoyed this conversation.

Jack Stripling Really did too. Thanks for doing it.

Christopher Eisgruber Thank you so much, Jack. Take care.

Jack Stripling College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you’d like, drop us a note at collegematters at chronicle.com. We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our Chronicle producer is Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Sarah Brown, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.