Dear Tories,
In October and November, hundreds of Princeton students and professors gathered before Nassau Hall to call for the eradication of the Jewish state. Repeated calls for “Intifada” and cheering Palestinian “resistance” against Israel rang out – not-so-subtle endorsements of the October 7 slaughter and kidnapping of hundreds of innocents. Yet the University has put out insipid statements protecting the activists’ calls to violence under the banner of free speech, while reminding students that the campus community “deplores expressions of hatred directed against any individual or group.” With this ambiguous phrasing, those who did not witness the vitriol at these demonstrations were left to guess who expressed hatred against whom.
Previously, the University has issued unequivocal statements on issues from the Russia–Ukraine war to George Floyd and BLM. President Eisgruber managed to condemn Hamas’ attacks – yet he remained tight-lipped when Princeton students called for further violence against Jews. Rather than appeal to Princeton’s “mission” in serving higher values like “human rights,” as he did in prior statements, Eisgruber directed the community to “scholarly contributions and public panel discussions.” Why has conviction melted away in the wake of this horrific massacre? Why has the University, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to practice institutional restraint?
The answer lies in genealogy. Senior administrators like President Eisgruber were inculcated into an older liberal progressivism, a moral framework that they assume will prevail in the marketplace of ideas. They sired a new brood of illiberal progressives with a more militant approach and values. They hold contempt for the West and express partiality toward anti-Western movements – in this case, Hamas.
However, the institution that fathered these progressives cannot betray them. Any activism with progressive DNA is untouchable. If the University reprimands its children, the University itself will be disgraced and the progressive name besmirched.
In this attitude, I detect the death knell for Princeton’s moral compass. Princeton has failed to instruct its pupils in the foundations of a liberal system of ethics – the distinctions between instigation and self-defense, between civilian and soldier, between murder and accident. This leaves students to light their own way out of moral confusion.
In this task, I hope this Tory issue may be of use. It contains our news coverage of anti-Israel campus demonstrations and our writers? analysis of the situation unfolding here and abroad. I hope their words can provide some moral clarity at this troubling moment at Princeton and beyond.
As always, we welcome your questions, feedback, and letters to the editor. You can send these and more to .
Best,
Darius Gross ’24, Tory Publisher
November 27, 2023
(Flickr / Ken Lund)
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