Maybe Eisgruber has had a change of heart, or maybe he’s swallowed a sanity pill — more likely he’s felt the winds blowing from a different direction.
Yesterday, I wrote a post about the Princeton University event with former Israeli Prime Minster Naftali Bennett, during which someone pulled the fire alarm, around 20 protesters walked out while chanting “you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and campus police officers stood by casually as one man yelled from the audience for two minutes. Roughly 200 protesters were screaming and banging on drums outside the event, which could be heard from within the lecture hall.
Two undergraduate students — one, the leader of the Zionist group B’Artzeinu Princeton, and the other of Princeton Tigers for Israel — wrote a letter about the “embarrassing spectacle” to the university president Christopher Eisgruber, and their account discloses unsettling details about the outdoor protest:
Students for Justice in Palestine’s pro-Hamas, anti-American protest — which occurred directly adjacent to the speaker event — was riddled with antisemitic chants and actions. The disgusting displays of Jew-hatred included multiple documented instances of agitators aiming triangle imagery at Jewish students, in reference to the Hamas symbol used to target Western enemies; repeated chants of “go back to Europe” yelled at Jewish students; telling Jewish students that “you’re all fucking inbred,” and calling Jewish students “inbred swine.”
The letter set forth the following demands: 1) “Publicly apologize to Mr. Bennett for the University’s failure to provide an open forum for his remarks,” 2) “Pursue punitive action against every individual and entity responsible for the shameful disruption of Monday’s event,” 3) “Enact a campus ban on face coverings for the purpose of concealing one’s identity,” 4) “Terminate Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for coordinating Monday’s large-scale heckler’s veto and for repeatedly breaching University regulations,” 5) “Unequivocally condemn the egregious displays of antisemitism expressed Monday on our campus.”
Early today, the Daily Princetonian reported that President Eisgruber confirmed an investigation had been opened. He further told the publication that he was “appalled at reports of antisemitic language,” and he had personally apologized to Bennett.
“Such behavior is reprehensible and intolerable. The University is investigating and will pursue disciplinary measures as appropriate, to the extent any members of the Princeton University community are implicated,” Eisgruber told the student-run newspaper.
That’s encouraging, but we’ll wait to see the results. After all, Princeton has had plenty of opportunities to punish the anti-Israel activists for violating school policies, but the university has a record of handling progressive activists with kiddie gloves. Just last year, Princeton faculty passed a non-binding resolution that called for both legal and disciplinary amnesty for students arrested during the encampment demonstrations. At the time, a university spokesperson said that the university was working with law enforcement to see how it “might help minimize the impact of the arrests.”
Maybe Eisgruber has had a change of heart, or maybe he’s swallowed a sanity pill. But it is more likely that he’s just felt the winds blowing from a different direction: The Trump administration froze some research grants awarded to Princeton amid the ongoing investigation into the university’s management of antisemitism on campus.