Eisgruber must go.
O nce again, Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, has taken to the friendly waters of The Atlantic. In his call to action on the part of universities and their leaders, Eisgruber correctly affirms “the rights of faculty members to pursue, publish, and teach controversial ideas.” Further, he makes an unintentionally noteworthy disclosure. The author’s biography mentions his forthcoming book, Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right. The cruel irony is that Eisgruber’s deeds at Princeton got free speech outrageously wrong.
Eisgruber protected his administration’s defamation of Princeton’s highly acclaimed then-professor Joshua Katz. Princeton mathematics professor Sergiu Klainerman, a free-speech advocate, deemed Eisgruber’s actions an “abuse of power and likely cover-up.”
This is no mere kerfuffle. Princeton later stripped Katz of tenure and fired him for alleged misrepresentation and obstruction in a disciplinary matter. By that standard, Eisgruber’s malfeasance in official duties — lying about and obstructing a faculty appeal over his administration’s vilification of Katz — warrants no less of a reckoning. Publicly available emails prove his in-office wrongs, surpassing the pre-office misdeeds in scientific research and publications that led to the resignations of Stanford’s and Harvard’s presidents. Eisgruber’s deliberate acts as president are far graver, undermining academic freedom, fairness, and accountability.
The campaign against Katz began in the summer of 2020 with his Quillette response to faculty demands addressing “anti-Black racism” at the university. Katz found himself the center of controversy, particularly for his harsh labeling of Princeton’s then-defunct student group, the Black Justice League (BJL), as “a small local terrorist organization.”
Rather than defend Katz’s right to publish controversial ideas, Eisgruber himself publicly objected to Katz’s description of the BJL. (In the weeks prior, Eisgruber had called for specific actions to “combat systemic racism within and beyond the University.”) It took days for Eisgruber to acknowledge that Katz’s description of the BJL was protected speech at Princeton. Troubled by this delay, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression asked, “What took so long?”
Controversy again erupted in the fall of 2021 with “To Be Known and Heard: Systemic Racism and Princeton University,” a presentation created by the university administration and required in that year’s freshman-orientation programming. Its chapter “Race and Free Speech” presented a purported verbatim quote of what Katz had said in Quillette. However, without any indication of doing so, the presentation omitted part of what Katz wrote in such a way as to make him appear racist.
Professor Robert P. George denounced the presentation’s depiction as defamatory and malicious. George concluded, “There is no question . . . Katz was defamed . . . with the evident intention of depicting him as racist — which he is not. The only real questions are who is responsible, and what is the proper disciplinary action.” The Eisgruber administration’s smearing of Katz sparked sharp criticism from faculty, alumni, and other free-speech advocates.
In October 2021, Klainerman joined seven other faculty members in a formal complaint. Klainerman warned Eisgruber, “If a sitting university professor can have his views distorted and be vilified on an official university website, then both principles [of academic freedom and fair treatment] have been violated.”
In December 2021, the administration dismissed the complaint, a ruling whose factual errors and flawed logic Princetonians for Free Speech denounced as “blatantly false” and “absurd.” In April 2022, a faculty committee unanimously overturned this ruling, setting the stage for an investigation of the administration’s wrongdoings with the “Known and Heard” presentation.
This prospect threatened Eisgruber and his team. He resorted to secrecy. In July 2022, Eisgruber cast an invisibility cloak over an “additional review.” Rather than disclose its substance to Klainerman, he stated the perfunctory conclusion that the review found the “Known and Heard” presentation to be fully protected speech under university policies — but the school’s free-expression policies do not protect “speech that falsely defames a specific individual.”
Worse still, in a July email, Eisgruber lied to Klainerman to buttress refusing the latter’s legitimate requests for information about the “additional review.” Eisgruber claimed, “My message of July 8th provides all of the information the University can share with you about the matter.” Given the detailed findings and reasoning in the prior three-page dismissal — a level of disclosure his perfunctory conclusion lacked — Eisgruber stated a knowing falsehood.
Further, Eisgruber wrongly declared the Klainerman complaint “adjudicated” and “now closed.” He purported that the secretive “additional review” established conclusively that the university’s free-expression policies provided “full protection” to the “Known and Heard” presentation. Given, for example, Professor George’s explanation of how the presentation defamed Katz, Eisgruber failed in his duty to give an honest and straightforward explanation of his claim that the university’s defamation exception did not apply. His failure to do so is telling, as his claim cannot withstand scrutiny. On July 22, after Klainerman pressed further for a substantive explanation of the dismissal, Eisgruber refused and abruptly cut him off, saying, “It would serve no purpose to prolong this exchange.”
Eisgruber has ignored a call for an investigation of the initial dismissal of Klainerman’s complaint, the rebuttals of his position that the “Known and Heard” presentation was protected speech, and my recent public call that he disclose the “additional review.” He could have released this crucial document with redactions to protect any personal privacy requirements. Instead, Eisgruber lied about and disgracefully concealed the “additional review.” In doing so, in his official duties as president, Eisgruber has violated Princeton’s mandate for “honest and straightforward” conduct.
In his 2024 State of the University Letter, Eisgruber proclaimed, “Our responsibility is to stand strongly for all the University’s defining values, including its commitments to scholarly excellence, inclusivity, and free speech, and to do so even when circumstances are hard and criticism is fierce.” Yet, in 2022, he hid behind secrecy rather than defend the “additional review” openly, undercutting the principles he now advocates. His lie to Klainerman — that he had shared all possible information about the review — was damning then and remains so now.
Watergate guides us: “It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.” Eisgruber approvingly declared of Katz’s dismissal, “He was treated neither better nor worse than other tenured faculty members whom Princeton fired after they obstructed investigations into prohibited affairs with students.” Eisgruber’s deception and suppression obstructed investigation into his administration’s prominent defamation of a faculty member. This cover-up makes him unfit to remain at Princeton.
Further, Eisgruber and Princeton’s trustees refused to allow Katz to resign and insisted that he be fired publicly. As the university did to Katz, so must Princeton’s trustees strip Eisgruber of tenure and dismiss him from the university, lest the trustees debase themselves by sacrificing integrity and honesty to convenience and denial.
Eisgruber must go.