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"Rantings Of A Demagogue" - Parents Angered By Princeton President's
Graduation Address

Authored by Abigail Anthony via The College Fix,

A large contingent of parents of graduating seniors who sat through
Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber’s recent
commencement address described it as hypocritical and a “woke sermon”
in interviews with The College Fix.

They scoffed at his claim that the Ivy League institution is a bastion
of free speech and bristled at his embrace of all kinds of diversity
except intellectual diversity.

“President Eisgruber’s commencement speech was a disgrace,” a mother
of a graduating senior told The College Fix in an email.

    “The primary assault on free speech takes place on every campus in
this country – including Princeton.”

“It takes the form of blocking and shouting down faculty and invited
speakers who dare to stray from the liberal orthodoxy,” she said.

    “…He chose to use his 2023 commencement address to deliver the
rantings of a demagogue.”

Eisgruber told the audience “we must stand up and speak up together
for the values of free expression and full inclusivity for people of
all identities.”

    “There are people who claim, for example, that when colleges and
universities endorse the value of diversity and inclusivity or teach
about racism and sexism, they are ‘indoctrinating students’ or in some
other way endangering free speech,” he said.

Eisgruber also criticized Florida legislation without specifying which
bills, suggesting students in Florida are now living in fear. He
denounced other newly passed laws across the nation that have reined
in illiberalism.

    “Some of these bills prohibit discussion of sexual orientation or
gender identity. Some prohibit teaching disfavored views about race,
racism, and American history. Others seek to undermine the
institutional autonomy of colleges and universities or to abolish
tenure, thereby enabling politicians to control what professors can
teach or publish,” he said.

More than 10 parents who attended the graduation ceremony expressed
their disappointment and anger with Eisgruber’s speech in interviews
with The College Fix. Most asked to remain anonymous.

    “I was taken aback by the audacity of [Eisgruber’s speech] and the
disingenuousness of it, even the dishonesty of it. As far as I can
tell, no one else in the country has done more to undermine the
protections that tenure gives to independent thought and independent
scholarly activity than he has,” Christopher Nadon, the father of a
graduating Princeton student, told The Fix.

Nadon, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, added that former
Princeton Professor Joshua Katz was “stripped of tenure obviously for
his political speech.”

Katz, a longtime classics professor, was fired last year after he
published an op-ed criticizing faculty proposals for anti-racism
initiatives at the University and criticized a group of far-left black
activists.

Katz had previously faced a fourteen-month investigation for a
consensual relationship that occurred over fifteen years ago with a
then-undergraduate, for which he had already been disciplined with a
one-year suspension without pay. Princeton opened a second
investigation after Katz published the op-ed.

“It was so hypocritical to say, ‘Oh, tenure is being threatened, and
books are being censored,’ when voices are being censored and opinions
are being censored and run off the campus,” Nadon said.

Several parents interviewed by The Fix also compared Eisgruber’s
speech to a religious address.

    “Eisgruber’s woke sermon was inappropriate for a college
commencement and a captive audience that was forced to sit through
it,” said a father of two Princeton alumni, one of whom graduated in
the class of 2023.

    “As a father, I felt a great deal of cognitive dissonance. On the
one hand, Princeton University has been very welcoming and generous to
my child.”

    “On the other hand, Eisgruber was indirectly condemning Governor
[Ron] DeSantis’ Florida law that is aimed to protect their children
from physical and chemical mutilation before they reach age 18 and can
make a more informed and rational decision,” he added.

Another parent of a graduating senior told The Fix that Eisgruber’s
speech attributed personal political views to the institution, thereby
instructing students “what” to think and not “how to think.”

“Eisgruber gave a very biased, sermon-like, condescending commencement
speech that was disrespectful of at least half the audience, both in
the student population and in the parent population,” a parent said
via email. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are consequences on the
donor front.”

Robert Gagnon, the father of a graduating senior and a professor at
Houston Christian University, wrote directly to President Eisgruber to
express disapproval.

    “As a President, you undoubtedly believed that you were exercising
your free-speech rights,” he wrote.

    “Yet in doing so you were trampling on the rights of others to
free speech by using your office to make those under your authority
feel that what would happen to racists would happen to them if they
expressed a dissenting view on ‘LGBTQ’ orthodoxy.”

Gagnon shared his letter to Eisgruber with The Fix.

“You have a greater obligation at Princeton than all others, precisely
because you occupy the highest office, to assure people who disagree
with you that they are respected and valued, not that they are the
moral equivalent of racists,” Gagnon continued. “You expressed no
concern that studies have shown that conservative college students
already feel like pariahs and are afraid to express their point of
view in the classroom for fear of administrative retaliation,
including at Princeton.”

A parent of a graduating senior in the humanities similarly criticized
Eisgruber for espousing an “orthodoxy.”

    “Eisgruber’s commencement remarks were not only disheartening. He
delivered a one sided angry polemic from his bully pulpit leaving no
doubt about the preferred orthodoxy at Princeton,” the parent wrote.

    “It begged [the question of] who he was pandering too and why? It
certainly didn’t seem [to be] a message intended for the students.”

A recent survey of Princeton students found a majority of
self-described “conservative” and nearly half of “moderate” seniors
are “very uncomfortable” or “somewhat uncomfortable” sharing their
views on campus. By contrast, the survey found that less than five
percent of students who identified as “very liberal” reported being
“very uncomfortable” or “uncomfortable” sharing political views.

Another recent survey of Princeton students found 76 percent believe
it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker.

“President Eisgruber’s speech made good points about equality and
freedom of expression but was hypocritical,” said a mother whose
graduating daughter was the second child to attend Princeton for an
undergraduate degree.

“While he speaks out against censorship in virtuous tones, Mr.
Eisgruber’s administration fosters a campus environment where minority
viewpoints (conservative, traditional, religious, etc.) are canceled,
and those who would express such views are intimidated,” she said.

“Senior survey results indicate Princeton students feel under a gag
order. Practice what you preach.”

Another parent, who is a teacher at a Christian school, wrote to The
College Fix that “President Eisgruber displayed either a shocking lack
of comprehension of his audience by assuming that all the students and
parents would be on board with such a left-leaning speech or else he
simply did not care about offending his audience.”

“I believe the latter is probably the case. He himself is surrounded
by a liberal bubble in which all are convinced that they have the
moral high ground and that anyone who does not support their policies
is a bigoted danger to society,” the parent continued.

In addition to parents who attended the ceremonies, undergraduates
also criticized Eisgruber’s speech.

“Any reasonable person observing Eisgruber’s sermon would conclude
that its content has no place in the President’s Commencement
address,” rising Princeton senior Matthew Wilson, a College Fix
alumnus, wrote in the Daily Princetonian. “It was a grave mistake for
Eisgruber to offer such ideological and divisive remarks at
Commencement — purportedly under the moralizing banner of inclusivity,
but in reality with the express aim of excluding, marginalizing, and
suppressing the voices of those who dispute his particular account of
social justice.”

Junior Danielle Shapiro wrote in The Princeton Tory, the undergraduate
conservative publication, that “Eisgruber’s departing message was
misguided for its substantial focus on political activism and its
departure from the core purpose of Princeton and universities like it:
truth-seeking and the production and dissemination of knowledge.”

Another aspect of the president’s hypocrisy, according to Nadon,
played out in more than  his main speech.

Nadon also attended the Princeton ROTC commissioning ceremony, where
Eisgruber delivered remarks which contrasted what he had said just
hours earlier to the entire graduating class and further revealed the
president’s hypocrisy, he said.

“As a student of our country’s Constitution, I find myself inspired by
a singular fact about this ceremony every time that I participate in
it: each of you will make a solemn promise to defend the Constitution
of this United States — not our land, not our wealth, not even our
people, but our Constitution,” Eisgruber told the newly commissioned
officers.

“It shows Eisgruber’s political tremor: he’ll say basically whatever
is required by the particular audience,” Nadon told The Fix. “For the
president of an institution that has a thirty billion dollar endowment
to be complaining about people trying to rein in some of the craziness
on campus—through a democratic representative process—is just another
element of hypocrisy.”