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Good morning!
Last Thursday, prospective members of Princeton’s Class of 2027 received offers of admission from the University. In a column, Opinion Editor Eleanor Clemans-Cope ’26 congratulated admitted students and encouraged them to engage in activism at Princeton. “There are urgent issues that demand student engagement on campus,” she wrote. Referring to Princeton’s informal motto of acting “in the service of humanity,” Clemans-Cope reminded students that “dismantling systemic injustice is work beyond the reach of a solitary individual.”
Today, Myles McKnight ’23 and Matthew Wilson ’24 respond to Clemans-Cope and offer their own advice: “As a student, you are a truth-seeker above all else." They urge students to seek to learn at Princeton, not come in with a belief that they already know the truth. McKnight and Wilson have discussed truth-seeking as it relates to free speech in the past. Last September, McKnight delivered an address to the then-incoming Class of 2026 centered on the importance of freedom of expression. This February, Wilson wrote in the ‘Prince’ that the University must consistently uphold principles of institutional neutrality to avoid compromising “its ability to fulfill its truth-seeking mission.” In the column, McKnight and Wilson place a much greater emphasis than Clemans-Cope on the academic aspects of the University, specifically mentioning lectures, seminars, and guest speakers, whereas Clemans-Cope focused on student groups and protests.
McKnight and Wilson's views have gotten some pushback. Contributing Columnist Nate Howard ’25 critiqued McKnight’s speech and his other writings. “On paper, this sounds good,” Howard wrote, but argued the “free speech that they claim to fight for are secondary to their conservative ideology.”
READ THE PIECE HERE →
Analysis by Michelle Miao
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