Notable & Quotable: Tearing Down Princeton Free speech, but only to supply students ‘with the tools with which they can tear down this place.’
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, associate professor of classics, in a video shown at Princeton University’s freshman orientation:
When I speak about the privileges that we have I am particularly intent on one of those privileges. This is the privilege—especially for those of us who have the benefits of tenure—to exercise free speech. But I don’t mean free speech in the masculinized, bravado sense . . . I envision a free speech and an intellectual discourse that is flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that.
And in order for that work to be realized richly and capaciously it behooves all of us who are on the faculty to think about ways in which we can provide effective mentoring to our students—instruct and guide them about the institutional peculiarities of Princeton and Princeton culture—but not with a view to habituating them into a practice of assimilation or indoctrinating them in the belief that somehow this is the best damn place of all, but in order to supply them with the tools with which they can tear down this place and make it a better one.
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