FIRE and ADL send warning to Princeton after student journalist was sanctioned for covering pro-Palestinian protest
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Anti-Defamation League issued a stern warning to Princeton University after it sanctioned a student journalist following a pro-Palestinian protest.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Anti-Defamation League issued a stern warning to Princeton University after it sanctioned a student journalist following a pro-Palestinian protest.
According to FIRE, Danielle Shapiro, a journalist with The Princeton Tory, a campus conservative publication, covered a November 9, 2023 pro-Palestinian protest hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine.
As Shapiro was recording video of the protest, a graduate student allegedly “attempted to block the journalist’s camera and then followed her around as she tried to cover the event,” a press release from FIRE states.
FIRE claims that Shapiro reported the incident to a nearby public safety officer, who instead faulted her for “inciting something.”
The graduate student then allegedly “continued to physically obstruct the journalist, eventually pushing her and stepping on her foot.”
Following the protest, Princeton granted a no-contact order request from the graduate student against Shapiro
According to FIRE, Princeton kept the no-contact order in place even after learning that the “graduate student had never communicated with the journalist.”
The student journalist asked the university if she could publish articles containing the graduate student’s name, to which an assistant dean advised the writer to “refrain from writing or to be interviewed for articles that mention the name of the student with whom you have an NCO (or to retract them if that’s possible).”
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If the student published stories with the graduate student’s name, the assistant dean continued, “it is possible some statements may be interpreted by the other student as an indirect or direct attempt to communicate.”
FIRE and the ADL wrote in their letter to Princeton that no-contact orders are being abused.
”In the wake of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, contentious debates on the conflict have dominated campus discourse. Yet Princeton is stifling these discussions and newsgathering by its student press, by permitting students who dislike certain speech to be granted no-communication or no-contact orders against other students,” the groups wrote. “These orders are being issued by administrators with disciplinary authority, under threat of punishment, without a modicum of due process, and—most unconscionably—where the student-speaker is not even alleged to have violated any university policy.”
”This practice is deeply chilling, in blatant violation of Princeton’s laudable free expression policies, and must end immediately,” they added.
