A curator whose show at Princeton was aborted on the verge of its debut places the blame for the debacle on that university’s “capitulation to cancel culture” in pursuit of “reputational management” rather than knowledge. 

Professor Samantha Baskind made those comments to the Sun after the show she conceived, intended to focus on art made by American Jews in the second half of the 19th century, collapsed in acrimony between Princeton’s administration on the one hand and a group of scholars and one of the university’s most significant donors, Leonard Milberg, on the other. 

It is a story of the fallout that ensues when the messy facts of history collide with the new age puritan sensibilities on campus — and when scholars hoping to tackle thorny subjects encounter a university apparently more interested in closing down conversation than opening it up. Princeton’s willingness to cross one of its major benefactors speaks volumes to the change in the ideological weather.  

The decision by Princeton’s university librarian, Anne Jarvis, and ultimately endorsed by the university president, Christopher Eisgruber, suggests that America’s greatest universities show a waning if not entirely evaporated devotion to what Princeton calls its “fundamental commitment to academic freedom and the rigorous and independent pursuit of truth.”  

This is yet another example, a professor of Jewish history, Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis, tells the Sun, of “walls being put up” around what is sayable on campus. Professor Baskind laments that “a powerful message is sent when one of the crown jewels of the academy shies away from important questions.”

The latest agonistes over speech on campus begins with a volume edited by Professor Sarna on American Jews during the Gilded Age. It is titled “Yearning to Breathe Free” and is slated for publication by Princeton University Library. 

An entry in that volume, penned by Professor Baskind, focused on art crafted during the period. It was the basis for an exhibit at Princeton’s Firestone Library, occupying a gallery named after Mr. Milberg and his wife. With these synergies abounding, an agreement was made to install the exhibit under the guidance of Professor Baskind. 

Religion News Network reports, though, that in December, after preparations had begun, Princeton’s librarian demanded that two of the show’s main subjects, the sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and the Confederate major and painter Theodore Moise, be stricken from the catalog.

Ezekiel, one of the most prominent American artists of the 19^th century, thought of himself as a lifelong son of the South. He served in the Confederate army and designed the Confederate War Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. 

The sculptor spent the majority of his working life in Rome, and the Confederate flag hung in his studio there for more than 40 years. Ezekiel stood guard at the casket of Lieutenant General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson.

Professor Baskind, who is writing a book about Ezekiel, tells the Sun that in addition to his Confederate loyalties Ezekiel was an ardent believer in freedom of religion. One of his sculptures, the 24-foot, 13-ton “Religious Liberty,” stands outside of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. He was the first Jew to graduate from the Virginia Military Institute.

In a statement provided to the Sun, a spokesperson at Princeton insisted that the show was canceled “after the Library and the donor were unable to agree on the show’s composition.” Claiming “editorial authority,” the university explained its “duty to ensure that any materials exhibited are presented, explained, and contextualized in a manner consistent with the Library’s educational and research mission.”

Mr. Milberg, a Princeton alum who funded the scholarly book, the proposed exhibit, and the gallery in which the exhibit was to take place, penned a regretful letter to the Daily Princetonian. He noted that he has funded “11 exhibitions at the Princeton Art Museum and Firestone Library and donated 10 collections to the University over the past 40 years without the slightest controversy.”

Professor Baskind termed Princeton’s response “an unfortunate anti-intellectual surrender to cancel culture” and told the Sun that the Ivy League school was“muddying the narrative” by laying blame on Mr. Milberg for canceling the show.  She explains that “Princeton forced the cancellation by canceling artists,” even to the point of “whitewashing history.”

The professor noted that the Princeton Art Museum owns  several works by Edgar Degas despite his anti-Semitism and that the exhibit would have included material contextualizing the relationship between the art and the Confederacy. In insisting that Ezekiel and Moises be removed from the show rather than engaged, Professor Baskind believes that Princeton is not “giving its students enough credit.”  

While not directly involved in the exhibit, the editor of the underlying book, Professor Sarna, notes in comments to the Sun that if “you touch the Confederacy, you get canceled.” He said that it was “horrible” that “a university of this stature” would be complicit in suppressing this material. He points out that the university teaches the work of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher who was an enthusiastic Nazi.

The contretemps over this exhibit comes on the heels of debate over the renaming of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School in response to criticism of his racism. In 2020, the former president of Princeton’s name was stricken from campus by its current one.  

Professor Sarna, for one, believes that “Wilson is the subtext” to this controversy and that the university was “on edge,” after strong public pressure led to the stripping of the progressive president’s name from Princeton’s public policy school and a residential college.

The founder of a group called “Princetonians for Free Speech,” Stuart Taylor, tells the Sun that his organization was founded in 2020 in reaction to the presence of “woke rot” at the Ivy League school, and maintains that the administrators instructed with Princeton’s governance are “part of the problem.” Mr. Taylor calls President Eisgruber a “fairweather friend” to freedom of speech.    

A prominent artist, Joel Babb, who studied art history at Princeton, shared with the Sun that he is “appalled” at this turn of events. He notes “Yearning to Breathe Free” seems so interesting from an art historical perspective that “this seems an unfortunate interference of academic freedom to me.” 

Ezekiel’s own descendants do not seem to share this view. In 2017, some 20 of his descendants wrote to the Washington Post petitioning for the Confederate War Memorial’s removal from Arlington and urging that it be “taken out of its honored spot in Arlington National Cemetery and put in a museum that makes clear its oppressive history.” 

If the work of this sculptor is to find home neither in the public square nor the hushed halls of Ivy League libraries, then one wonders where all of this history is to go altogether.