Brian on WNYC. With me now, the president of Princeton University, Christopher Icegruber.

He has a new book called Terms of Respect, How Colleges Get Free Speech Right.

It's an interesting title at a time when critics on both the left and the right and free speech purists without a political side all say colleges are getting it wrong.

Christopher Icegruber has been the Princeton president since 2013.

He has the unusual, perhaps, academic track of

having been a physics major at Princeton in the 80s, but then going on to become a constitutional

lawyer, including as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Louis Powell. He has written provocative

books before, including one about undemocratic features of the U.S. Constitution, one that

proposed reforming the Supreme Court justice selection process, and one about the Constitution

and religious liberty that argued that religion gets treated as both too privileged and too

punished by modern applications of the wall of separation between religion and government as people see it.

Maybe we'll touch on some of the themes of those older books as they relate to the new one about

speech on campus. In a nutshell, Ice Gruber argues that there can be a balance between free speech

and respectful inclusivity. We'll see how he thinks we get there. I should also say President Icegruber has been

in the news this year for being outspoken early on about what he called the Trump administration's

attack on Columbia University, presenting what he called the greatest threat to American

University since the Red Scare of the 1950s. A lot has happened since he wrote those words in the Atlantic in March,

so we'll talk about that, as well as, of course, the new book, which again is called Terms of Respect,

how colleges get free speech right. President Ice Gruber, thanks for coming on to discuss this vital topic.

Welcome to WN.YC. Brian, it's a pleasure to be here with you, and thank you for that generous introduction.

If I can correct just one detail on it, I clerked for John Paul Stevens rather than Lewis Powell,

both great justices, but I owe that to my boss.

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