As the readers of The Panther have seen, the university has not upheld its free speech values in the recent interaction with The Panther. How this happened, and why, is probably not as important as the fact that I am now convinced that the university did indeed request The Panther for prior review of an article, in obvious conflict with the values we espouse.

As President, I am saddened that this happened, but I want to reaffirm our commitment as an institution, as well as my personal commitment, to do better next time. I also want to restate and double down on our promise of free speech. The fact that we failed this time is not something we want to hide, but something we want to learn from. The fact that we failed is no justification for lowering our standards in the future.

I appreciate the work that The Panther has done to bring this issue to the surface, and I look forward to being able to demonstrate in concrete our renewed aspiration to be an institution that models our values.