Along with a handful of other Princeton professors, economist Paul Krugman has helped define what it means to be a “public intellectual,” writing a regular New York Times column, a blog, and books that are accessible to nonacademic readers. At a press conference in a packed Dodds Auditorium last month, he celebrated his latest and greatest honor, a Nobel Prize, taking questions from reporters around the world and — no surprise — not sparing the Bush administration in his critiques of current events.
Krugman received the Nobel not for his newspaper columns, but for explorations of trade theory he conducted before he began writing for the Times. Public reaction to his Nobel was intense: Within a few hours of the announcement, more than 2,000 people had posted messages of approval online. PAW joins them in offering congratulations. Read about Krugman on page 14, and post your own comments at paw.princeton.edu.
Also in this issue, Christopher Shea ’91 writes about Woodrow Wilson School professor Gary Bass and his recent book on humanitarian intervention. Bass shows that the question of when to intervene has been around for centuries, and as recent events in Darfur and Iraq illustrate, it’s always complicated.
This week marks the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” that often is used to date the beginning of the genocide against the Jews of Europe — a time when many felt the United States could have, and should have, done more to help save them. To mark the event, PAW Online, at paw.princeton.edu, offers an essay by Ernest Stock ’49, who as a 14-year-old boy in Frankfurt saw his Jewish school closed, the nearby synagogue go up in flames, and his father sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Stock writes about his experiences — including his time at Princeton — in the years after that horrific time.
Marilyn H. Marks *86
mmarks@princeton.edu