I read with interest, and a degree of surprise, the articles in the Jan. 13 issue that deal with race and ethnicity at Princeton: the various Asian-American, African-American, Latino-American, and multiracial enclaves. All of them seem ardently to aspire to curricula, and extracurricular activities, that embrace their own ethnic and/or racial niches. The University seems hell-bent on satisfying their desires.
I am certainly not a professional educator, and my Princeton experience was many decades ago. Over all the years I have treasured my four years of liberal education, which definitely was not ethnically nor racially oriented in any way whatsoever. It was an American education at what was, and (hopefully) still is, an American university.
I believe the University should return to its American roots that somehow, sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, got tangled up and now seemingly are spreading out of control throughout the very essence of the place. Let the minority students (in all their unrestricted numbers!) meld themselves into an American educational culture that transcends where their families came from.