As I approach a half-century of involvement with Princeton University, I see President Shirley Tilghman as the leader who finally turned the University back toward its original 1746 mission dedicated to establishing fairness and justice in the new nation.
As one of Princeton’s first 20 students of color, I struggled with the University’s informal motto, “Princeton in the nation’s service,” because our nation had systematically stained me and my colored ancestors and created a cohort of Negroes who were viewed as less than human and derided even by people of color. Established as a child of the Great Awakening by the “Occupy Wall Streeters” of their day, Princeton was the “northernmost outpost of Southern culture.” The college was born in opposition to the oppressive religious tenets that had ruled the Colonial era, and the school’s founding fathers repudiated the materialistic, greedy, mercenary world of an affluent Colonial society.
Notwithstanding, Princeton vociferously championed slavery and, over a period of two centuries, it equated black people with the biblical “Tribe of Ham,” destined for servitude. President Tilghman, through her strength of character, succeeded in directing Princeton toward understanding that the natural constituency of the University is now the whole world and that in our shrinking world of globalization, Princeton students, faculty, alumni, staff, and others exert greater influence and thus enjoy an enhanced opportunity to contribute toward a world society of equality and cultural understanding.