I suppose Professor Robert P. George, Princeton’s resident ultra-conservative political philosopher, is being allowed to run the James Madison Program as a private fiefdom, but it was still shocking to see that the Harold T. Shapiro Lecture on Ethics, Science, and Technology was given by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. Dr. Bhattacharya was one of a core of health policy “experts” who, from the beginning, underestimated the dangers of COVID and opposed measures that attempted to mitigate its damage.
For example, in June 2021, in a joint column with Dr. Martin Kulldorf (then at Harvard) in that rigorous scientific publication, the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that the “[COVID] pandemic is on its way out,” after 600,000 deaths. He was off by many months and about half of the deaths. Earlier, in April 2020, he, colleague Dr. John Ioannidis, and others mostly at Stanford attempted to calculate the mortality rate for early strains of COVID, and arrived at a figure only 1/5 of what later, more complete analysis showed. What made their estimate egregious, instead of simply mistaken, was that it was incompatible with the observed number of deaths that had already occurred in New York City, an early center of COVID infection and death. Far from searching for why they were wrong, the authors continue to maintain these Flat Earth beliefs in any venue that will publish them.
Drs. Bhattacharya and Kulldorf both signed the Oct. 4, 2020, Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a “let it rip” approach to COVID. More precisely, they called for opening everything up, with some vague “focused protection” for the elderly and others at greater risk. (See the new book We Want Them Infected, by Jonathan Howard.) I refer to this plan, which would not, of course, spare teachers and parents when young people fell ill, as “cull the herd immunity.”
Great Barrington, Vermont, the eponymous source of the declaration, is the headquarters of the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, which sponsored it. AIER’s dedication to public health can be measured by its quondam editorial director’s endorsement of teenage cigarette smoking.
Now that Dartmouth and Yale have led the way, isn’t it time for Princeton to abandon the “test-optional” policy for undergraduate admission? That policy arguably made sense when adopted in the darkest quarantine days of the coronavirus crisis. But it now just seems to be hanging on as a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to democratize admission policies.
Yale’s research concluded that “when admissions officers reviewed applications with no scores, they placed greater weight on other parts of the application. But this shift frequently worked to the disadvantage of applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.” (Emphasis in original.)
Consistent with other research, Yale also concluded that “among all application components, test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades. This is true even after controlling for family income and other demographic variables ...”
I was proud when Princeton in 2001 became the first university in the country to eliminate loans from its student aid packages. That enlightened decision facilitated the matriculation of more low- and moderate-income students. But the “test-optional” policy seems to actually work against this laudable goal. I hope Princeton will soon join the salutary countertrend started by Dartmouth and Yale.
I was ashamed to read in The New York Times (“The Top U.S. Colleges With the Greatest Economic Diversity,” Sept. 8, 2023) that with the highest per-student endowment in the Ivy League, Princeton ranks sixth in the Ivy League in low-income freshmen (those receiving Pell Grants), at 18%. I was even more ashamed after looking up the numbers for my own employer, the George Washington University: a similar freshman Pell rate (17%), but with a per-student endowment of only 1/35th (less than 3%) of Princeton’s. I wonder if 18% is where the University wants to be, and if not, what is standing in the way of raising it.
In the April 26 Washington Post, Princeton’s president did his best to support the U.S. education department’s “college for all” doctrine, citing the increased earning power that goes along with getting a four-year degree. But he left out the most convincing counter-argument — the college dropout rates are just awful.
1) Between 2019 and 2020, about 24% of first-time, full-time undergraduate first-year students dropped out of college.
2) In 2021, 31.6% of students who enrolled in 2015 were no longer enrolled six years later and had not received their degree.
3) American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, and Pacific Islander first-year students have higher dropout rates than their Hispanic, white, and Asian peers.
With only a two in three chance of getting a degree, should we be surprised that a good many young people are opting for apprenticeships and vocational training instead of college? Why pile up debt when plenty of good jobs are available to non-college grads with the right vocational training?
In February, while Israeli rescue crews worked through the Sabbath to save lives in Turkey, the English department at Princeton University paid and sponsored someone who, in his writing, claims Israelis eat the organs of Palestinians and threatened to shoot protestors at an earlier speech at Arizona State University. At Princeton, Mohammed El-Kurd made many such hateful references, such as describing the Anti-Defamation League, which has fought antisemitism and racism for more than a century, as the “Apartheid Defense League.”
This is not a First Amendment issue. Mr. El-Kurd is free to spout his poison on the internet or on a street corner, but why is Princeton sponsoring this?
For a Princeton University department to sponsor (i.e., pay or use University resources to support) a speaker who would like to exterminate me and my two Princeton sons, Benjamin ’13 and Theodore ’20, as well as everyone who lives in Israel, is appalling.
Such targeting of any other racial, ethnic, religious, or national group would be unthinkable at Princeton. And yet it is somehow appropriate for the English department at Princeton to invite and support such a speaker targeting a minority group — Jews.
Apparently, the only University-connected figure with the courage to confront El-Kurd’s hatred was Rabbi Eitan Webb of Chabad at Princeton, who got up and shouted, “I would like to thank you very much for giving a masterclass on how to be an antisemite.”
I am already a 1746 Society donor to the University. But tell me, why should I support this?
The PAW article about Ernest Stock ’49, focusing in part on the bigotry he experienced as a Jew at Princeton from students whose pre-Princeton lives were likely, at worst, a casual walk in the park compared to his, was compelling reading. But how ironic. The PAW arrived the same week that Princeton’s English department and the Princeton Committee on Palestine gave 24-year-old “activist” Mohammed El-Kurd a platform for his crackpot, antisemitic ideas about Jews and Israel (for example, he writes that Jews “harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their warriors our own”).
What El-Kurd has so far peddled in his young life would have made Goebbels proud and no doubt has had many QAnon followers and other conspiracy theorists bemoaning the fact they hadn’t come up with El-Kurd’s ideas before he did. Among the risible explanations from the chair of the English department for El-Kurd’s invitation to speak at Princeton is that El-Kurd “has urgent experience and ideas to bring to the campus.” “Urgent experience and ideas” gained when and where? After living in the United States, being educated in New York, and moving to Jerusalem at age 22? What’s next from the English department? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion reviewed by Louis Farrakhan? Why not? Farrakhan has experience and ideas.
Stock’s experiences at Princeton decades ago and the enabling of El-Kurd’s antisemitism in 2023 make clear that, as to Princeton’s English department and Jews, the more things change the more they remain the same.
I read Michael Goldstein ’78’s Inbox note with great interest (April issue). Antisemitism is not new at Princeton. Few will remember but in 1957, in the throes of the bicker system, which may or may not be alive and well today, some Jewish sophomores were not admitted to any eating clubs. I forget how many.
In an effort to correct this, there was a meeting in our living room above Blair Arch with seniors, including myself, and a number of sophomores.
We advised the eating clubs that either all Jewish sophomores would be admitted or none. If it was none, a few eating clubs would go bankrupt. Needless to say, all were admitted. And the following year, or soon thereafter, Wilson Lodge was opened by the University — a club open to all.
Just a commentary on a long forgotten dark episode in the school’s history.
We pride ourselves for divesting from fossil fuels, we decry Nazis, we cancel slaveholders, we align ourselves as individuals and as a community with various human rights concerns here and around the globe. However, we have not spoken a word as a University community against the numberless human rights atrocities committed by China under the Chinese Communist Party every day. We continue to engorge on their vast resources and funding to feed our academic hunger, which is really blood money. I will not be silent. It is time Princeton University stand true to her ideals and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.
I have often reflected on Princeton’s responsibility as a leading elite and well-endowed institution to embrace the 21st century, in terms of the students it serves, the programs and modalities of education it offers, and the culture it fosters. As a former head of e-learning at a peer institution, I already have commented on Princeton’s slowness to adapt in that arena, but I believe that its tethering to tradition has broader implications with respect to the mission of service and bears further scrutiny given the now precarious state of affirmative action programs.
Although Princeton has made strides in diversifying its student population and incrementally increasing class sizes, it hasn’t progressed in terms of broadening access to nontraditional students, high school and adult learners, significant outreach programs to local and underserved communities, or with respect to valuing alternative educational experiences whether, online, experiential, or through study abroad. This resistance to embracing new audiences and approaches is in part a reflection of the long-held belief that a Princeton education surpasses all others and that one can’t have a commensurate experience elsewhere (at least during the academic calendar year), and an elitist and tradition-bound culture that similarly continues to promote professions, such as management consulting and investment banking (although now has included tech) as preferred professional pathways. Not much has changed in that regard since I was a student 40 years ago.
This culture of elitism persists, and regardless of the numbers of students of color and/or those from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds Princeton admits, which should remain of critical importance, if it doesn’t address this culture, its students will perpetuate the same in the institutions they may someday lead.
I am a proud Princetonian and truly appreciate the incredible education it afforded me. That is why I feel so strongly that Princeton should evolve to meet the moment. To hold true to its service and diversity aspirations, Princeton as an institution must lead by example and nurture a more egalitarian culture. It should consider integrating a service component and/or field work into its distribution requirements, advancing more diverse career opportunities, especially those that are service/community oriented, creating bridge programs for local high school students from underserved communities to support alternative channels to admission, and/or partnering with other institutions around the world to create joint online and/or hybrid programs that enhance its offerings and extend its audience.
It is time for Princeton to look inward and reconsider what it means to be “in the service of humanity” as a well-resourced leading educational institution in the 21st century.
I am so dismayed to see Princeton taking unsustainable actions at students’ expense by mandating booster COVID-19 vaccination in the spring.
Potentially serious vaccine side effects have been documented for months, particularly after Moderna for young men, Johnson and Johnson for young women, and AstraZeneca for younger people overall. Yes, adverse events are relatively rare. But COVID-19 harms are extremely differentiated by age and comorbidities such as obesity. A risk-stratified approach would minimize harms and maximize benefits from vaccination, and it would live up to Princeton’s renown for nurturing its undergraduates.
Vaccination mandates disregarding immunity from infection or differential risks also have ethical and socio-political costs, from understaffed hospitals to global inequities in vaccine access. Do punitive mandates achieve harm reduction and a more tolerant, just society? Or do they pantomime virtue, taking a further toll on public trust?
Princeton’s policy takes the omicron variant as a serious threat. But which high-quality data have shown this? Vaccine companies’ announcements surely cannot be counted as solid evidence. The omicron variant is already widespread globally. Vaccinated individuals can transmit it. We must accept that COVID-19 will become endemic and minimize its harms as equitably as possible. What are the University’s metrics for dropping its intrusive, punitive COVID-19 measures?
I was privileged to enjoy an education at Princeton that emphasized free inquiry, a compassionate global perspective, and rigorous examination of evidence. I expected far better from my alma mater.
I have just read a letter from student members of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition objecting to SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal’s mass email regarding the outcome of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Nothing in this letter would have been objectionable at the Princeton I attended, but 58 of the 60 signatories’ names “were redacted as a condition for the public release of this letter.”
I think that obvious fear confirms something we really didn’t want to know about the current state of free speech at Princeton.
The recent Daily Princetonian article about the Honor Code and the stressses faced by those it examined for violations says nothing about prevention.
From my current enrollment, year 7 as an MA in Egyptlogy student at the University of Manchester in the U.K., I have seen the value of a preventive alternative related to plagiarism. It would also apply to the other examples cited in the article.
Proposals:
- Develop an online course on the issues that cause students to be cited for potential Honor Code violations, based on current examples. Require every student prior to matriculation to complete this course with attendant T/F questions.
- Require returning students to complete an abbreviated form of this course each summer.
- Have an email resource that students can access when they have questions about situations that could result in Honor Code violations.
- Provide this course and email resource to the faculty so that they are aware of this process.
- Collect and modify the course based on total number and specific issues that come before the Honor Committee each year with a goal of reductions in its referrals based on the results.
I recently received a series of emails from the Concerned Black Alumni of Princeton calling for the establishment of an academic center at Princeton to signal the University’s commitment to fighting racism. I also recently received emails from a similar sounding center at another major academic institution inviting me to virtual discussions that felt more like advocacy than balanced academic discussion; their descriptions did not make me feel welcome as a white individual who self-defines as moderate.
I believe that there is too much siloing of individuals with different perspectives on race and other critical societal issues. There is a great need for an academic center that attempts to draw in proponents of multiple viewpoints (progressive and conservative) and works towards reasonable consensus positions, but I believe that there are better places outside of academia for groups that are not balanced and collaborative. If Princeton chooses to establish a center, I hope it explicitly follows a collaborative pathway in its purpose and its hires.
The University’s proposed new Environmental Studies and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences building complex to be located immediately south of the eating clubs promises to provide for a high level of functionality for a world-class faculty, researchers, and students, yet distressingly the plans for a very small portion of it will unnecessarily and irrevocably damage Prospect Avenue’s iconic streetscape, which is included in the National Register’s Princeton Historic District.
A May 30 Planet Princeton article (bit.ly/prospect-ave) reports on this issue and contains links to a town-resident-created online petition as well as to a 19-page presentation by Princeton Prospect Foundation. Alumni are urged to speak up now if they find this particular aspect of the University’s otherwise grand construction plans to be unacceptable.
Editor’s note: The municipality of Princeton’s planning board was scheduled to discuss this project as PAW was going to press. The June 17 discussion will be continued July 8; PAW will report on the board’s decision when it is announced.
Princeton is applying for Planning Board approval for a new 15-acre engineering campus (ES-SEAS) that will sit between the eating clubs and Princeton Stadium. The plans include building a modern pavilion on Prospect Avenue, a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. To do this, the architects want to pick up the former Court Club, move it across the street, and demolish three Victorian houses. The disruption and destruction this will cause to a historic residential neighborhood is shocking.
There has been so much protest from the local community that the University application will carry forward to a third Planning Board meeting in September. The Princeton Historic Preservation Commission unanimously recommended that the Planning Board deny the application. The University’s plan violates National Park Service Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The University has refused to consider any of the concerns or suggestions from the community. See much more information at princetonprospectfoundation.org.
Princeton is where I discovered my love and respect for history. As one of the first women at Princeton, the historic campus made me feel I was part of history. I live in a local historic house and was chair of the Montgomery Township Landmarks Commission. I’m shocked and saddened to witness Princeton’s disregard for the Princeton Historic District. I urge the architects of this plan to reflect on what they’ve heard from the community. Princeton’s values will be reflected in the final execution of this project. Princeton has the talent and the resources to meet its objectives and also follow the guidelines for the preservation of national historic properties.
Some universities keep their medieval ambiance, like Oxford and Cambridge; some like Duke look like God built it in one day, all the same style, a bit like Disneyland. Princeton at least shows change over time, from colonial times to the glass and steel world of the present. But change, while good, should not overtake everything old. Proposals for Prospect Avenue look unwise.
As a loyal alumnus, after 52 years I have finally figured out what makes Princeton such a special place. And it’s not what Princeton is. It’s what Princeton is not.
While Princeton has very prestigious graduate programs, it does not have a law school, a business school, nor a medical school. Most of the other Ivy League schools have all three professional schools and all have at least one.
Princeton’s unique focus on the undergraduate experience is what makes it so special. We should promote that attribute more.
We are just a few of the alumni from seven decades who have come together out of concern for the future of Princeton and our planet. We have pledged to withhold donations until Princeton University commits to divesting from the fossil-fuel industry. We don’t know how much of Princeton’s $26 billion endowment is invested in dirty energy because PRINCO will not share that information.
We do know that Princeton does not engage in shareholder activism and has refused to join Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative that promotes action on climate change. We also know that Princeton continues to accept funding from ExxonMobil and BP, despite the fact that Exxon is currently being sued for allegedly lying about climate change and BP was the oil company that spent the most on blocking climate-change legislation last year ($53 million, according to InfluenceMap.org).
Nearly 40 campus organizations and hundreds of current students have endorsed the campaign. To join the more than 1,560 Princetonians who have already signed the open letter to President Eisgruber ’83, visit divestprinceton.com. This is an existential crisis threatening humanity — where is Princeton?
Any continued investment in support of and alliance with the fossil-fuel industry is a violation of ethics, morality, science, and is in direct contradiction to President Eisgruber ’83 saying opposition is a political matter. He elevates it to one of political support for this industry and ratifies this position with business relationships. This is and should be unacceptable to this esteemed institution.
On Sept. 9, 2020, we woke up early. It was Sanchali’s birthday. Instead of the clear blue skies we’ve come to expect in Oakland, we found a dark, orange-tinged glow. The sun didn’t rise that day. It would be the first of 10 days of smoke-filled skies caused by the raging wildfires across the American West.
As two Princeton alums who started dating in college, our years after school were filled with adventure, ambition, and joy. We lived in New York, then chased our dreams to work in East Africa and India. We attended graduate school in Boston, and surprising none of our college friends, got married. But over the last several years, the urgent threat and injustice of climate catastrophe have become a driving motivation for us. We pivoted our careers into climate, continuing a journey that started on Princeton’s campus, where we first learned about climate change.
At Princeton, too, the community is taking notice. Last year, a group of undergrads, graduate students, and alumni came together to form Divest Princeton. In some regards, the University has been a leader on climate change. However, we fall short in one notable area: management of the $26.1 billion endowment.
We believe divestment from fossil fuels is not only in the University’s best interests — it is the only path that reduces exposure to long-term climate and financial risk. For Tiger alumni, urging our alma mater to divest may be one of the most impactful actions we can take to ensure a just and sustainable future for the next generation.
First, there is a strong financial argument to invest in a fossil-fuel-free portfolio. Global stock indexes without fossil-fuel holdings outperform identical indexes that include them. As reported by The Guardian in 2018, “investors who divested from fossil-fuel companies would have earned an average return of 13 percent a year since 2010, compared to the 11.8 percent-a-year return earned by conventional investors.” Princeton’s return on its endowment was estimated at 12 percent per year over the 25-year period ending June 30, 2019.
The University of California divested from fossil fuels last year, citing financial imperative: “The reason we sold some $150 million in fossil-fuel assets from our endowment was the reason we sell other assets: They posed a long-term risk to generating strong returns for UC’s diversified portfolios.” Investing in fossil fuels is fiscally irresponsible.
Second, divestment is an effective tactic. In the cases of South Africa’s apartheid government and the tobacco industry, divestment played a significant role in creating the popular opposition that contributed to their decline. Analysts at Goldman Sachs have already stated that the “divestment movement has been a key driver of the coal sector’s 60 percent de-rating over the past five years.” Shell considers divestment a “material risk” to its business.
Universities are uniquely positioned to take a stance on divestment. They are creators of knowledge, protectors of truth, and inventors of the future. Many universities have divested, including Stanford, the University of California, the University of Massachusetts, Middlebury, and Cambridge University. Princeton carries outsize weight both through its endowment — one of the five largest in the world — and through its brand and policy influence. If Princeton chooses to take a symbolic stance on the issue of fossil fuels, that stand will have outsize influence.
Opponents of divestment cite the argument that universities can more effectively influence fossil-fuel companies as a major shareholder. Our response is simple: Princeton has invested in fossil fuels for the past several decades. How effective has its influence been so far?
Third, and most importantly, there is a moral leadership argument for divestment. Investing the endowment in fossil fuels is a direct and serious violation of our alma mater’s values. Fossil-fuel companies deliberately spread misinformation that contradicts the scientific consensus and perpetuate products that cause death and destruction for people and habitats around the world. There is no doubt that climate change is a violation of the nation’s best interests, and the interests of all nations.
Opponents of divestment often cite the “slippery slope” argument: If the University divests from fossil fuels, it will have to divest from guns, alcohol, and every other potentially unsavory sector. While no investment strategy is perfect, some are more destructive than others. Princeton faces reputational risk if it does not take a stance on the most important issues of the generation it purports to educate. We believe this applies to divesting from fossil fuels as well as to divesting from private prisons.
As Princeton, we have a moral window in which to define the future we are courageous enough to investin, not simply the risks we should divest from.
No one at Princeton taught us that leadership would be easy. The interests that drive the fossil-fuel industry are embedded in the University and will not disappear without a fight. For instance, between 2015 to 2020, Exxon Mobil donated $6.4 million to the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton; in July, the University renewed its collaboration for another five years.
President Eisgruber ’83 wrote in 2017, in response to a petition to divest from private prisons, that Princeton will divest if there is sustained campus interest, if there is consensus on the University’s response, and if the target corporations’ actions are a “direct and serious violation” of a “central University value.” It seems that to convince President Eisgruber that Princeton should divest from the companies causing the greatest threat to human civilization, we must demonstrate sustained, passionate commitment. We, Princeton’s 91,000 living alumni, comprise a major interest group for the University. Together we represent over $1.4 billion in cumulative donations, with nearly $70 million in 2019 alone; moreover, we embody the reputation and legacy of the University around the world.
If you have been on the fence about divestment, the overwhelming events of recent months make it clear: We have no time to waste. Fires, floods, pandemics, and drought are accelerating.
Voice your support for fossil-fuel divestment by signing and sharing this letter and committing to withhold donations until Princeton divests. Already, more than 1,500 students and alumni, 45 faculty and staff, and 40 campus groups have signed on. By Dec. 31, we seek to have 2,500 signatures to present to President Eisgruber before the Council of the Princeton University Community considers Divest Princeton’s official fossil-fuel divestment request in spring 2021.
The bottom line is this: Our actions speak louder than words. We cannot educate our students on the dangers of climate breakdown while we invest in the very fossil fuels that threaten their future. We impel our university to invest in a thriving planet for us and for future generations.
Leaving the ethical obligation to divest of fossil fuels completely aside, how does it make sense for Princeton to be investing in dying industries that won’t grow our endowment the way better alternatives will? One better alternative is renewable energy. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of new energy generation in the United States. The U.S. solar industry has been growing at an average annual rate of 48 percent over the last 10 years, and in the first half of 2020 alone, it supplied 37 percent of new generation. The financial manager of Princeton’s endowment, Princo, might want to talk to the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a $7 trillion portfolio. “Climate risk is investment risk,” says Larry Fink, chairman and CEO, who has committed BlackRock to divest from coal and is directing part of its portfolio to climate industries. For more information go to: https://divestprinceton.wixsite.com/divestprinceton.
As my previous letter to PAW noted, I thought that the decision in a short period to expunge Woodrow Wilson from Princeton’s history thoughtless and damaging to Princeton’s reputation as an intellectual and carefully analytical leading research university. I am now subsequently appalled by Chris Eisgruber’s long dissertation claiming that Princeton has been imbedded with systemic racism. Not only is that an extremely questionable thesis but clearly no careful analysis was done to raise the risk that the current government would seize on that to attack an “elite” university. Certainly both decisions are severely damaging to our beloved university and exhibit extremely poor judgment by our leaders.
Princeton’s hard-earned reputation rests on its ability to attract leading professors, admitting and educating future leaders, and doing cutting edge research as well as on its extraordinary history. These two recent decisions betray the above and appear to be merely succumbing to the wind of current social trends.
For background, I am the product of parents who went only through the 10th grade and who lost close relatives in the Holocaust. For over 20 years I ran the New York area Schools Committee and beginning in the early 1970s recruited many outstanding African American students to Princeton. Future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was also encouraged to attend Princeton by our Committee. Now I am responsible for a wonderful Vietnamese current undergraduate. So I find lectures on racism and diversity by Princeton misinformed and misguided.
We expect the leadership of Princeton to be thoughtful, intellectual, analytical, and particularly protective of our hard-earned reputation — as well as being respectful of predecessors upon whose shoulders they are fortunate to stand. These two recent decisions reflect none of these criteria and certainly raise questions about their judgment.
To make a more inclusive Princeton, I recommend two changes to the existing “Policy on Discrimination and/or Harassment” (available online at bit.ly/dh-policy).
First, the current definition of harassment is “unwelcome verbal or physical behavior ... based on a protected characteristic” (race, creed, sex, etc.). It should be expanded to include all unwelcome verbal or physical behaviors including those based on a protected characteristic. News reports indicate that much (and perhaps most) harassment on college campuses these days relates to politics or ideology rather than a protected characteristic, and is thus outside the current definition. An inclusive Princeton does not tolerate anyone being harassed for any reason.
Second, clarify that exposure to ideas and opinions one dislikes is not the same thing as harassment. In fact, exposure to such ideas and opinions is one of the goals of a Princeton education.
I write regarding President Eisgruber ’83’s Sept. 2 letter to the Princeton community, in which he described “systemic racism” at the University and made several proposals (On the Campus, October issue).
Mr. Eisgruber has been president of the University for more than seven years. Before that, he was provost for nine. He bears more responsibility for the University’s present circumstances than anyone. If he truly believes Princeton today is a racist institution, he should resign. If he does not believe it, then he should stop saying it and thereby impugning the many people who have contributed their lives and talents to the institution.
In a time when American public life is saturated with lies and words have lost their usual meaning, Princeton’s leadership should be distinguished for its honesty, not its pandering to slogans that sow resentment and division.
The letter received electronically today from President Eisgruber explains his role in leading the world against racism. I thought his role was to run Princeton University. Even Wilson waited until he was elected president before trying to remake the world, and then he did a disastrous job of it, most historians I think would agree to a great extent. I suggest some modesty on the part of the current University president. Truly.
Princeton expects hard questions and demands honest answers. She nurtures our young minds and souls, allows us to blossom in a rigorous environment, waters us with love and respect, and imbues us with the ideal of service. We stumble. Here, I describe a fall and suggest a means to stand tall again.
Like many, I have tried to help fight COVID-19. I am an urban pediatrician with a science Ph.D. I know well the detection technique for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. In mid-March, when U.S. testing was woefully inadequate, I devised a means to remove three major impediments (naso-pharyngeal swabs, viral culture/transport media, and personal protective equipment, all scarce). In 15 days, aided by classmates and study volunteers, I demonstrated feasibility and submitted a manuscript.
Determined to help, I visited affected nursing homes. None were interested. I knocked at the maximum security gate of the Cook County Jail, the worst site in the nation. The guard begged for help. I offered to test all detainees and staff over seven days. The head doctor demurred, citing cost ($125 each, less than one day’s incarceration).
I searched for money. Foundations, companies, and Congress gave none. I realized that my alma mater had both money and a mission: “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” I called Princeton incessantly. I left multiple messages on phones and via email for President Eisgruber. One person called. Though kind, she offered neither money nor assistance. Not a penny could be pried from the endowment to save lives of pre-trial detainees or jail guards in the largest U.S. outbreak of the worst pandemic of our lifetimes.
“Princeton in the Nation’s Service” is, I am sure, often true. When I called on her, it was not.
Princeton, reinvigorate the motto. Support your alumni, as they support you, and work together in service. Fund alumni-selected ideas that put the motto into action. You have grown us well, now help us give back that which is more valuable than our money: our minds and our hearts. And, from this stumble, let us stand taller together.
If Princeton were truly interested in diversity, it would act to make certain that (1) there were conservative voices on the faculty (which is now overwhelmingly liberal/progressive and Democratic), (2) that speakers could not be shouted down at public forums, (3) and that administrators would not allow themselves to be extorted into craven capitulation to unreasonable demands by any mob, progressive or reactionary.
I was gratified to see President Eisgruber’s June 22 Message to the Princeton Community regarding anti-racism initiatives, including his call to “seize this tragic and searing moment in American history to ask how we can more effectively fight racism.” I support such a task wholeheartedly, but I ask, what took so long?
Princeton students, faculty, staff, and alumni have long confronted the University on critical cases of institutional racism, from the issue of divestment in South Africa years ago to, more recently, the tainted legacy of Woodrow Wilson and Princeton’s complicity in slavery. Princeton officials, President Eisgruber included, have too often been slow to respond to those challenges in a positive manner, but now, in the midst of an inescapable national crisis, Princeton’s president calls upon everyone to be “relentless in our efforts to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive for equality and justice.” In fact, many people at Princeton have been doing that for years.
I point to the Princeton & Slavery Project: From its beginnings as a small student seminar led by Professor Martha Sandweiss, in 2013, the project now provides a model for engaged scholarship and service, with around 1,000 pages of evidence and analysis on its website, slavery.princeton.edu. I would urge everyone in the Princeton community to explore the Princeton & Slavery site and begin to come to terms with the University’s emergence from deep roots of racism. Only by acknowledging where we came from can we determine where we need to go.
On June 11, 1963, a great but flawed Princeton alumnus [John F. Kennedy ’39] challenged the nation to recognize that civil rights is for all Americans, regardless of race, creed, or anything else. He called on each of us to examine our own conscience to see where we stood on the issue of race and what we could do in our homes, communities, and at every level of government to treat others the way we would want ourselves and our children to be treated. That was 57 years ago. I suspect that many members of my class and that entire generation of Princetonians remember JFK’s challenge and have tried to live by it. In this sense, I think the letter of Gregory Nobles ’70 in the last issue of PAW that many people at Princeton have for years been trying to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive in various ways for equality and justice is exactly right.
As Greg Nobles asked, what took the University administration so long to catch up? But if we could hear today from Presidents Goheen, Bowen, Shapiro, and Tilghman, they would likely point out — with some humility — the many ways in which they did move Princeton forward to be a more inclusive place for all races, despite failures to accomplish everything,
Now, after all the progress that has been made and steps which have been taken for over half a century to fight racism at Princeton, we hear the crusading call to “seize this tragic and searing moment in American history to ask how we can more effectively fight racism” and to be “relentless in our efforts to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive for equality and justice.” The problem with crusades is that throughout history they have caused a lot of collateral damage, often unnecessarily.
I would hope that as Princetonians gird up their loins to fight racism they would show others the respect they themselves seek. This would include respect towards Professor Joshua Katz, a great scholar in the Princeton community, who may have stretched the dictionary meaning of the word “terrorist” by applying it to Black Justice League, but that does not make him a racist, bigot, or deserving of public rebuke. We can even ask: When did students earn the right to commit a trespass and take the University president’s office hostage to get their demands met?
If we do not approve of Professor Katz’s language, we should avoid escalating the problem by being hyper-reactive ourselves. Nothing is really gained by throwing exaggerations and epithets at each other. Such language does not move us forward as a community of scholars. We can do better than that.
President Eisgruber ’83 is to be applauded for Princeton’s principled declining of federal funds during the COVID crisis. With our large endowment it is only right that these limited emergency funds should go elsewhere. Call it noblesse oblige if you want, but his action made me proud to be a Princetonian.
I was at Princeton for the first time in 15 years to celebrate my 20th reunion with the Class of ’99. It was a joyous occasion spent connecting with classmates and sharing our successes and challenges of the past two decades. However, I was troubled by the general lack of awareness and effort toward meaningful reduction of waste at the various tents and during the P-rade. This was surprising to me, as Princeton loves to tout the leadership role it plays in sustainability.
What better place for Princeton to show its commitment to sustainability than Reunions, when thousands of alumni and their families descend on campus? Everywhere I looked, plastic cups were used liberally and discarded inappropriately, despite the widely accepted projections that pieces of plastic will outnumber marine life in our oceans by 2040. The costumes we were issued were made of polyester fiber and sequins, will probably never be worn again, and will just end up in landfills. Many people had brought plastic foam coolers to Reunions, seemingly unaware of the fact that styrene is carcinogenic in its production, consumption, and disposal, and never goes away.
I am a native of Miami and have spent most of my life in South Florida, which is ground zero for sea-level rise, toxic algal blooms, and the overall effects of climate change. Perhaps because of this, I feel a great sense of urgency to mitigate the effects of human activity on climate change.
I hope that moving forward, Princeton can be more effective in engaging its alumni community regarding sustainability. In defense of its policy not to provide recycling containers at Reunions, the University is correct to point out that recycling practices have become lower yield now that other countries are no longer accepting our recyclables. However, there is vast room for improvement with respect to generating waste in the first place and having all Princetonians exercise “Princeton in the service of the planet” by being stewards for change.
I write to make a modest proposal: I have felt for some time that Princeton and other great universities should use substantial portions of their endowments to establish a partnership program with colleges and universities that primarily serve disadvantaged students.
While Princeton’s efforts at diversity and outreach are laudable, they are not enough. I urge the trustees to consider establishing programs that would allow others to share in the bounty with which Princeton has been blessed. For example:
Identify and partner with sister schools that would receive grants to improve educational facilities and faculty in areas where Princeton has expertise, such as math, physics, science, engineering, and other areas.
Establish a program for students mutually selected from partner schools to come to Princeton for their final two years.
Create incentives for Princeton faculty to teach at partner schools for a year.
Work to improve and develop the curricula at partner schools.
Make direct grants to partner schools to provide scholarships for students.
Create a pipeline via alums to internships and job opportunities for students at sister schools.
I come at this almost assuredly naively, and I am certain there are a multitude of difficulties to overcome to make something like this work. (What a great thesis project.) But why not try? I hope other alums will support this idea.
I see much mention of moral mission, ethical mission, service mission, and such. I think a great university must be concerned first of all with an intellectual or academic mission.
There is a liberal tendency to meddle in all directions, and this can be destructive to what should be a university’s first priorities. I’m stunned to see that our great universities pay almost no attention to the illiteracy and ignorance in our public schools.
My sense is that fewer than half the kids graduating from public school can read fluently, that is, easily and for pleasure. What used to be taken for granted in the fourth grade a century ago is now an impossible dream for millions of young adults.
Do you wonder how this is possible? Easy. The schools use ineffective methods, as has been explained by many authors going back to Rudolf Flesch. A second part of the equation is that the surrounding society, in particular the institutions concerned with learning and culture, stand aside as culture is carefully destroyed. Princeton’s proper mission is to oppose this destruction in every way possible.
Nassau Hall set up a team of people, at great trouble and expense, to identify students who might be persuaded to transfer to Princeton. I would like to see the same effort and expense exerted at putting pressure on K-12 across the country to do a better job.
I am glad to hear from alumni who would like further discussion of these issues.
I want to express my hope that “Seeking Happiness: The Kingdom of Bhutan,” a Princeton Journey to be led by Professor Jonathan Gold, will include awareness of the travesty of the Bhutanese ethnic cleansing, and a visit to the refugee camps there. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, 100,000 ethnic Nepali Bhutanese experienced degradation, torture, murder, and expulsion. Thousands still suffer, for multiple generations now, in destitute Bhutanese camps, with no rights. This ethnic cleansing was carried out by the glamorous former king of Bhutan, seeking national purity for his “utopian” vision. His Western-educated son, who became king in 2006, and his wife have not accomplished anything toward justice for their people. Yet this number accounted for a substantial and ancient percentage of Bhutan’s population.
Some of us, fortunate enough to know Nepali refugee families resettled in our towns by Catholic Social Services and other groups in nearly every state and many other countries, have been made acquainted with the double injustice of their stories and the deafness of the world to them.
The king and queen of Shangri-La must be held accountable by the world until they restore human rights, if not ancestral property, to their own people.
Hats off to Professor Dalton Conley for his Aug. 13 op-ed in The Washington Post advocating a lottery for admission to Princeton University and other elite colleges! I suppose that, as a sociology professor, he comes to the issue from that discipline. My major at Princeton was economics, and I taught a graduate seminar in economics for 10 semesters between 2001 and 2009 at leading universities in Washington, D.C.
During this period, drawing on items in PAW, I became increasingly bothered by the admissions process at the University. Not only did it seem to be unfair to many qualified applicants, it also seemed unscientific from an economics perspective. The process appeared to be premised on a highly questionable ability to predict how individual applicants would perform as students and beyond. I concluded that a lottery system — along the lines sketched out by Professor Conley — would be both more fair and more scientific.
Following are excerpts from Professor Dalton Conley’s op-ed, reprinted with permission of The Washington Post. For the full text, go to https://wapo.st/2PaJr3k.
The public is busy arguing over affirmative action and whether Asian Americans are discriminated against in Harvard University admissions, and whether preferences based on “legacy” alumni connections, athletic skills, or other attributes should continue. But sociologists and economists are trying to assess whether all this fuss even matters. In other words, what is the value of going to a highly selective school such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton? There’s one sure way to resolve both these debates: a lottery.
Universities would set minimum standards of admission, considering a mix of criteria such as SAT scores, class rank, personal essay, extracurricular activities, and challenges such as overcoming economic hardship. The final selection would be done purely by lottery. If schools wanted to weight certain factors for diversity purposes, they could do it at the drawing stage.
In the same way that medical residency programs and newly minted doctors sort each other out, the applicants would order their college preferences in advance and be matched to their top-choice school that drew their name in its lottery.
Such a system would make explicit what most of us already know: There’s a huge amount of randomness in elite-college admissions, which stirs a corresponding suspicion about how the process might be skewed. Moreover, a lottery system would be a boon to social scientists, since it would approximate an experiment to determine the actual value-added of a particular school. We could compare the career outcomes of students who went to one school vs. another school based on the straws they drew.
Luck has no place in America’s Horatio Alger national myth, but admissions to the country’s elite universities is no meritocracy. Maybe it’s time to gamble on a little randomness.
While I’m appreciative of the University’s desire to expand, I was saddened to find in the campus plan supplement that lands that were farms in 1922-1948 are going to be largely covered with buildings and sports fields. Forget farm to table, this will be farm to tile and farm to foul line.
During my years at Princeton, I watched with sadness as ecology and evolutionary biology (staff and buildings) were decimated to expand molecular biology, and as the geology department struggled to find the staff to teach basic distribution requirements, while Bowen Hall was being commissioned for materials science. In a sense, this feels like a continuation of the same idea.
I worry that Princeton has forgotten that classical sciences like biology and geology matter, and that there is a great deal of essential science in a farm, particularly as we try to understand how the living planet will cope with the coming climate change disaster. A university that still subscribes to a Latin oratory at graduation would do well to consider what its students could learn from ars agriculturae.
We read that Princeton’s new campus plan (University supplement, mailed with the Feb. 7 issue) has been “multi-dimensional,” that it “develops a mission-centered vision,” and that it seeks “a climate that encourages thoughtful and creative approaches to sustainability.” That’s undoubtedly reassuring to people who know what those words mean. The rest of us, especially those who fell in love with Princeton because it was a small and beautiful place, may not relish the prospect of an enormously expanded university — one with multiple campuses, “campus connectors,” hundreds more students, and new residential colleges. The country has plenty of sprawling universities already.
The proposed campus plan indicates a serious lack of concern for handicapped access. The proposed site for engineering and environmental studies eliminates the closest, and only usable, handicapped parking spaces to the stadium and homecoming activities at Fine Plaza. The longer-term plan eliminates the lot adjacent to Jadwin and appears to provide no parking north of the lake and east of Washington Road. Given that some of us older alumni are, or have spouses who are, mobility-impaired, the proposed plans will make it difficult if not impossible for us to attend athletic events.
Editor’s note: University Architect Ron McCoy *80 responded that parking for athletics events “will be sensitive to the needs of the mobility-impaired and in keeping with accessibility standards.” Diagrams in the campus plan at this stage should not be seen as a blueprint, he said.
I studied with interest the recent campus-plan supplement. From the point of view of the University, the development of the land beyond Lake Carnegie seems very sensible. I missed, however, any nod to the regional context. For instance, how much will the urbanization of this strip diminish the open space resources of the Route 1 corridor? It will certainly have the effect of fusing the University firmly into the enveloping urban mass. I would like to see this impact discussed.
I have often wondered whether Princeton has ever made an attempt to bring its prestige and expertise to bear on larger planning issues in its part of New Jersey. Could its influence in any way have mitigated the unimaginative, auto-centric, and indeed suffocatingly boring development style that was applied as this former semi-rural gap in the Northeastern urban corridor was filled? Could Princeton have catalyzed a movement to maintain something of a greenbelt here? I would love to hear more about any thinking along these lines that may have occurred.
In his letter to the editor (Inbox, March 21), John Hart ’70 observes that a new campus across Lake Carnegie will further fuse the University into the “enveloping urban mass,” but he misses a reference to regional planning.
Yet in the 1970s, accompanying the development of Princeton Forrestal Center, the University became a leader in regional planning. To foster collaboration among civic, business, and governmental interests, the University led in founding the nonprofit Middlesex Somerset Mercer Regional Council (MSM).
Results of the council’s work include striking successes and persistent challenges. MSM focused early on the disparity between job growth and affordable housing — and the traffic congestion that ensued. The persistence of these conditions still undercuts our quality of life.
On the positive side, land preservation ranks as a major achievement. Parks, farms, and conservation areas in the environs of Princeton may now approach 30 to 40 percent of the total land area. Many civic and governmental entities collaborated in preserving open space, and the University’s representation was significant.
After the high-water mark of regional planning and “smart growth” in the 1980s and 1990s, there have been several regional forums along the “Route One Corridor,” but their work has yet to show results commensurate with the need. Home rule still too frequently trumps regional planning.
As the University expands, we’ll see if its commitment to regional planning can be carried forward to meet the growing need for smart growth.
It has been 50 years since my picture was taken in the infirmary. I have tried to find out the facts surrounding the incident on multiple occasions, only to be stonewalled by past and present University officials. I met with the dean of students soon after the incident and contacted the president’s office when the New York Times article was published. I wonder if there are other concerned students who are interested in these issues and whether we can band together to have the University set up a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the bizarre photography. I would like to know who authorized the pictures, who knew the pictures were being taken, what the pictures were used for, and why the University did not feel that it needed to launch a full investigation. The only information I was able to uncover was that the pictures sent to the Smithsonian were destroyed.
President Eisgruber recently chastised senators for questioning a judicial nominee over writing and stating that she would recuse herself from a case if executing the law conflicted with her Catholic beliefs. Can he be so naïve as to insist “it is ... possible to probe those [judicial] philosophies without reference to the religious affiliation or theological views of a nominee,” when a judge who once defiantly displayed the Ten Commandments in his courtroom may soon be a senator? Given our history of judges flaunting faith-based animus while denying due process and equal protection to the LGBT community? When a Supreme Court with a majority of Catholic justices will decide if a religious right to discriminate against cake-buyers outweighs our right not to be discriminated against when buying cake? Now judges are the victims?
Oh boo-hoo-hoo; try being systematically oppressed, jailed, and murdered for centuries, then cry to me about how tough your job interview was. Being asked about your own words, or the conditions under which you would not do your job, isn’t an unconstitutional “test.” I was devoutly Catholic at Princeton, but have no use now for any institution — secular, religious, or educational — that protects bulwarks of discrimination and abuse while ignoring the real injustices of our world.
President Eisgruber ’83 is to be commended for his criticism of senators for questioning a judicial nominee’s religious views (Inbox, Oct. 25). His letter and copies were sent to all members of the Judiciary Committee, but surely he knows the problem is with the Democrats, specifically Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, and Mazie Hiroko.
Notre Dame President John Jenkins showed more gumption. His letter went directly to ranking member Sen. Feinstein and stated that it was chilling to hear that a nominee’s faith might disqualify that person from service as a federal judge.
If a person's religion demonstrates intellectual error, moral deficiency, and historical ignorance, why should this religion not be discussed along with other matters in his vita?
Many of our most contentious issues are cultural: religion, guns, sexual practices, etc. You can no more convince a redneck Christian that the Jesus with whom he thinks he has a personal relationship is not the real Jesus than you can convince him that he doesn't need an automatic and deadly weapon to kill a rabbit or a deer. We have failed with a large percentage of our population in our role in civilizing the masses. They remain what they have always been: ignorant, credulous, and dangerous.
The 2007 Princeton publication “Princeton: Defining Diversity” states that one goal of the University’s commitment to diversity is to ensure that students of different backgrounds learn from each other. From recent PAW articles it would appear that this goal is not being met. In one report, students of Latin American background seemed most concerned with learning about their own culture. They also wanted Princeton to consider a criterion other than research and teaching ability in hiring new faculty. This criterion is ethnic origin, a factor that is decided on the basis of pure chance and has nothing to do with ability or accomplishment. Another article detailed the University’s commitment of its funds to build a “safe” home for students “of color” from which white students will be excluded.
“Balkanization” seems a rather mild term for this policy. It is time to re-examine the way in which the diversity effort is being handled.
The 2007 Princeton publication Princeton: Defining Diversity states that one goal of the University’s commitment to diversity is to ensure that students of different backgrounds learn from each other. From recent PAW articles it would appear that this goal is not being met. In one report, students of Latin American background seem most concerned with learning about their own culture. They also want Princeton to consider a criterion other than research and teaching ability in hiring new faculty. This criterion is ethnic origin, a factor that is decided on the basis of pure chance and has nothing to do with ability or accomplishment. Another article details the University’s commitment of its funds to build a “safe” home for students “of color” from which white students will be excluded. “Balkanization” seems a rather mild term for this policy. It is time to re-examine the way in which the diversity effort is being handled.
I was saddened and angered to read the letter from Thomas P. Wolf ’48 (Inbox, Jan. 11) in which the writer managed to get in a jab at President Eisgruber ’83 for “the drive for diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of quality ... for the sake of political correctness.” In the same issue was an article that made the case beautifully for diversity — about Anton Treuer ’91 and his personal and academic efforts to keep his Ojibwe culture alive. Mr. Wolf may be “tolerating” President Eisgruber’s work, but I am not tolerating the casual and baseless dismissal of the importance of diversity in enhancing the quality of a Princeton education, nor the hackneyed use of the term “political correctness” as a derogatory epithet.
Without people like Professor Treuer and thousands of other equally fascinating people of different backgrounds, Princeton would be failing to take advantage of the cultural and intellectual wealth that the United States and the world can offer. We have plenty of evidence for the benefits of this wealth in the pages of PAW alone. Diversity isn’t for quotas — it’s to make sure that a Princeton education is the very best it can be and that it is accessible to everyone with the qualifications for admission.
I loved my years at Princeton and have contributed to Annual Giving every year for 50 years. I will also leave a portion of my estate to Princeton when I die. Nonetheless, I am not blind to her warts.
I once heard a talk by C.N. Parkinson explaining Parkinson’s laws. One was: “In any organization, administration expands without limit.” Where there were a modest number of deans and administrative personnel in 1960, there are now multiple deans, assistant deans, and a battalion of accountants and administrative personnel. Each receives a salary and benefits at considerable annual cost.
Tuition in 1960 was about $800/year, or about 15 percent of the median U.S. annual income. In 2015, tuition was about $43,000/year, or about 75 percent of the median household income. The compound growth rate over this interval is 7.2 percent! Unabated, this will lead to “a tyranny of exponential functions” where in 2040 a college education will cost approximately $1 million, and in 2065 it will run $5 million! These numbers seem absurd, but annual college expenses over $50,000/year would have seemed preposterous in 1960. What to do?
I believe all universities need to limit costs to avoid pricing themselves out of the market. How many deans, assistant deans, and administrators are essential to the operation of a great university? When I look back on my time at Princeton, I remember four wonderful professors who helped make my career possible. I do not remember a single administrator.
Go (WeiQi) is a board game thousands of years old. Google’s AlphaGo software made news recently by defeating a world-class human player for the first time.
The Princeton Go Club was founded by math professor Ralph Fox in 1945. He brought Japanese professional players and Bell Labs scientists to visit, promoting the game for three decades until his untimely death in 1973. I joined in 1986. We hosted the fifth national U.S. Go Congress in 1989 and the regional N.J. Open tournament from 1990 to 2016. We were mentioned in the Office of Admission’s 2002 “Beginnings” video and in the 2011 Report on Campus Social & Residential Life.
The word is “inclusive,” a value Princeton claims to support. The club always taught anyone who showed interest, young or old, student or not. Its heterogeneous, eclectic nature was featured in the May 31, 2004, Princeton Weekly Bulletin.
The 9-year-old in that article’s photo is 7-Dan today (equivalent to a 7th-degree black belt in the martial arts). The gentleman he is playing still comes to the club – or did. Nonstudents (including alumni) now are barred by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students from participation. Students, alumni, and townspeople may no longer gather together around a common interest on today’s campus.
At the end of my freshman year, the FitzRandolph Gate was permanently opened “in a symbol of the University’s openness to the local and worldwide community,” according to the Princetoniana website. Set aside the personal humiliation of being told bluntly one is not welcome after 30 years of volunteer effort. The truly sad thing is seeing that gate swing shut again.
51 Responses
Andrew J. Lazarus ’79
5 Months AgoCOVID Denialism at Princeton
I suppose Professor Robert P. George, Princeton’s resident ultra-conservative political philosopher, is being allowed to run the James Madison Program as a private fiefdom, but it was still shocking to see that the Harold T. Shapiro Lecture on Ethics, Science, and Technology was given by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. Dr. Bhattacharya was one of a core of health policy “experts” who, from the beginning, underestimated the dangers of COVID and opposed measures that attempted to mitigate its damage.
For example, in June 2021, in a joint column with Dr. Martin Kulldorf (then at Harvard) in that rigorous scientific publication, the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that the “[COVID] pandemic is on its way out,” after 600,000 deaths. He was off by many months and about half of the deaths. Earlier, in April 2020, he, colleague Dr. John Ioannidis, and others mostly at Stanford attempted to calculate the mortality rate for early strains of COVID, and arrived at a figure only 1/5 of what later, more complete analysis showed. What made their estimate egregious, instead of simply mistaken, was that it was incompatible with the observed number of deaths that had already occurred in New York City, an early center of COVID infection and death. Far from searching for why they were wrong, the authors continue to maintain these Flat Earth beliefs in any venue that will publish them.
Drs. Bhattacharya and Kulldorf both signed the Oct. 4, 2020, Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a “let it rip” approach to COVID. More precisely, they called for opening everything up, with some vague “focused protection” for the elderly and others at greater risk. (See the new book We Want Them Infected, by Jonathan Howard.) I refer to this plan, which would not, of course, spare teachers and parents when young people fell ill, as “cull the herd immunity.”
Great Barrington, Vermont, the eponymous source of the declaration, is the headquarters of the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, which sponsored it. AIER’s dedication to public health can be measured by its quondam editorial director’s endorsement of teenage cigarette smoking.
We can do much better.
Greg Schwed ’73
7 Months AgoEnding Test-Optional Admissions
Now that Dartmouth and Yale have led the way, isn’t it time for Princeton to abandon the “test-optional” policy for undergraduate admission? That policy arguably made sense when adopted in the darkest quarantine days of the coronavirus crisis. But it now just seems to be hanging on as a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to democratize admission policies.
Yale’s research concluded that “when admissions officers reviewed applications with no scores, they placed greater weight on other parts of the application. But this shift frequently worked to the disadvantage of applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.” (Emphasis in original.)
Consistent with other research, Yale also concluded that “among all application components, test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades. This is true even after controlling for family income and other demographic variables ...”
I was proud when Princeton in 2001 became the first university in the country to eliminate loans from its student aid packages. That enlightened decision facilitated the matriculation of more low- and moderate-income students. But the “test-optional” policy seems to actually work against this laudable goal. I hope Princeton will soon join the salutary countertrend started by Dartmouth and Yale.
Donald Clarke ’77, professor, George Washington University Law School
1 Year AgoRecruiting Low-Income Students
I was ashamed to read in The New York Times (“The Top U.S. Colleges With the Greatest Economic Diversity,” Sept. 8, 2023) that with the highest per-student endowment in the Ivy League, Princeton ranks sixth in the Ivy League in low-income freshmen (those receiving Pell Grants), at 18%. I was even more ashamed after looking up the numbers for my own employer, the George Washington University: a similar freshman Pell rate (17%), but with a per-student endowment of only 1/35th (less than 3%) of Princeton’s. I wonder if 18% is where the University wants to be, and if not, what is standing in the way of raising it.
Richard C. Kreutzberg ’59
1 Year AgoAlternatives to College for All
In the April 26 Washington Post, Princeton’s president did his best to support the U.S. education department’s “college for all” doctrine, citing the increased earning power that goes along with getting a four-year degree. But he left out the most convincing counter-argument — the college dropout rates are just awful.
According to BestColleges.com:
1) Between 2019 and 2020, about 24% of first-time, full-time undergraduate first-year students dropped out of college.
2) In 2021, 31.6% of students who enrolled in 2015 were no longer enrolled six years later and had not received their degree.
3) American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, and Pacific Islander first-year students have higher dropout rates than their Hispanic, white, and Asian peers.
With only a two in three chance of getting a degree, should we be surprised that a good many young people are opting for apprenticeships and vocational training instead of college? Why pile up debt when plenty of good jobs are available to non-college grads with the right vocational training?
Michael Goldstein ’78
1 Year AgoWhy Is the University Sponsoring an Antisemitic Speaker?
In February, while Israeli rescue crews worked through the Sabbath to save lives in Turkey, the English department at Princeton University paid and sponsored someone who, in his writing, claims Israelis eat the organs of Palestinians and threatened to shoot protestors at an earlier speech at Arizona State University. At Princeton, Mohammed El-Kurd made many such hateful references, such as describing the Anti-Defamation League, which has fought antisemitism and racism for more than a century, as the “Apartheid Defense League.”
This is not a First Amendment issue. Mr. El-Kurd is free to spout his poison on the internet or on a street corner, but why is Princeton sponsoring this?
For a Princeton University department to sponsor (i.e., pay or use University resources to support) a speaker who would like to exterminate me and my two Princeton sons, Benjamin ’13 and Theodore ’20, as well as everyone who lives in Israel, is appalling.
Such targeting of any other racial, ethnic, religious, or national group would be unthinkable at Princeton. And yet it is somehow appropriate for the English department at Princeton to invite and support such a speaker targeting a minority group — Jews.
Apparently, the only University-connected figure with the courage to confront El-Kurd’s hatred was Rabbi Eitan Webb of Chabad at Princeton, who got up and shouted, “I would like to thank you very much for giving a masterclass on how to be an antisemite.”
I am already a 1746 Society donor to the University. But tell me, why should I support this?
Willis J. Goldsmith p’02
1 Year AgoStock ’49’s Story and Antisemitism Today
The PAW article about Ernest Stock ’49, focusing in part on the bigotry he experienced as a Jew at Princeton from students whose pre-Princeton lives were likely, at worst, a casual walk in the park compared to his, was compelling reading. But how ironic. The PAW arrived the same week that Princeton’s English department and the Princeton Committee on Palestine gave 24-year-old “activist” Mohammed El-Kurd a platform for his crackpot, antisemitic ideas about Jews and Israel (for example, he writes that Jews “harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their warriors our own”).
What El-Kurd has so far peddled in his young life would have made Goebbels proud and no doubt has had many QAnon followers and other conspiracy theorists bemoaning the fact they hadn’t come up with El-Kurd’s ideas before he did. Among the risible explanations from the chair of the English department for El-Kurd’s invitation to speak at Princeton is that El-Kurd “has urgent experience and ideas to bring to the campus.” “Urgent experience and ideas” gained when and where? After living in the United States, being educated in New York, and moving to Jerusalem at age 22? What’s next from the English department? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion reviewed by Louis Farrakhan? Why not? Farrakhan has experience and ideas.
Stock’s experiences at Princeton decades ago and the enabling of El-Kurd’s antisemitism in 2023 make clear that, as to Princeton’s English department and Jews, the more things change the more they remain the same.
Merritt H. Cohen ’57
1 Year AgoBicker in the 1950s
I read Michael Goldstein ’78’s Inbox note with great interest (April issue). Antisemitism is not new at Princeton. Few will remember but in 1957, in the throes of the bicker system, which may or may not be alive and well today, some Jewish sophomores were not admitted to any eating clubs. I forget how many.
In an effort to correct this, there was a meeting in our living room above Blair Arch with seniors, including myself, and a number of sophomores.
We advised the eating clubs that either all Jewish sophomores would be admitted or none. If it was none, a few eating clubs would go bankrupt. Needless to say, all were admitted. And the following year, or soon thereafter, Wilson Lodge was opened by the University — a club open to all.
Just a commentary on a long forgotten dark episode in the school’s history.
Dorina Amendola ’02
1 Year AgoDivest From China
We pride ourselves for divesting from fossil fuels, we decry Nazis, we cancel slaveholders, we align ourselves as individuals and as a community with various human rights concerns here and around the globe. However, we have not spoken a word as a University community against the numberless human rights atrocities committed by China under the Chinese Communist Party every day. We continue to engorge on their vast resources and funding to feed our academic hunger, which is really blood money. I will not be silent. It is time Princeton University stand true to her ideals and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.
Jane Hatterer ’83
1 Year AgoServing Humanity in the 21st Century
I have often reflected on Princeton’s responsibility as a leading elite and well-endowed institution to embrace the 21st century, in terms of the students it serves, the programs and modalities of education it offers, and the culture it fosters. As a former head of e-learning at a peer institution, I already have commented on Princeton’s slowness to adapt in that arena, but I believe that its tethering to tradition has broader implications with respect to the mission of service and bears further scrutiny given the now precarious state of affirmative action programs.
Although Princeton has made strides in diversifying its student population and incrementally increasing class sizes, it hasn’t progressed in terms of broadening access to nontraditional students, high school and adult learners, significant outreach programs to local and underserved communities, or with respect to valuing alternative educational experiences whether, online, experiential, or through study abroad. This resistance to embracing new audiences and approaches is in part a reflection of the long-held belief that a Princeton education surpasses all others and that one can’t have a commensurate experience elsewhere (at least during the academic calendar year), and an elitist and tradition-bound culture that similarly continues to promote professions, such as management consulting and investment banking (although now has included tech) as preferred professional pathways. Not much has changed in that regard since I was a student 40 years ago.
This culture of elitism persists, and regardless of the numbers of students of color and/or those from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds Princeton admits, which should remain of critical importance, if it doesn’t address this culture, its students will perpetuate the same in the institutions they may someday lead.
I am a proud Princetonian and truly appreciate the incredible education it afforded me. That is why I feel so strongly that Princeton should evolve to meet the moment. To hold true to its service and diversity aspirations, Princeton as an institution must lead by example and nurture a more egalitarian culture. It should consider integrating a service component and/or field work into its distribution requirements, advancing more diverse career opportunities, especially those that are service/community oriented, creating bridge programs for local high school students from underserved communities to support alternative channels to admission, and/or partnering with other institutions around the world to create joint online and/or hybrid programs that enhance its offerings and extend its audience.
It is time for Princeton to look inward and reconsider what it means to be “in the service of humanity” as a well-resourced leading educational institution in the 21st century.
Y. Yvon Wang ’08
2 Years AgoQuestioning COVID Policies
I am so dismayed to see Princeton taking unsustainable actions at students’ expense by mandating booster COVID-19 vaccination in the spring.
Potentially serious vaccine side effects have been documented for months, particularly after Moderna for young men, Johnson and Johnson for young women, and AstraZeneca for younger people overall. Yes, adverse events are relatively rare. But COVID-19 harms are extremely differentiated by age and comorbidities such as obesity. A risk-stratified approach would minimize harms and maximize benefits from vaccination, and it would live up to Princeton’s renown for nurturing its undergraduates.
Vaccination mandates disregarding immunity from infection or differential risks also have ethical and socio-political costs, from understaffed hospitals to global inequities in vaccine access. Do punitive mandates achieve harm reduction and a more tolerant, just society? Or do they pantomime virtue, taking a further toll on public trust?
Princeton’s policy takes the omicron variant as a serious threat. But which high-quality data have shown this? Vaccine companies’ announcements surely cannot be counted as solid evidence. The omicron variant is already widespread globally. Vaccinated individuals can transmit it. We must accept that COVID-19 will become endemic and minimize its harms as equitably as possible. What are the University’s metrics for dropping its intrusive, punitive COVID-19 measures?
I was privileged to enjoy an education at Princeton that emphasized free inquiry, a compassionate global perspective, and rigorous examination of evidence. I expected far better from my alma mater.
Rick Mott ’73
2 Years AgoEvidence Free Speech Is at Risk at Today’s Princeton
I have just read a letter from student members of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition objecting to SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal’s mass email regarding the outcome of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Nothing in this letter would have been objectionable at the Princeton I attended, but 58 of the 60 signatories’ names “were redacted as a condition for the public release of this letter.”
I think that obvious fear confirms something we really didn’t want to know about the current state of free speech at Princeton.
Kim Masters ’68
2 Years AgoHonor Code Suggestions
The recent Daily Princetonian article about the Honor Code and the stressses faced by those it examined for violations says nothing about prevention.
From my current enrollment, year 7 as an MA in Egyptlogy student at the University of Manchester in the U.K., I have seen the value of a preventive alternative related to plagiarism. It would also apply to the other examples cited in the article.
Proposals:
- Develop an online course on the issues that cause students to be cited for potential Honor Code violations, based on current examples. Require every student prior to matriculation to complete this course with attendant T/F questions.
- Require returning students to complete an abbreviated form of this course each summer.
- Have an email resource that students can access when they have questions about situations that could result in Honor Code violations.
- Provide this course and email resource to the faculty so that they are aware of this process.
- Collect and modify the course based on total number and specific issues that come before the Honor Committee each year with a goal of reductions in its referrals based on the results.
Daniel Mytelka '87 s'89 p'17 p'19
3 Years AgoCollaboration in Fighting Racism
I recently received a series of emails from the Concerned Black Alumni of Princeton calling for the establishment of an academic center at Princeton to signal the University’s commitment to fighting racism. I also recently received emails from a similar sounding center at another major academic institution inviting me to virtual discussions that felt more like advocacy than balanced academic discussion; their descriptions did not make me feel welcome as a white individual who self-defines as moderate.
I believe that there is too much siloing of individuals with different perspectives on race and other critical societal issues. There is a great need for an academic center that attempts to draw in proponents of multiple viewpoints (progressive and conservative) and works towards reasonable consensus positions, but I believe that there are better places outside of academia for groups that are not balanced and collaborative. If Princeton chooses to establish a center, I hope it explicitly follows a collaborative pathway in its purpose and its hires.
Sandy Harrison ’74, board chair, Princeton Prospect Foundation
3 Years AgoPreserving Prospect Avenue
The University’s proposed new Environmental Studies and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences building complex to be located immediately south of the eating clubs promises to provide for a high level of functionality for a world-class faculty, researchers, and students, yet distressingly the plans for a very small portion of it will unnecessarily and irrevocably damage Prospect Avenue’s iconic streetscape, which is included in the National Register’s Princeton Historic District.
A May 30 Planet Princeton article (bit.ly/prospect-ave) reports on this issue and contains links to a town-resident-created online petition as well as to a 19-page presentation by Princeton Prospect Foundation. Alumni are urged to speak up now if they find this particular aspect of the University’s otherwise grand construction plans to be unacceptable.
Editor’s note: The municipality of Princeton’s planning board was scheduled to discuss this project as PAW was going to press. The June 17 discussion will be continued July 8; PAW will report on the board’s decision when it is announced.
Lisa Schmucki ’74
3 Years AgoDisregard for History
Princeton is applying for Planning Board approval for a new 15-acre engineering campus (ES-SEAS) that will sit between the eating clubs and Princeton Stadium. The plans include building a modern pavilion on Prospect Avenue, a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. To do this, the architects want to pick up the former Court Club, move it across the street, and demolish three Victorian houses. The disruption and destruction this will cause to a historic residential neighborhood is shocking.
There has been so much protest from the local community that the University application will carry forward to a third Planning Board meeting in September. The Princeton Historic Preservation Commission unanimously recommended that the Planning Board deny the application. The University’s plan violates National Park Service Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The University has refused to consider any of the concerns or suggestions from the community. See much more information at princetonprospectfoundation.org.
Princeton is where I discovered my love and respect for history. As one of the first women at Princeton, the historic campus made me feel I was part of history. I live in a local historic house and was chair of the Montgomery Township Landmarks Commission. I’m shocked and saddened to witness Princeton’s disregard for the Princeton Historic District. I urge the architects of this plan to reflect on what they’ve heard from the community. Princeton’s values will be reflected in the final execution of this project. Princeton has the talent and the resources to meet its objectives and also follow the guidelines for the preservation of national historic properties.
Norman Ravitch *62
3 Years AgoUniversity Architecture
Some universities keep their medieval ambiance, like Oxford and Cambridge; some like Duke look like God built it in one day, all the same style, a bit like Disneyland. Princeton at least shows change over time, from colonial times to the glass and steel world of the present. But change, while good, should not overtake everything old. Proposals for Prospect Avenue look unwise.
William E. Holmer ’68
3 Years AgoWhat Princeton Is Not
As a loyal alumnus, after 52 years I have finally figured out what makes Princeton such a special place. And it’s not what Princeton is. It’s what Princeton is not.
While Princeton has very prestigious graduate programs, it does not have a law school, a business school, nor a medical school. Most of the other Ivy League schools have all three professional schools and all have at least one.
Princeton’s unique focus on the undergraduate experience is what makes it so special. We should promote that attribute more.
John Huyler ’67, Bob Massie ’78, Lynne Archibald ’87, Aryeh M. Abeles ’94, Anna Liebowitz ’09, Graham Turk ’17, and Naomi Cohen-Shields ’20
3 Years AgoAlumni Support for Divestment
We are just a few of the alumni from seven decades who have come together out of concern for the future of Princeton and our planet. We have pledged to withhold donations until Princeton University commits to divesting from the fossil-fuel industry. We don’t know how much of Princeton’s $26 billion endowment is invested in dirty energy because PRINCO will not share that information.
We do know that Princeton does not engage in shareholder activism and has refused to join Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative that promotes action on climate change. We also know that Princeton continues to accept funding from ExxonMobil and BP, despite the fact that Exxon is currently being sued for allegedly lying about climate change and BP was the oil company that spent the most on blocking climate-change legislation last year ($53 million, according to InfluenceMap.org).
Nearly 40 campus organizations and hundreds of current students have endorsed the campaign. To join the more than 1,560 Princetonians who have already signed the open letter to President Eisgruber ’83, visit divestprinceton.com. This is an existential crisis threatening humanity — where is Princeton?
Steven C. Hall ’65
3 Years AgoCommitment of Service to the World
Any continued investment in support of and alliance with the fossil-fuel industry is a violation of ethics, morality, science, and is in direct contradiction to President Eisgruber ’83 saying opposition is a political matter. He elevates it to one of political support for this industry and ratifies this position with business relationships. This is and should be unacceptable to this esteemed institution.
Sanchali Pal ’12 and Rohit Gawande ’11
3 Years AgoFinding the Courage to Invest in Our Futures
On Sept. 9, 2020, we woke up early. It was Sanchali’s birthday. Instead of the clear blue skies we’ve come to expect in Oakland, we found a dark, orange-tinged glow. The sun didn’t rise that day. It would be the first of 10 days of smoke-filled skies caused by the raging wildfires across the American West.
As two Princeton alums who started dating in college, our years after school were filled with adventure, ambition, and joy. We lived in New York, then chased our dreams to work in East Africa and India. We attended graduate school in Boston, and surprising none of our college friends, got married. But over the last several years, the urgent threat and injustice of climate catastrophe have become a driving motivation for us. We pivoted our careers into climate, continuing a journey that started on Princeton’s campus, where we first learned about climate change.
At Princeton, too, the community is taking notice. Last year, a group of undergrads, graduate students, and alumni came together to form Divest Princeton. In some regards, the University has been a leader on climate change. However, we fall short in one notable area: management of the $26.1 billion endowment.
We believe divestment from fossil fuels is not only in the University’s best interests — it is the only path that reduces exposure to long-term climate and financial risk. For Tiger alumni, urging our alma mater to divest may be one of the most impactful actions we can take to ensure a just and sustainable future for the next generation.
First, there is a strong financial argument to invest in a fossil-fuel-free portfolio. Global stock indexes without fossil-fuel holdings outperform identical indexes that include them. As reported by The Guardian in 2018, “investors who divested from fossil-fuel companies would have earned an average return of 13 percent a year since 2010, compared to the 11.8 percent-a-year return earned by conventional investors.” Princeton’s return on its endowment was estimated at 12 percent per year over the 25-year period ending June 30, 2019.
The University of California divested from fossil fuels last year, citing financial imperative: “The reason we sold some $150 million in fossil-fuel assets from our endowment was the reason we sell other assets: They posed a long-term risk to generating strong returns for UC’s diversified portfolios.” Investing in fossil fuels is fiscally irresponsible.
Second, divestment is an effective tactic. In the cases of South Africa’s apartheid government and the tobacco industry, divestment played a significant role in creating the popular opposition that contributed to their decline. Analysts at Goldman Sachs have already stated that the “divestment movement has been a key driver of the coal sector’s 60 percent de-rating over the past five years.” Shell considers divestment a “material risk” to its business.
Universities are uniquely positioned to take a stance on divestment. They are creators of knowledge, protectors of truth, and inventors of the future. Many universities have divested, including Stanford, the University of California, the University of Massachusetts, Middlebury, and Cambridge University. Princeton carries outsize weight both through its endowment — one of the five largest in the world — and through its brand and policy influence. If Princeton chooses to take a symbolic stance on the issue of fossil fuels, that stand will have outsize influence.
Opponents of divestment cite the argument that universities can more effectively influence fossil-fuel companies as a major shareholder. Our response is simple: Princeton has invested in fossil fuels for the past several decades. How effective has its influence been so far?
Third, and most importantly, there is a moral leadership argument for divestment. Investing the endowment in fossil fuels is a direct and serious violation of our alma mater’s values. Fossil-fuel companies deliberately spread misinformation that contradicts the scientific consensus and perpetuate products that cause death and destruction for people and habitats around the world. There is no doubt that climate change is a violation of the nation’s best interests, and the interests of all nations.
Opponents of divestment often cite the “slippery slope” argument: If the University divests from fossil fuels, it will have to divest from guns, alcohol, and every other potentially unsavory sector. While no investment strategy is perfect, some are more destructive than others. Princeton faces reputational risk if it does not take a stance on the most important issues of the generation it purports to educate. We believe this applies to divesting from fossil fuels as well as to divesting from private prisons.
As Princeton, we have a moral window in which to define the future we are courageous enough to invest in, not simply the risks we should divest from.
No one at Princeton taught us that leadership would be easy. The interests that drive the fossil-fuel industry are embedded in the University and will not disappear without a fight. For instance, between 2015 to 2020, Exxon Mobil donated $6.4 million to the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton; in July, the University renewed its collaboration for another five years.
President Eisgruber ’83 wrote in 2017, in response to a petition to divest from private prisons, that Princeton will divest if there is sustained campus interest, if there is consensus on the University’s response, and if the target corporations’ actions are a “direct and serious violation” of a “central University value.” It seems that to convince President Eisgruber that Princeton should divest from the companies causing the greatest threat to human civilization, we must demonstrate sustained, passionate commitment. We, Princeton’s 91,000 living alumni, comprise a major interest group for the University. Together we represent over $1.4 billion in cumulative donations, with nearly $70 million in 2019 alone; moreover, we embody the reputation and legacy of the University around the world.
If you have been on the fence about divestment, the overwhelming events of recent months make it clear: We have no time to waste. Fires, floods, pandemics, and drought are accelerating.
Voice your support for fossil-fuel divestment by signing and sharing this letter and committing to withhold donations until Princeton divests. Already, more than 1,500 students and alumni, 45 faculty and staff, and 40 campus groups have signed on. By Dec. 31, we seek to have 2,500 signatures to present to President Eisgruber before the Council of the Princeton University Community considers Divest Princeton’s official fossil-fuel divestment request in spring 2021.
The bottom line is this: Our actions speak louder than words. We cannot educate our students on the dangers of climate breakdown while we invest in the very fossil fuels that threaten their future. We impel our university to invest in a thriving planet for us and for future generations.
Tom Leyden ’77
3 Years AgoInvesting in Renewable Energy
Leaving the ethical obligation to divest of fossil fuels completely aside, how does it make sense for Princeton to be investing in dying industries that won’t grow our endowment the way better alternatives will? One better alternative is renewable energy. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of new energy generation in the United States. The U.S. solar industry has been growing at an average annual rate of 48 percent over the last 10 years, and in the first half of 2020 alone, it supplied 37 percent of new generation. The financial manager of Princeton’s endowment, Princo, might want to talk to the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a $7 trillion portfolio. “Climate risk is investment risk,” says Larry Fink, chairman and CEO, who has committed BlackRock to divest from coal and is directing part of its portfolio to climate industries. For more information go to: https://divestprinceton.wixsite.com/divestprinceton.
Lawrence W. Leighton ’56
4 Years AgoRecent Decisions and Princeton’s Reputation
I write this letter with a heavy heart.
As my previous letter to PAW noted, I thought that the decision in a short period to expunge Woodrow Wilson from Princeton’s history thoughtless and damaging to Princeton’s reputation as an intellectual and carefully analytical leading research university. I am now subsequently appalled by Chris Eisgruber’s long dissertation claiming that Princeton has been imbedded with systemic racism. Not only is that an extremely questionable thesis but clearly no careful analysis was done to raise the risk that the current government would seize on that to attack an “elite” university. Certainly both decisions are severely damaging to our beloved university and exhibit extremely poor judgment by our leaders.
Princeton’s hard-earned reputation rests on its ability to attract leading professors, admitting and educating future leaders, and doing cutting edge research as well as on its extraordinary history. These two recent decisions betray the above and appear to be merely succumbing to the wind of current social trends.
For background, I am the product of parents who went only through the 10th grade and who lost close relatives in the Holocaust. For over 20 years I ran the New York area Schools Committee and beginning in the early 1970s recruited many outstanding African American students to Princeton. Future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was also encouraged to attend Princeton by our Committee. Now I am responsible for a wonderful Vietnamese current undergraduate. So I find lectures on racism and diversity by Princeton misinformed and misguided.
We expect the leadership of Princeton to be thoughtful, intellectual, analytical, and particularly protective of our hard-earned reputation — as well as being respectful of predecessors upon whose shoulders they are fortunate to stand. These two recent decisions reflect none of these criteria and certainly raise questions about their judgment.
Respectfully,
James G. Russell ’76
4 Years AgoA More Inclusive Princeton
To make a more inclusive Princeton, I recommend two changes to the existing “Policy on Discrimination and/or Harassment” (available online at bit.ly/dh-policy).
First, the current definition of harassment is “unwelcome verbal or physical behavior ... based on a protected characteristic” (race, creed, sex, etc.). It should be expanded to include all unwelcome verbal or physical behaviors including those based on a protected characteristic. News reports indicate that much (and perhaps most) harassment on college campuses these days relates to politics or ideology rather than a protected characteristic, and is thus outside the current definition. An inclusive Princeton does not tolerate anyone being harassed for any reason.
Second, clarify that exposure to ideas and opinions one dislikes is not the same thing as harassment. In fact, exposure to such ideas and opinions is one of the goals of a Princeton education.
Daniel Kearney ’96
4 Years Ago‘Systemic Racism’ at Princeton
I write regarding President Eisgruber ’83’s Sept. 2 letter to the Princeton community, in which he described “systemic racism” at the University and made several proposals (On the Campus, October issue).
Mr. Eisgruber has been president of the University for more than seven years. Before that, he was provost for nine. He bears more responsibility for the University’s present circumstances than anyone. If he truly believes Princeton today is a racist institution, he should resign. If he does not believe it, then he should stop saying it and thereby impugning the many people who have contributed their lives and talents to the institution.
In a time when American public life is saturated with lies and words have lost their usual meaning, Princeton’s leadership should be distinguished for its honesty, not its pandering to slogans that sow resentment and division.
Norman Ravitch *62
4 Years AgoWhat Is the Job of a University President?
The letter received electronically today from President Eisgruber explains his role in leading the world against racism. I thought his role was to run Princeton University. Even Wilson waited until he was elected president before trying to remake the world, and then he did a disastrous job of it, most historians I think would agree to a great extent. I suggest some modesty on the part of the current University president. Truly.
Brian S. Morse, MD, Ph.D. ’82
4 Years AgoPutting the Motto Into Action
Princeton expects hard questions and demands honest answers. She nurtures our young minds and souls, allows us to blossom in a rigorous environment, waters us with love and respect, and imbues us with the ideal of service. We stumble. Here, I describe a fall and suggest a means to stand tall again.
Like many, I have tried to help fight COVID-19. I am an urban pediatrician with a science Ph.D. I know well the detection technique for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. In mid-March, when U.S. testing was woefully inadequate, I devised a means to remove three major impediments (naso-pharyngeal swabs, viral culture/transport media, and personal protective equipment, all scarce). In 15 days, aided by classmates and study volunteers, I demonstrated feasibility and submitted a manuscript.
Determined to help, I visited affected nursing homes. None were interested. I knocked at the maximum security gate of the Cook County Jail, the worst site in the nation. The guard begged for help. I offered to test all detainees and staff over seven days. The head doctor demurred, citing cost ($125 each, less than one day’s incarceration).
I searched for money. Foundations, companies, and Congress gave none. I realized that my alma mater had both money and a mission: “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” I called Princeton incessantly. I left multiple messages on phones and via email for President Eisgruber. One person called. Though kind, she offered neither money nor assistance. Not a penny could be pried from the endowment to save lives of pre-trial detainees or jail guards in the largest U.S. outbreak of the worst pandemic of our lifetimes.
“Princeton in the Nation’s Service” is, I am sure, often true. When I called on her, it was not.
Princeton, reinvigorate the motto. Support your alumni, as they support you, and work together in service. Fund alumni-selected ideas that put the motto into action. You have grown us well, now help us give back that which is more valuable than our money: our minds and our hearts. And, from this stumble, let us stand taller together.
Henry Lerner ’71
4 Years AgoDiversity Suggestions
If Princeton were truly interested in diversity, it would act to make certain that (1) there were conservative voices on the faculty (which is now overwhelmingly liberal/progressive and Democratic), (2) that speakers could not be shouted down at public forums, (3) and that administrators would not allow themselves to be extorted into craven capitulation to unreasonable demands by any mob, progressive or reactionary.
Gregory Nobles ’70
4 Years AgoConfronting Racism
I was gratified to see President Eisgruber’s June 22 Message to the Princeton Community regarding anti-racism initiatives, including his call to “seize this tragic and searing moment in American history to ask how we can more effectively fight racism.” I support such a task wholeheartedly, but I ask, what took so long?
Princeton students, faculty, staff, and alumni have long confronted the University on critical cases of institutional racism, from the issue of divestment in South Africa years ago to, more recently, the tainted legacy of Woodrow Wilson and Princeton’s complicity in slavery. Princeton officials, President Eisgruber included, have too often been slow to respond to those challenges in a positive manner, but now, in the midst of an inescapable national crisis, Princeton’s president calls upon everyone to be “relentless in our efforts to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive for equality and justice.” In fact, many people at Princeton have been doing that for years.
I point to the Princeton & Slavery Project: From its beginnings as a small student seminar led by Professor Martha Sandweiss, in 2013, the project now provides a model for engaged scholarship and service, with around 1,000 pages of evidence and analysis on its website, slavery.princeton.edu. I would urge everyone in the Princeton community to explore the Princeton & Slavery site and begin to come to terms with the University’s emergence from deep roots of racism. Only by acknowledging where we came from can we determine where we need to go.
Wayne S. Moss ’74
4 Years AgoMoving Forward and Confronting Racism
On June 11, 1963, a great but flawed Princeton alumnus [John F. Kennedy ’39] challenged the nation to recognize that civil rights is for all Americans, regardless of race, creed, or anything else. He called on each of us to examine our own conscience to see where we stood on the issue of race and what we could do in our homes, communities, and at every level of government to treat others the way we would want ourselves and our children to be treated. That was 57 years ago. I suspect that many members of my class and that entire generation of Princetonians remember JFK’s challenge and have tried to live by it. In this sense, I think the letter of Gregory Nobles ’70 in the last issue of PAW that many people at Princeton have for years been trying to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive in various ways for equality and justice is exactly right.
As Greg Nobles asked, what took the University administration so long to catch up? But if we could hear today from Presidents Goheen, Bowen, Shapiro, and Tilghman, they would likely point out — with some humility — the many ways in which they did move Princeton forward to be a more inclusive place for all races, despite failures to accomplish everything,
Now, after all the progress that has been made and steps which have been taken for over half a century to fight racism at Princeton, we hear the crusading call to “seize this tragic and searing moment in American history to ask how we can more effectively fight racism” and to be “relentless in our efforts to eliminate the scourge of racism and strive for equality and justice.” The problem with crusades is that throughout history they have caused a lot of collateral damage, often unnecessarily.
I would hope that as Princetonians gird up their loins to fight racism they would show others the respect they themselves seek. This would include respect towards Professor Joshua Katz, a great scholar in the Princeton community, who may have stretched the dictionary meaning of the word “terrorist” by applying it to Black Justice League, but that does not make him a racist, bigot, or deserving of public rebuke. We can even ask: When did students earn the right to commit a trespass and take the University president’s office hostage to get their demands met?
If we do not approve of Professor Katz’s language, we should avoid escalating the problem by being hyper-reactive ourselves. Nothing is really gained by throwing exaggerations and epithets at each other. Such language does not move us forward as a community of scholars. We can do better than that.
Henry Lerner ’71
4 Years AgoTurning Down Federal Aid
President Eisgruber ’83 is to be applauded for Princeton’s principled declining of federal funds during the COVID crisis. With our large endowment it is only right that these limited emergency funds should go elsewhere. Call it noblesse oblige if you want, but his action made me proud to be a Princetonian.
Veronica A. Diaz ’99
5 Years AgoSustainability at Reunions
I was at Princeton for the first time in 15 years to celebrate my 20th reunion with the Class of ’99. It was a joyous occasion spent connecting with classmates and sharing our successes and challenges of the past two decades. However, I was troubled by the general lack of awareness and effort toward meaningful reduction of waste at the various tents and during the P-rade. This was surprising to me, as Princeton loves to tout the leadership role it plays in sustainability.
What better place for Princeton to show its commitment to sustainability than Reunions, when thousands of alumni and their families descend on campus? Everywhere I looked, plastic cups were used liberally and discarded inappropriately, despite the widely accepted projections that pieces of plastic will outnumber marine life in our oceans by 2040. The costumes we were issued were made of polyester fiber and sequins, will probably never be worn again, and will just end up in landfills. Many people had brought plastic foam coolers to Reunions, seemingly unaware of the fact that styrene is carcinogenic in its production, consumption, and disposal, and never goes away.
I am a native of Miami and have spent most of my life in South Florida, which is ground zero for sea-level rise, toxic algal blooms, and the overall effects of climate change. Perhaps because of this, I feel a great sense of urgency to mitigate the effects of human activity on climate change.
I hope that moving forward, Princeton can be more effective in engaging its alumni community regarding sustainability. In defense of its policy not to provide recycling containers at Reunions, the University is correct to point out that recycling practices have become lower yield now that other countries are no longer accepting our recyclables. However, there is vast room for improvement with respect to generating waste in the first place and having all Princetonians exercise “Princeton in the service of the planet” by being stewards for change.
Steve Ramsey ’69
5 Years AgoSharing Princeton’s Bounty
I write to make a modest proposal: I have felt for some time that Princeton and other great universities should use substantial portions of their endowments to establish a partnership program with colleges and universities that primarily serve disadvantaged students.
While Princeton’s efforts at diversity and outreach are laudable, they are not enough. I urge the trustees to consider establishing programs that would allow others to share in the bounty with which Princeton has been blessed. For example:
I come at this almost assuredly naively, and I am certain there are a multitude of difficulties to overcome to make something like this work. (What a great thesis project.) But why not try? I hope other alums will support this idea.
Bruce Deitrick Price ’63
5 Years AgoMoral Leadership
I see much mention of moral mission, ethical mission, service mission, and such. I think a great university must be concerned first of all with an intellectual or academic mission.
There is a liberal tendency to meddle in all directions, and this can be destructive to what should be a university’s first priorities. I’m stunned to see that our great universities pay almost no attention to the illiteracy and ignorance in our public schools.
My sense is that fewer than half the kids graduating from public school can read fluently, that is, easily and for pleasure. What used to be taken for granted in the fourth grade a century ago is now an impossible dream for millions of young adults.
Do you wonder how this is possible? Easy. The schools use ineffective methods, as has been explained by many authors going back to Rudolf Flesch. A second part of the equation is that the surrounding society, in particular the institutions concerned with learning and culture, stand aside as culture is carefully destroyed. Princeton’s proper mission is to oppose this destruction in every way possible.
Nassau Hall set up a team of people, at great trouble and expense, to identify students who might be persuaded to transfer to Princeton. I would like to see the same effort and expense exerted at putting pressure on K-12 across the country to do a better job.
I am glad to hear from alumni who would like further discussion of these issues.
Dorina Amendola ’02
5 Years AgoHuman Rights in Bhutan
I want to express my hope that “Seeking Happiness: The Kingdom of Bhutan,” a Princeton Journey to be led by Professor Jonathan Gold, will include awareness of the travesty of the Bhutanese ethnic cleansing, and a visit to the refugee camps there. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, 100,000 ethnic Nepali Bhutanese experienced degradation, torture, murder, and expulsion. Thousands still suffer, for multiple generations now, in destitute Bhutanese camps, with no rights. This ethnic cleansing was carried out by the glamorous former king of Bhutan, seeking national purity for his “utopian” vision. His Western-educated son, who became king in 2006, and his wife have not accomplished anything toward justice for their people. Yet this number accounted for a substantial and ancient percentage of Bhutan’s population.
Some of us, fortunate enough to know Nepali refugee families resettled in our towns by Catholic Social Services and other groups in nearly every state and many other countries, have been made acquainted with the double injustice of their stories and the deafness of the world to them.
The king and queen of Shangri-La must be held accountable by the world until they restore human rights, if not ancestral property, to their own people.
Lex Rieffel ’63
6 Years AgoAdmission by Lottery
Hats off to Professor Dalton Conley for his Aug. 13 op-ed in The Washington Post advocating a lottery for admission to Princeton University and other elite colleges! I suppose that, as a sociology professor, he comes to the issue from that discipline. My major at Princeton was economics, and I taught a graduate seminar in economics for 10 semesters between 2001 and 2009 at leading universities in Washington, D.C.
During this period, drawing on items in PAW, I became increasingly bothered by the admissions process at the University. Not only did it seem to be unfair to many qualified applicants, it also seemed unscientific from an economics perspective. The process appeared to be premised on a highly questionable ability to predict how individual applicants would perform as students and beyond. I concluded that a lottery system — along the lines sketched out by Professor Conley — would be both more fair and more scientific.
Following are excerpts from Professor Dalton Conley’s op-ed, reprinted with permission of The Washington Post. For the full text, go to https://wapo.st/2PaJr3k.
The public is busy arguing over affirmative action and whether Asian Americans are discriminated against in Harvard University admissions, and whether preferences based on “legacy” alumni connections, athletic skills, or other attributes should continue. But sociologists and economists are trying to assess whether all this fuss even matters. In other words, what is the value of going to a highly selective school such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton? There’s one sure way to resolve both these debates: a lottery.
Universities would set minimum standards of admission, considering a mix of criteria such as SAT scores, class rank, personal essay, extracurricular activities, and challenges such as overcoming economic hardship. The final selection would be done purely by lottery. If schools wanted to weight certain factors for diversity purposes, they could do it at the drawing stage.
In the same way that medical residency programs and newly minted doctors sort each other out, the applicants would order their college preferences in advance and be matched to their top-choice school that drew their name in its lottery.
Such a system would make explicit what most of us already know: There’s a huge amount of randomness in elite-college admissions, which stirs a corresponding suspicion about how the process might be skewed. Moreover, a lottery system would be a boon to social scientists, since it would approximate an experiment to determine the actual value-added of a particular school. We could compare the career outcomes of students who went to one school vs. another school based on the straws they drew.
Luck has no place in America’s Horatio Alger national myth, but admissions to the country’s elite universities is no meritocracy. Maybe it’s time to gamble on a little randomness.
Greg Nelson ’91
6 Years AgoCritiquing the Campus Plan
While I’m appreciative of the University’s desire to expand, I was saddened to find in the campus plan supplement that lands that were farms in 1922-1948 are going to be largely covered with buildings and sports fields. Forget farm to table, this will be farm to tile and farm to foul line.
During my years at Princeton, I watched with sadness as ecology and evolutionary biology (staff and buildings) were decimated to expand molecular biology, and as the geology department struggled to find the staff to teach basic distribution requirements, while Bowen Hall was being commissioned for materials science. In a sense, this feels like a continuation of the same idea.
I worry that Princeton has forgotten that classical sciences like biology and geology matter, and that there is a great deal of essential science in a farm, particularly as we try to understand how the living planet will cope with the coming climate change disaster. A university that still subscribes to a Latin oratory at graduation would do well to consider what its students could learn from ars agriculturae.
Benjamin Plotinsky ’99
6 Years AgoPlanning the Campus
We read that Princeton’s new campus plan (University supplement, mailed with the Feb. 7 issue) has been “multi-dimensional,” that it “develops a mission-centered vision,” and that it seeks “a climate that encourages thoughtful and creative approaches to sustainability.” That’s undoubtedly reassuring to people who know what those words mean. The rest of us, especially those who fell in love with Princeton because it was a small and beautiful place, may not relish the prospect of an enormously expanded university — one with multiple campuses, “campus connectors,” hundreds more students, and new residential colleges. The country has plenty of sprawling universities already.
Stanley Kalemaris ’64
6 Years AgoPlanning the Campus
The proposed campus plan indicates a serious lack of concern for handicapped access. The proposed site for engineering and environmental studies eliminates the closest, and only usable, handicapped parking spaces to the stadium and homecoming activities at Fine Plaza. The longer-term plan eliminates the lot adjacent to Jadwin and appears to provide no parking north of the lake and east of Washington Road. Given that some of us older alumni are, or have spouses who are, mobility-impaired, the proposed plans will make it difficult if not impossible for us to attend athletic events.
Editor’s note: University Architect Ron McCoy *80 responded that parking for athletics events “will be sensitive to the needs of the mobility-impaired and in keeping with accessibility standards.” Diagrams in the campus plan at this stage should not be seen as a blueprint, he said.
John Hart ’70
6 Years AgoPlanning the Campus
I studied with interest the recent campus-plan supplement. From the point of view of the University, the development of the land beyond Lake Carnegie seems very sensible. I missed, however, any nod to the regional context. For instance, how much will the urbanization of this strip diminish the open space resources of the Route 1 corridor? It will certainly have the effect of fusing the University firmly into the enveloping urban mass. I would like to see this impact discussed.
I have often wondered whether Princeton has ever made an attempt to bring its prestige and expertise to bear on larger planning issues in its part of New Jersey. Could its influence in any way have mitigated the unimaginative, auto-centric, and indeed suffocatingly boring development style that was applied as this former semi-rural gap in the Northeastern urban corridor was filled? Could Princeton have catalyzed a movement to maintain something of a greenbelt here? I would love to hear more about any thinking along these lines that may have occurred.
Samuel M. Hamill Jr. ’60 *91
6 Years AgoRegional-Planning support
In his letter to the editor (Inbox, March 21), John Hart ’70 observes that a new campus across Lake Carnegie will further fuse the University into the “enveloping urban mass,” but he misses a reference to regional planning.
Yet in the 1970s, accompanying the development of Princeton Forrestal Center, the University became a leader in regional planning. To foster collaboration among civic, business, and governmental interests, the University led in founding the nonprofit Middlesex Somerset Mercer Regional Council (MSM).
Results of the council’s work include striking successes and persistent challenges. MSM focused early on the disparity between job growth and affordable housing — and the traffic congestion that ensued. The persistence of these conditions still undercuts our quality of life.
On the positive side, land preservation ranks as a major achievement. Parks, farms, and conservation areas in the environs of Princeton may now approach 30 to 40 percent of the total land area. Many civic and governmental entities collaborated in preserving open space, and the University’s representation was significant.
After the high-water mark of regional planning and “smart growth” in the 1980s and 1990s, there have been several regional forums along the “Route One Corridor,” but their work has yet to show results commensurate with the need. Home rule still too frequently trumps regional planning.
As the University expands, we’ll see if its commitment to regional planning can be carried forward to meet the growing need for smart growth.
Andrew Raubitschek ’70
6 Years AgoQuestions About Student Photos
It has been 50 years since my picture was taken in the infirmary. I have tried to find out the facts surrounding the incident on multiple occasions, only to be stonewalled by past and present University officials. I met with the dean of students soon after the incident and contacted the president’s office when the New York Times article was published. I wonder if there are other concerned students who are interested in these issues and whether we can band together to have the University set up a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the bizarre photography. I would like to know who authorized the pictures, who knew the pictures were being taken, what the pictures were used for, and why the University did not feel that it needed to launch a full investigation. The only information I was able to uncover was that the pictures sent to the Smithsonian were destroyed.
Patrick J. Krug ’92
6 Years AgoReligion and the Courts
President Eisgruber recently chastised senators for questioning a judicial nominee over writing and stating that she would recuse herself from a case if executing the law conflicted with her Catholic beliefs. Can he be so naïve as to insist “it is ... possible to probe those [judicial] philosophies without reference to the religious affiliation or theological views of a nominee,” when a judge who once defiantly displayed the Ten Commandments in his courtroom may soon be a senator? Given our history of judges flaunting faith-based animus while denying due process and equal protection to the LGBT community? When a Supreme Court with a majority of Catholic justices will decide if a religious right to discriminate against cake-buyers outweighs our right not to be discriminated against when buying cake? Now judges are the victims?
Oh boo-hoo-hoo; try being systematically oppressed, jailed, and murdered for centuries, then cry to me about how tough your job interview was. Being asked about your own words, or the conditions under which you would not do your job, isn’t an unconstitutional “test.” I was devoutly Catholic at Princeton, but have no use now for any institution — secular, religious, or educational — that protects bulwarks of discrimination and abuse while ignoring the real injustices of our world.
Charles S. Rockey Jr. ’57
6 Years AgoOn the Judiciary Committee
Published online Jan. 4, 2018
President Eisgruber ’83 is to be commended for his criticism of senators for questioning a judicial nominee’s religious views (Inbox, Oct. 25). His letter and copies were sent to all members of the Judiciary Committee, but surely he knows the problem is with the Democrats, specifically Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, and Mazie Hiroko.
Notre Dame President John Jenkins showed more gumption. His letter went directly to ranking member Sen. Feinstein and stated that it was chilling to hear that a nominee’s faith might disqualify that person from service as a federal judge.
Norman Ravitch *62
6 Years AgoIf a person’s religion...
If a person's religion demonstrates intellectual error, moral deficiency, and historical ignorance, why should this religion not be discussed along with other matters in his vita?
Norman Ravitch *62
6 Years AgoIt’s the Culture
Many of our most contentious issues are cultural: religion, guns, sexual practices, etc. You can no more convince a redneck Christian that the Jesus with whom he thinks he has a personal relationship is not the real Jesus than you can convince him that he doesn't need an automatic and deadly weapon to kill a rabbit or a deer. We have failed with a large percentage of our population in our role in civilizing the masses. They remain what they have always been: ignorant, credulous, and dangerous.
David S. Hodes ’63
6 Years AgoReview Diversity Efforts
The 2007 Princeton publication “Princeton: Defining Diversity” states that one goal of the University’s commitment to diversity is to ensure that students of different backgrounds learn from each other. From recent PAW articles it would appear that this goal is not being met. In one report, students of Latin American background seemed most concerned with learning about their own culture. They also wanted Princeton to consider a criterion other than research and teaching ability in hiring new faculty. This criterion is ethnic origin, a factor that is decided on the basis of pure chance and has nothing to do with ability or accomplishment. Another article detailed the University’s commitment of its funds to build a “safe” home for students “of color” from which white students will be excluded.
“Balkanization” seems a rather mild term for this policy. It is time to re-examine the way in which the diversity effort is being handled.
David S. Hodes ’63
7 Years AgoRe-Examine Diversity Policies
Published online July 6, 2017
The 2007 Princeton publication Princeton: Defining Diversity states that one goal of the University’s commitment to diversity is to ensure that students of different backgrounds learn from each other. From recent PAW articles it would appear that this goal is not being met. In one report, students of Latin American background seem most concerned with learning about their own culture. They also want Princeton to consider a criterion other than research and teaching ability in hiring new faculty. This criterion is ethnic origin, a factor that is decided on the basis of pure chance and has nothing to do with ability or accomplishment. Another article details the University’s commitment of its funds to build a “safe” home for students “of color” from which white students will be excluded. “Balkanization” seems a rather mild term for this policy. It is time to re-examine the way in which the diversity effort is being handled.
Mary McKitrick ’78
7 Years AgoThe Case for Diversity
I was saddened and angered to read the letter from Thomas P. Wolf ’48 (Inbox, Jan. 11) in which the writer managed to get in a jab at President Eisgruber ’83 for “the drive for diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of quality ... for the sake of political correctness.” In the same issue was an article that made the case beautifully for diversity — about Anton Treuer ’91 and his personal and academic efforts to keep his Ojibwe culture alive. Mr. Wolf may be “tolerating” President Eisgruber’s work, but I am not tolerating the casual and baseless dismissal of the importance of diversity in enhancing the quality of a Princeton education, nor the hackneyed use of the term “political correctness” as a derogatory epithet.
Without people like Professor Treuer and thousands of other equally fascinating people of different backgrounds, Princeton would be failing to take advantage of the cultural and intellectual wealth that the United States and the world can offer. We have plenty of evidence for the benefits of this wealth in the pages of PAW alone. Diversity isn’t for quotas — it’s to make sure that a Princeton education is the very best it can be and that it is accessible to everyone with the qualifications for admission.
Paul F. Jacobs *66
7 Years AgoRein in Administrators
I loved my years at Princeton and have contributed to Annual Giving every year for 50 years. I will also leave a portion of my estate to Princeton when I die. Nonetheless, I am not blind to her warts.
I once heard a talk by C.N. Parkinson explaining Parkinson’s laws. One was: “In any organization, administration expands without limit.” Where there were a modest number of deans and administrative personnel in 1960, there are now multiple deans, assistant deans, and a battalion of accountants and administrative personnel. Each receives a salary and benefits at considerable annual cost.
Tuition in 1960 was about $800/year, or about 15 percent of the median U.S. annual income. In 2015, tuition was about $43,000/year, or about 75 percent of the median household income. The compound growth rate over this interval is 7.2 percent! Unabated, this will lead to “a tyranny of exponential functions” where in 2040 a college education will cost approximately $1 million, and in 2065 it will run $5 million! These numbers seem absurd, but annual college expenses over $50,000/year would have seemed preposterous in 1960. What to do?
I believe all universities need to limit costs to avoid pricing themselves out of the market. How many deans, assistant deans, and administrators are essential to the operation of a great university? When I look back on my time at Princeton, I remember four wonderful professors who helped make my career possible. I do not remember a single administrator.
Rick Mott ’73
7 Years AgoPrinceton Go Club
Published online November 30, 2016
Go (WeiQi) is a board game thousands of years old. Google’s AlphaGo software made news recently by defeating a world-class human player for the first time.
The Princeton Go Club was founded by math professor Ralph Fox in 1945. He brought Japanese professional players and Bell Labs scientists to visit, promoting the game for three decades until his untimely death in 1973. I joined in 1986. We hosted the fifth national U.S. Go Congress in 1989 and the regional N.J. Open tournament from 1990 to 2016. We were mentioned in the Office of Admission’s 2002 “Beginnings” video and in the 2011 Report on Campus Social & Residential Life.
The word is “inclusive,” a value Princeton claims to support. The club always taught anyone who showed interest, young or old, student or not. Its heterogeneous, eclectic nature was featured in the May 31, 2004, Princeton Weekly Bulletin.
The 9-year-old in that article’s photo is 7-Dan today (equivalent to a 7th-degree black belt in the martial arts). The gentleman he is playing still comes to the club – or did. Nonstudents (including alumni) now are barred by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students from participation. Students, alumni, and townspeople may no longer gather together around a common interest on today’s campus.
At the end of my freshman year, the FitzRandolph Gate was permanently opened “in a symbol of the University’s openness to the local and worldwide community,” according to the Princetoniana website. Set aside the personal humiliation of being told bluntly one is not welcome after 30 years of volunteer effort. The truly sad thing is seeing that gate swing shut again.