PAW’s Future: A Letter to Readers

PAW should continue as it has with no control from the University. My opinion is based on 52 years’ experience with Stanford and Stanford’s magazine for its alumni. Stanford prints only what it wants its alumni to hear — never a word to the contrary. It is one of Stanford’s greatest weaknesses, and yes, Stanford has weaknesses. The general public seldom hears about them because its board is very good at its control. Our annual alumni giving percentage is almost twice Stanford’s and my personal observation of their alumni gatherings pales in comparison to ours. One of my greatest prides in PAW is how open and candid the alumni letters are and how PAW examines what the Princeton Board of Trustees is doing. I am deeply disappointed with the University for raising this issue. I do not see any point of leverage that Princeton has to compel this change. The answer to them is “No,” followed immediately by the question: “Who are the individuals who proposed this? We want their names and reasons for doing so.”

As someone who has been reading the Princeton Alumni Weekly from a time when it was a bit closer to actually being a weekly, I was initially shocked by the notice (PAW July/August 2021) from Marc Fisher ’80 about Princeton’s move to take over the magazine completely. In perusing recent editions, however, this does not seem to engender much of a change. Has PAW been inadequately pc or insufficiently woke? There are, of course, letters from curmudgeons occasionally decrying some purported outrage that the University has committed, and also the Memorials section. The latter may represent something of an embarrassment because of its focus on dead white men, but mortality will take care of this in the next 20 years as more diverse alumni pass on. The former is perhaps a more difficult problem because you can never tell when some over-educated alum will raise a complaint in a way that differs from University orthodoxy, leading to further criticism, and worse, adverse comments in the national press. In the future, such letters could simply be suppressed. Fear of litigation is, of course, a proper concern for a corporate university. Perhaps the present arrangements between PAW and the University are too dangerous in this regard. A complete break may diminish the survivability of PAW as a quality publication. By allowing PAW to be presented clearly as a vehicle for Princeton to communicate with its alumni, still including class notes and obituaries, there should be an adequate and honest solution.

Princeton’s stated reasons for its proposed takeover of PAW are pure balderdash. The real reason for its proposal is to suppress PAW’s viewpoints and those of its readers which increasingly challenge those of the administration, an administration which has become blind to one of the most fundamental underpinnings of a great university, the fostering of diverse viewpoints. To direct this kind of conduct toward its very own alumni is simply shameful.

I have been reading PAW for over 60 years. For many years it was rather light and shallow and I would leaf through it rather quickly. In more recent years it has become more substantive and thoughtful, and I devote a good deal more time to reading it. As its future unfolds, I hope the “substantive and thoughtful” aspects remain.

Marc Fisher ’80’s page in the July/August issue includes the following: “An independent board has proven to be a vital guarantee that a magazine’s editor, not university administrators, direct coverage.” Continuing on that path seems very important.

I am delighted that the University finally accepts that alumni should not pay for their subscription to PAW. It’s long overdue. But I vehemently object to the terms. Specifically: “Princeton has not guaranteed the continued editorial independence of the magazine.”

On the contrary: Princeton should guarantee the continuance of editorial independence of the magazine. What the University is proposing is censorship.

What I have been proposing to Bob Durkee ’69 for 20 years is that we find an alumnus or group of alumni that will endow PAW and make it truly independent (how about $100 million, Jeff Bezos ’86?). PAW will continue printing the University’s propaganda as it does now, and the alumni board will continue to include representatives from the University. And PAW will finally be sent to all graduate alumni.

Thank you for your letter in the PAW. In over 100 man-years as a corporate director in various types of companies I have never seen a situation where I concluded that decreasing the influence of independent directors would be an improvement. Boards are created to govern and provide oversight. When there are conflicts, independent voices broaden the set of alternative solutions and generally help to find better solutions. Opponents of independent boards usually seek to control outcomes and suppress ideas or outcomes that are not to their liking.

Regardless of the intent of individuals who are pressing for a change in the governance structure of the PAW, the details of any changes will have lasting impacts. To test the value of a proposed change, the parties considering the change should discuss what would happen down the road, when different individuals are involved. Assign the worst of motives to the future individuals and trace through the process that would then exist to rectify any problems that could be expected to arise. If the proposed changes will not make sense in that hypothetical future, they should not be adopted now.

Thank you for requesting input. I graduated in 1984 and have increasingly found that the PAW has almost zero content that appeals to me, a Canadian who is a conservative.

Page after page is an exercise in hopelessly boring virtue signaling of leftist ideals and stories. Why? Are you assuming that all alumni of Princeton are secular progressives? I can assure you we are not.  

You have to assume that at least 50 percent of Princetonians are conservatives because that is the divide in North America generally.   

For example, I would like to see a balanced piece about Ted Cruz ’92, one of our most well-known graduates at this time, rather than a hit job.  

I note that you say the board is comprised of publishers and journalists — perhaps that is the root of the problem. You’re all on one side of the fence drinking the same Kool-Aid. Get some conservative thinkers onto your board! 

When I served in the leadership of the Alumni Council in the 1990s I wrote an article supporting PAW independence and justifying the use of class dues. It was, a survey showed, the best read article of the year. My basic theory is that PAW is to the University as an investment newsletter is to the funds it covers. Readers expect a generally positive report but they also trust it more, and are more interested in it, because it has independence.

Surely the University cannot claim it lacks the means to get its message out. The University has ample other means of direct communication with alumni. Email is the cheapest and most recent. If subscriptions to email notices are down, it is only because there are already too many of them. My guess is that the President’s Page at the front of PAW is much better read than those emails, especially given the fact that the current president is a talented writer.

As a lawyer who has represented news media organizations for more than 40 years, and been a class secretary and reader of PAW, I find it difficult to give much credence to the University’s fear of legal liability. Surely there is insurance. And, given its benign content, PAW is not a likely target. Has it ever been sued? 

Princeton historically has operated on the theory that alumni control over aspects of their relationship with the University was a critical element in the unmatched enthusiasm Princeton alumni have for their university. Witness reunions, where all the university does is provide a physical location and security. Class dues provide a way to promote connections among the class and, of course, provide information to the secretary for class notes. Those notes are far more robust in PAW than they are in the alumni magazine for my law school’s university.

That theory that alumni control is a good thing has been tested in recent years by a variety of steps hostile to uniqueness, including the demotion of the Alumni Council so that it is now subordinate to what we used to call “development.” The claim that PAW should be treated like any other department is simply another way of saying Princeton wants to do it like everyone else. It is worth recalling that PAW used to be almost entirely independent and that it has only become a University department because the University wanted, for reasons I still do not understand, more control.

If the University wants to operate on the principle “let’s do it like everyone else,” then it can only expect the alumni to behave accordingly and show the same level of enthusiasm, or lack of it. That would not be a good thing.

The University should keep its “paws” off PAW.

I write to express my reservations regarding the University’s proposal to fund and oversee PAW’s publication. Even if the University had guaranteed PAW’s editorial independence, I would have concerns about PAW's ability to provide balanced and independent coverage of the University. Money, after all, brings with it power — and that power can be used to influence or even control the content and tone of a publication. That pattern has been visible across the media landscape over the past decade.

But the University is not even promising to protect PAW’s journalistic independence.  While I appreciate the University’s honesty and directness, I am concerned that University control will change PAW, and not for the better.  Other alumni magazines I and my family receive are quite different from PAW in terms of their content, depth, and tone.  Those magazines — funded and controlled by the institutions — are vehicles for boosterism rather than a lens on campus life and the evolution of those schools.  Stories that are controversial, critical, or skeptical of the official institutional posture are largely absent.  When they are published, they are almost uniformly a response to stories already reported by outside sources.

Such magazines get cursory reading in our household.  By contrast, the PAW gets more careful reading, and not just by the Princeton alum in the family.  Should PAW’s board accept the University’s offer, the magazine will no longer be my primary source of information for what’s really happening on campus and across the broader alumni community.  It will be just another multi-page advertisement for the school, one that gets skimmed or pre-emptively recycled rather than being read.

I am both confounded and troubled by the University’s proposal to unilaterally seize financial and editorial control of the Princeton Alumni Weekly that since 1900 has served so expertly and responsively as “a magazine by alumnae/i for alumnae/i.” In fact, Princeton alumni classes operate separately and independently, electing their own officers; raising and administering their own funding; and in many cases supporting independent public- and University-service programs, including the Class of 1955’s Project 55 that encourages public service by graduates and the Prize in Race Relations initiated, funded, and administered by our Class of 1966.

Moreover, each year these classes collectively contribute many millions of dollars in Annual Giving to support the mission and administration of the University. Therefore, the University’s offer to cover the costs of class PAW subscriptions for alumni is essentially philanthropy done with mirrors, returning in subsidies that the classes have each year already given directly as subsidies to the college. And so in this context, the University's apparently high-minded concern that PAW “operates in a manner that is consistent with University policies” — however controversial or misguided those policies may appear to students or to alumni readers and contributors — is in fact pre-censorship masquerading as benevolent and patronizing public relations.

No thoughtful dissenting voice is editorially prohibited from the pages of the Alumni Weekly, which instead includes a full President’s Page in every issue for his official articulation of university policy and political perspectives. At the same time, the magazine provides in-depth reporting of student concerns and issues on campus, most recently including in-depth reporting on student dissatisfaction with college responses to sexual assault concerns on campus and in study abroad, a dissatisfaction supported by data from a survey of the incidence of this issue composed and administered by students themselves.

In fact, a University pre-censored and financially controlled Alumni Weekly would threaten freedom of speech among all constituencies in the fundamental/foundational intellectual discourse of a so often self-proclaimed “great university.” Disingenuous, self-interested, cynical, and high-handed, the University's proposal willfully sacrifices the freedoms of the press and thought in its engineered preference for looking good on its own terms.

I love and owe much to Princeton. I am also a regular reader of PAW for 40 years and greatly value its mission and what it has delivered for its readers. My love for Princeton does not blind me to its flaws, and I know that it is not a purely benevolent, opinion-less open forum; it is instead an institution with a strong point of view. This reality makes it essential that there be other points of view that can be heard when appropriate, and I have always counted on PAW for that. Princeton, in its benevolence, made the staff of PAW employees of the University to bring efficiencies, save money, and provide the staff the security of a strong employer, but now Princeton wants to leverage that tie to its advantage and this strong-arming (no matter how polite) must be opposed. If necessary, PAW should explore establishing itself as a completely separate entity, with its staff employed by that entity rather than the University. I believe that many alumni would support that independence and would step up to help accomplish that if required.  

I oppose the administration’s proposed takeover of PAW, without a guarantee of the continued editorial independence of the magazine.

PAW’s independence has been a unique feature of Princeton’s relationship with its alums, and I cannot imagine any good that will come from losing it.

I have been reading PAW avidly since it was slipped under my dorm room’s door. I have always valued PAW’s editorial independence. Unlike many other Princeton publications, it has not been obliged to toe the party line. I recognized and appreciated this right from the start.

This independence seems like it could be severely compromised by the plan sketched in your letter. Under that plan, the University administration would have a much more direct role in guiding PAW. My own experience as an academic has made me suspicious about this kind of oversight. My own university’s counterpart to PAW is also editorially independent, which I value very much. It’s certainly no bomb-thrower, but it has evidently found a way to assure its editorial independence. I hope that PAW is able to find some way to do so as well.

I read with interest your letter, “PAW’s Future: A Letter to Readers,” in the most recent Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Not knowing the reasons for the University administrators’ position, I hesitate to comment; but I feel compelled to do so because there is a fundamentally important issue here, the independent expression of ideas, opinion, and challenge. I can think of no other place more important to the free, uncensored expression of opinion than Princeton.

The phrase apparently used in the University’s statement, “consistent with University policies,” strikes me as code for editorial control, or, to be more precise, censorship.

I hope those in senior administrative positions, including the University president and the board of trustees, will ponder the implications of the path they are on and take a higher road.

I read with disappointment and sadness of the University’s plans to take over the financial and operational roles of PAW. Unfortunately, the news is not surprising. As the former editor of two medical school alumni magazines and a consultant in alumni affairs to some of Princeton’s peers (Columbia and Dartmouth), I’ve viewed the same battle over editorial independence play out between alumni magazines and administrations.

There is undoubtedly the very real problem of how to financially support a magazine, with the decline of print advertising and lack of other outside financial support. At the same time, alumni magazines are an invaluable tool for engagement, even in our fast-paced digital world, and are valued by alumni. If anything, a well-produced, high-quality printed magazine stands out even more than it would have in the past, with people receiving less mail generally and fewer magazines these days. 

The most important argument for keeping PAW’s editorial independence is as you’ve stated: to strengthen ties with alumni by providing open discussion and objective assessment of the University and its policies and activities. Anything less than this will lead to its weakening as a credible source of information; breed cynicism; and lead to less, not more, engagement among alumni. We have gotten used to having a credible, independent, and lively instrument in PAW and many of us likely don’t realize that most institutions don’t have the same. Meanwhile, as you say, PAW is not a flamethrower — though I believe and hope it criticizes the University when necessary. An editorially independent PAW is crucial to the successful functioning of the University and an example of the way to lead according to our principles, as we always have.

The “unique character” of PAW referred to in the University’s statement also reflects the fact that Princeton has always had a unique relationship with its alumni, one that universities all over envy. We eagerly come to Reunions in the many thousands, willingly give of our time and money, and do it in the name of service to the institution we love and in our connection to our fellow alumni. Following the path that other schools have taken with their alumni magazines, turning them into vehicles for institutional messaging and fundraising priorities, will destroy this unique character.

I wholeheartedly support your efforts to maintain the independence of PAW and the vital role it serves for the University. I’m encouraged by your observation that other schools have assured editorial independence while the university supports them financially. Is this an option for PAW? What can alumni do to help?

Thank you for soliciting alumni thoughts. I wish I had suggestions to help, but I’m sure most have been discussed at length, for example, increasing independent fundraising for PAW. 

I hope the University will allow for independence of the board and allow the magazine to direct coverage.

Thanks for the letter about the changes in the works for PAW.

One of your needed steps will be to junk this wording — “a magazine by alumni for alumni” — and to replace it with “a magazine by the University for the University.”

To pretend otherwise would strain the credulity of your readers.

After 66 years in journalism, as a newspaper reporter, editor, publisher, and owner in North Carolina, Miami, San Francisco, and Marin County, California, I’m familiar with who runs things and who doesn’t. For the past 13 years I first helped revive and now advise the San Quentin News (see PAW, March 22, 2017), one of the very few inmate-controlled newspapers in the United States. We’re proud of the fact that, although we circulate in all of California’s 35 prisons, the prison system does not pay for or run the paper. I would hate to see the alumni of Princeton University have less control over their publication than do the inmates of San Quentin State Prison.