This year is the 10th anniversary of Princeton’s Pre-read tradition, which introduces incoming first-year students to Princeton’s intellectual life through the experience of reading and discussing a book together. The Class of 2027’s book is How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa ’86. Here’s an excerpt from my foreword to the Pre-read edition, which the incoming class will receive this summer. I encourage all alumni to read along with us!
Dear Members of the GREAT Class of 2027, Warm greetings from Princeton! My colleagues and I look forward to welcoming you to campus later this year. Your talents, interests, and perspectives will add tremendously to this community, and I am confident that you in turn will develop and grow through the experiences, interactions, challenges, and opportunities that await you here.
You will find Princeton a place of innovation, activity, and evolving traditions, including some that are very old and some that are quite new. This book represents one of our younger traditions.
During each year of my presidency, I have chosen a “Princeton Pre-read.” My goal when selecting the Pre-read is to find a book that introduces entering students to the University’s academic life and provokes them to examine ethical issues that will be important during their time on campus and after graduation.
The Pre-read will be the subject of an assembly during Orientation week and discussions that I lead in the residential colleges during the fall semester. I like to think of the Pre- read as an academic counterpart to the Pre-rade, a joyous ceremony in which you and your classmates march together to celebrate your arrival at Princeton.
The author of this year’s book is special. She is Maria Ressa ’86, who in 2021 received the Nobel Peace Prize.
I have met many impressive Princeton alumni, but none whom I admire more than Maria Ressa. Her courage is awesome, her values are inspiring, and her energy is boundless. She is also an almost unbelievably generous person who radiates compassion and good humor despite having faced extraordinary threats and hardships.
Maria’s book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, includes a chapter about her experiences at Princeton. One of many reasons that I chose the book as this year’s Pre-read is that it describes how Maria’s education prepared her, sometimes in surprising ways, for unexpected challenges over the course of her career.
Another thing that I like about How to Stand Up to a Dictator is that it encompasses at least four different narratives, each of them compelling in its own right. One narrative is the story of a young woman’s search for her identity and her calling at Princeton and beyond.
Another is a first-person account from the front lines of pivotal events that reshaped journalism, the Philippines, and the world.
Yet another is a set of recommendations that are embodied in her chapter subtitles and culled from the experiences of a lifetime.
And a fourth is an urgent invitation to join what Maria calls “the fight for our future”: the quest to protect truth, democracy, and humane understanding from the corrosive effects of online media platforms and the algorithms that drive them.
Though Maria continues to fight the legal battles that she describes in this book, she currently plans to join us to discuss her book during Orientation week.
I hope that you enjoy How to Stand Up to a Dictator, and I hope, too, that you have a wonderful and refreshing summer.
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3 Responses
Clem Dinsmore ’65
9 Months AgoMaria Ressa ’86 is an inspiration not only to citizens of the Philippines but also citizens of the United States. As is being stated publicly by some and discussed privately among many, we, too, have a pressing need to face down despots including notably Donald Trump, a bully, deceiver, psychopath, narcissist, and outlaw, who lacking all norms other than the pursuit of self-interest clearly demonstrates the behavior of a despot.
My own shining example of an individual willing even to sacrifice his life to face down a despot is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the prominent Lutheran pastor and theologian during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. For his continuing opposition to Hitler and the Nazi party Bonhoeffer was executed at Flossenberg concentration camp in April 1945 two weeks before an uncle of mine and his Third Army artillery unit liberated the camp.
May Bonhoeffer’s moral and intellectual courage inspire us all to recognize and oppose — and help our fellow citizens recognize and oppose — despots among us. Who among us likes a bully?
Wayne S. Moss ’74
1 Year AgoThis year’s Pre-read, How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa ’86 (On the Campus, June issue), is as inspiring as Maria’s life is admirable. Both her book and her life embrace what is at the core of a liberal arts education: “honesty, vulnerability, empathy, moving away from emotions, embracing your fear, believing in the good” (her words). She also stands for the kind of society where these personal values can flourish: pluralism, free speech, anti-authoritarianism, the search for truth. She subtitles her book “The Fight for Our Future.” I’ll add that it’s the fight for our present as well.
Ben Tousley ’71
1 Year AgoI was puzzled to read in President Eisgruber ’83’s letter to incoming freshmen (President’s Page, May issue) that he described the “Princeton Pre-read” as a relatively new tradition that he began 10 years ago.
Back in the summer of 1967, our Class of 1971 received a similar letter requesting us to read a book called The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto for the purpose of discussing it in small groups. As I recall, the request was described at that time as part of a longstanding tradition. Was that tradition suspended at some point? Might PAW or perhaps the University archivist provide an explanation?
Editor’s note: According to April Armstrong *14, library collections specialist at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, the University Archives show some examples of prior summer reading assignments for incoming undergraduates, including one iteration that began in 1962. Eisgruber began the current Pre-read tradition in 2013, his first year as president.