I read Hope Perry ’24’s piece on Tom Leyden '77’s Andlinger fellowship and his work helping students find careers in clean energy. As a member of the Princeton in Solar and Cleantech LinkedIn group he organized, I can tell you how valuable the group has been in my career as well. One of the initiatives our group has discussed is encouraging Princeton to add a distribution requirement related to the climate crisis. Leo Yu ’27 made a strong argument for it in a December 2023 op-ed for The Daily Princetonian: “The purpose of the requirement is not to raise awareness but to prompt sustained and real engagement with the issue of the climate crisis …” Students can easily meet the requirement in virtually every subject area by making connections between their discipline and the climate crisis. It doesn’t take much imagination to tie the requirement to classes or independent work that cover history, literature, science, politics, sociology, etc. Clearly, the climate crisis is here and getting worse, requiring urgent action to mitigate it. The requirement would elevate Princeton in this area to live up to its motto of “in the service of humanity.”
I read Hope Perry ’24’s piece on Tom Leyden '77’s Andlinger fellowship and his work helping students find careers in clean energy. As a member of the Princeton in Solar and Cleantech LinkedIn group he organized, I can tell you how valuable the group has been in my career as well. One of the initiatives our group has discussed is encouraging Princeton to add a distribution requirement related to the climate crisis. Leo Yu ’27 made a strong argument for it in a December 2023 op-ed for The Daily Princetonian: “The purpose of the requirement is not to raise awareness but to prompt sustained and real engagement with the issue of the climate crisis …” Students can easily meet the requirement in virtually every subject area by making connections between their discipline and the climate crisis. It doesn’t take much imagination to tie the requirement to classes or independent work that cover history, literature, science, politics, sociology, etc. Clearly, the climate crisis is here and getting worse, requiring urgent action to mitigate it. The requirement would elevate Princeton in this area to live up to its motto of “in the service of humanity.”