Comment on PAW’s Food Issue and Global Food Issues

Elena Nikolova *11’s letter struck a chord. Her candid callout is refreshing. As the writer of an article in PAW’s March Food Issue, I felt a responsibility of sorts to justify why I had chosen Princeton’s expanding dining hall options and output as the subject of my reporting. Amid the global food crises that Nikolova notes — of which I am acutely aware as an individual invested in food security work — the stations in a new dining hall, and the elimination of certain academic culinary events, are trivial. But do we need to legitimize, or avoid, writing on such topics?

These are news items one would only read of a highly resourced institution. And we can’t particularly escape them. PAW should address Princetonian involvement in food systems worldwide, but setting the University’s food culture adjacent to articles on global issues offers our privilege context and perspective — more so than simply cutting out local record. Could that risk minimizing the gravity of famine, conflict, and natural disaster? It’s a line that we, as readers and as journalists, have to tread. The issue is not the articles PAW published, but those which it did not.

Editor’s note: The writer is a student contributor to PAW. The views expressed in Inbox do not represent the views of PAW or Princeton University.