I’ve been interviewing applicants to Princeton for over 20 years (with two years off when my children applied), and it has been extremely rewarding. I have great admiration for the work of the Office of Admission, the Alumni Schools Committee, and the Princeton Schools Committee. Although some alumni have balked, I have been impressed by the new procedures (online tutorials, webinars, zoom interviews, sample texts) and believe they have made the alumni interview process more fair and more professional.
Since 2020, I have also been involved with Divest Princeton (fossil fuels) as an alumni organizer. As part of that work, I have written articles and gone on the record criticizing the policies of the Trustees of Princeton with regards to the climate crisis. Following the University’s partial divestment and dissociation from fossil fuels in 2022, we have continued to demand that the University sever all ties with the fossil fuel industry. I have never mentioned my views or these activities in interviews with applicants and would never do so. I did not sense any conflict of interest in continuing to be an ASC interviewer because I believed that encouraging the best and brightest to choose Princeton would help Princeton to become the best that it can be.
I now find myself in a different position. The University’s response to the nonviolent protests on campus this spring called into question the ethics of encouraging a young person to attend Princeton. The University spends a huge amount of time lauding those who have fought for freedom in varied contexts in the past but when they were faced with their own brave students peacefully asking for justice now, the University had them arrested. The administration then banned Princeton students from their own campus and expelled them from their housing. This shocked me profoundly — shelter is one of the most basic human needs.
The Princeton administration chose to put its own students in jeopardy. When high school students ask if they should go to Princeton, I can no longer answer “yes.” It is with great regret, therefore, that I am resigning as chair of the Alumni Schools Committee for Portugal.