Rex Lee Jim ’86

Rex, the politician and poet who led the Navajo nation in office and in words, died Feb. 24, 2026. He was 63. 

After growing up in Chinle, Ariz., and graduating from the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, Jim came to Princeton, where he majored in English. His senior thesis, “Do Navajos Love as White People Do? A Study of the Role of White Romantic Love in Novels Written about Navajos by White Writers,” explored just how the Diné people and their amorous relationships were portrayed in the general literature.  

“There is no doubt,” he wrote in the thesis, “that white writers who write about Navajos will never achieve the level of thinking and feeling that Navajos have. Every time they try to deal with what makes a Navajo Navajo, they end up interpreting those qualities in their own terms. ... Instead of helping them out through their misinterpretations in the novels, these writers destroy the very people they try to help.”  

When he returned to Arizona, he pursued three paths: nurturing education on the Navajo reservation, writing his own poetry in his native tongue, Diné Bizaad, and serving in the Navajo leadership. He authored several collections of poetry and then passed them out on the campaign trail, a path that took him to several offices, including the vice president of the Navajo Nation from 2011 to 2015. When he died, he was finishing a Ph.D. at Arizona State University.  

To all he served as a teacher and educator and to all he touched with his poetry, the Class of 1986 extends our deepest gratitude and appreciation.