David Alexander Ablin ’86

David Ablin died June 8, 1995, of a heart attack in NYC. He was a PhD candidate at Yale at the time.

When David was young, his father took him to the neighborhood Democratic Club. This visit inspired his lifelong fascination with and passion for politics, particularly the psychology underlying social systems and interactions.

While at Princeton, David was a Woodrow Wilson School major and belonged to Charter Club. He took a year's leave from Princeton after our freshman year to teach in a refugee camp on the ThaiCambodian border. On this trip he drew a connection between the Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust, of which his mother is a survivor. At Yale, David spearheaded a successful campaign to create a political psychology program. David was writing his doctoral dissertation on the psychology of genocide during the Cambodian holocaust. One can find some of David's work in a 1987 book he wrote, The Cambodian Agony, which was the result of a conference he organized at the Wilson School entitled, "Kampuchea in the 1980's: Prospects and Problems."

David returned to Cambodia a couple of times, once as a NY Times correspondent covering that country's first democratic elections. David's friends remember his promise, wit, curiosity, determination, and passion. To his mother, Hanka, and brother Jason, the class offers its condolences.

The Class of 1986