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Nico David-Fox
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: After an extraordinarily tumultuous semester for higher education, Princeton concluded its fundraising year on Monday with $68.4 million in Annual Giving contributions and a 43.9 percent undergraduate alumni participation rate — the lowest rate since the 2010–11 fundraising year. The final months of year’s campaign coincided with the University’s “Stand Up” initiative, launched in April to combat the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education over the past few months.
In “Stand Up” emails to more than 10,000 alumni and other supporters, Princeton explicitly appealed for donations to Annual Giving, especially in the wake of the suspension of $210 million in federal research grants.
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Since faculty voted in may to proctor in-person exams, national news outlets and some alumni have decried the end of Princeton’s 133-year-old tradition of unsupervised testing, but students, faculty, and recent graduates say the conversation within the campus community has been mild.
Professor George explained that he does not believe there is “one single uniquely correct model for colleges and universities.” The success of College of the Ozarks demonstrates the strength of its distinctive mission—not the need for every college to adopt the same model.
Prestigious universities and leading state schools across the nation have embraced viewpoint diversity by building new institutions—civic education centers and the like—which are simultaneously on yet apart from the campus. Harvard has quietly taken a different tack. Over the past several months, the university’s top brass have been asking major donors for $10 million gifts to endow new professorships under the banner of “viewpoint diversity.” Provost John Manning, a scholar often associated with the conservative legal movement, has led the effort, aiming to place between 20 and 30 new faculty across schools and departments rather than siloed in a standalone institute.
Why Harvard would need additional funding for this is an open question, but putting that partly aside, we ought to ask what to make of this unique initiative. It stands a chance of being either the most consequential reform attempt in elite higher education this decade, or a sophisticated piece of reputation management serving double duty as a clever fundraiser. Which one it turns out to be depends on whether Harvard has thought carefully about what viewpoint diversity means, and whether it intends to execute in line with a considered answer.
