December 18, 2024
1 min read
Abby Leibowitz
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: A month after Donald Trump’s reelection and the red wave that swept down-ballot elections in New Jersey and across the United States, public policy lecturer Lynda Dodd joined Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, for a private presentation held at the Princeton Public Library on Dec. 15. They discussed New Jersey’s potential to build “firewalls of freedom” — safeguards based on actions that governors, attorney generals, and statewide officials can take locally to protect communities made vulnerable by potential Trump policies.
Indivisible Princeton, a local chapter of the organization Indivisible formed by Ezra Levin GS ’13 in 2017 in response to Trump’s first election, hosted the event as its ”relaunch meeting.”
Read More December 16, 2024
1 min read
Michelle Miao and Nate Howard
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Since Nov. 5, Princeton commentators from across the political spectrum have misrepresented progressive Kamala Harris supporters.
On one hand, columnist Julianna Lee ’25 wrote a well-intentioned but misinformed op-ed characterizing left-leaning students at Princeton in broad strokes as stuck inside the Orange Bubble and unwilling to engage with other perspectives. On the other hand, certain members of the leftist community have spent more time denigrating Democrats than working to fight fascism. On both of these counts, we would like to set the record straight.
Read More December 15, 2024
1 min read 1 Comment
Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics
Excerpt: Most selective colleges and universities receive substantial federal funds – tens and even hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year for student aid and faculty research. Since Title VI contains no exceptions to its prohibition on raced-based discrimination, it also bars racism that is systemic. Thinking along these lines, in 2020, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attempted to hold Princeton University accountable for the systemic racism it claimed was lodged there.
Entertaining and instructive as was her gambit, the Trump administration should not repeat it. That’s because systemic racism does not plague the nation’s colleges and universities, and government should not legitimize frivolous claims that it does.
Read More 
Matt Jacobs ‘77
March 27, 2024
Luqmaan -
I am class of 1977 from Princeton; now 68 years old. I read your article from the Prince that appeared on the PFS email that I receive.
You could have written that article in 1973, when I arrived at Princeton from Bethesda, Maryland. This has been the situation for the past 50 years (as I can attest) and most likely for the 50 before that. I came from a great public school – Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS — and ran track, and played football and basketball as well.
I met another Maryland runner early during freshman year. His name was Kerry Lanham. Kerry, an African-American, had gone to a military academy before Princeton. We practiced together and hung out, generally.
I started going to the eating clubs for weekend parties as a freshman, courtesy of a senior who lived on my hallway. I really loved the club I went to most often – Cottage — and wanted to join. I eventually bickered there and received a bid, and had a great two years eating there and having fun on weekends, and I still keep in touch with many of my classmates from Cottage – -50 years later.
Kerry eventually left the track team. Also, during sophomore year, he tended to socialize with more Black kids, and I did not get the impression that he wanted to join a selective club. He also chose to live in what was then known as the “New New Quad,” it’s real name, where many other African-Americans tended to live.
They self-segregated, and I noticed that long before graduating in 1977. I asked myself many of the same questions you have posed in your article – why does that happen? Sure, we tend to like people who “look like us” or who “think like us,” but I noticed that the Princeton “community” grew more strongly among kids from similar backgrounds. Ironically, despite that I went to a (very good) public school, I ended up becoming very close friends with many kids (back then mostly males) who had gone to elite private schools such as Lawrenceville, Deerfield, and The Pingry School. I had public school friends as well, but I noticed that – by the second semester of sophomore year – many in our class seemed to recognize that “we are all here at Princeton, we will all have similar college experiences, and, as a result, we have more in common than we know.”
At least I felt that way.
As for Kerry, I would see him around, and we would say hello. He also moved back to the DC area after graduation, and I saw him at several Princeton alumni event down here. And Kerry’s daughter ended up going to Princeton. I have no idea, of course, about what he shared with her about his Princeton experience, or whether he even enjoyed Princeton – but she went to the school. My two boys, who unfortunately both had social/behavioral issues that impacted their high school experiences, did not even apply. They went to other colleges and did just fine. But I would have loved for them to have gone to Princeton.
I eventually became the President of the Princeton Club of Washington, and then served on the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council. The AC never addressed or considered the issues you have raised during my two two-year terms, but these issues should be addressed. Why do kids who will have a very common four-year college experience tend to self-segregate, which emphasizes their differences rather than their shared experiences? Why do they turn to their own socio-economic and race-based cohorts rather than seeking out different, more diverse connections? Maybe that’s asking too much of kids who are 18-22 years old, and who are all working very hard to do well at the world’s greatest University. But the questions are worth asking, and I am glad to see you did that in your article.
Matt Jacobs ‘77