Ian Mann
The Daily Princetonian
This call for near unanimity is inconsistent both with the University’s previous divestment decisions and the University’s role as a liberal arts institution. To be a liberal arts institution, as then-President Harold Shapiro GS ’64 wrote in a 1999 article to the Princeton Alumni Weekly, the University “needs to prepare us for an independent and responsible life of choice,” give us “a capacity to make moral and political choices,” and provide us a moral education. Equating consensus with near unanimity and disposing of politically contentious petitions abandons the University’s commitment to this moral education.
The University must resolve this contradiction: Either turn away from moral education and cease to divest at all, or make divestment a component of that moral education, letting go of the notion of complete consensus.
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