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Every so often, the complexities of the world break through the orange bubble that is Princeton University. There are occasional reminders of the world outside, like the pro-Ukraine flag-waving event outside FitzRandolph Gate, reminding us that a major conflict in Europe is still ongoing four years later. Even as a veteran, it still feels like something happening in a remote place. It was only when I attended the European Cultural Studies (ECS) Faber Colloquium, a requirement for the European Studies minor I am pursuing, that I reflected on Europe’s significance and the debt Princeton as an institution owes to Europe, from its architecture to its precept system.
Matters of viewpoint diversity have recently received considerable attention in the academy and the media. A recent essay by Lisa Siraganian, “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” makes the case against efforts to increase viewpoint diversity.
I believe that the lack of viewpoint and intellectual diversity within the university has hindered the pursuit of knowledge and the well-being of society. I would thus like to take up Siraganian’s invitation and charge.
RocaNews is one of those new platforms growing by the seemingly simple acts of building trust and conducting on-the-ground reporting in the places the New York Times promised to do. They believe their readers are smart enough to form their own opinions. At least that was being claimed on February 19th in McCosh Hall at an event entitled RocaNews, Non-Partisan Reporting, and the Fight against Legacy Media organized by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC). RocaNews currently has 2 million instagram followers, 651,000 YouTube subscribers, and a daily newsletter sent to over 200,000 subscribers. If that growth is not enough to convince you that they are doing something right, you can see for yourself through a myriad of ways, all focused on ease of access and user experience. Roca uses Instagram and newsletters to build a go-to news community based on factual, on-the-ground reporting.
89 years ago, the pages of the ‘Prince’ featured a series of lively debates in the “To the Editor” section about the future of the humanities curriculum at Princeton. One of the central issues of the debate, as Wallace Irwin Jr. ’40 wrote in his letter to the editor on Feb. 22, 1937, was striking a balance between the breadth of humanistic disciplines and the realistic limit of students’ time.
Irwin’s letter was a direct response to Temple Fielding ’39, who, just a few days prior, wrote a proposal for a drastic curricular change and published it in the ‘Prince.’ Fielding suggested a course combining content from different academic departments, offering undergraduates an interdisciplinary exploration of various cultural fields.
Princeton recently hosted the New Jersey General Assembly for a special session in the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the independent legislature’s first meeting in August 1776. At the time of that inaugural session, Nassau Hall was still unravaged by the horrors of war.
Closing the doors to such historic buildings repeats the mistake made by too many universities: conflating the institution with its administration. While the University could not function without the work of its leaders and trustees, neither could it live without the flesh, blood, and spirit of its students and faculty.
The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.
However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.
