Princeton

Iowa Wesleyan is the latest. Finlandia University before that. Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences as of January 2024. Many others you have probably not heard of: Stone Academy, Cazenovia College, Bloomfield College. These are colleges and universities that have breathed their last. Most often they are just local stories. A college that has been reduced to a few hundred students and perhaps two dozen faculty members comes to its final, final end.  In most cases, that final end has been dragged out long past the point where there was any realistic hope of saving the institution. As a former college president once told me, “Colleges die hard.” The faculty and administrators rarely have other career options.

The University of Cambridge appointed a new vice-chancellor earlier this month: Deborah Prentice, the current provost of Princeton University. Prentice brings degrees from Yale and Stanford and thirty-four years at Princeton with her across the pond, but no experience of the United Kingdom, let alone of Cambridge. As both a Princetonian and a Cantabrigian, I’m here to tell you that this is not good. On the one hand, Cambridge can, perhaps, benefit from Prentice’s acquaintance with Princeton’s finances. As Malcolm Gladwell recently explained, with its $37.7 billion endowment, Princeton is the world’s first perpetual motion machine. Cambridge has over 500 years on Princeton, yet its endowment is a measly £3.6 billion.

Last July 17, my daughter, Solveig Gold, married (then) Princeton professor Joshua Katz. It was a glorious, indeed transcendent (as one friend put it) celebration of the glory of God and the power of love — attended by a large gathering of the canceled, the not-yet-canceled and a lucky few who are seemingly uncancellable. Last month, as the world now knows, he was fired. If you haven’t yet read Solveig’s piece in Bari Weiss’s Substack, put mine aside and read hers first. It is beautiful and inspiring. Mine, by contrast, is merely mad as hell. In July 2020, Joshua published a piece in Quillette taking vigorous exception to the now infamous July 4 “Princeton faculty letter.

Princeton won’t be Princeton without anyone present, grumbled president Eisgruber, lying on the rug. Harvard and Princeton yesterday announced their plans for the 2020-21 academic year, and they don’t look good. Harvard will welcome ‘first-year students’ on campus in the fall and seniors in the spring; Princeton will welcome ‘first-year students’ and juniors in the fall and sophomores and seniors in the spring. (God forbid either university use the term ‘freshmen’.) Remote learning will be the norm and parties will be prohibited. Princeton, at least, offers a 10 percent tuition reduction. Harvard is increasing its tuition by 4 percent.

On November 18, 2015, a group of Princeton University undergraduates calling themselves the Black Justice League, or BJL, invaded historic Nassau Hall and occupied President Christopher Eisgruber’s office overnight, refusing to leave until Eisgruber had agreed to, and signed off on, their list of ‘demands’. Most famously, they demanded the purging of Woodrow Wilson’s name from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and from one of the residential colleges, Wilson College. At the time, Eisgruber promised to form committees to discuss the students’ demands; skillfully sidestepping the controversy. Today, however, nearly five years later, Eisgruber has announced that Wilson’s name is coming down.

An anonymous Instagram account surfaced this weekend that accused multiple Ivy League students of racism, without evidence.‘Ivy League Racists’ (@ivyleagueracists) — which has since been deleted — posted pictures of white male students alongside descriptions of the racist acts they purportedly committed.For instance, one post read: ‘[name redacted] of [location redacted] raped an innocent black freshman at Penn. The victim is now suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. Contact Penn Police at 2155733333.’Another post was aimed at a former Princeton sportsman, naming his hometown, parents and siblings. Neither post provided any tangible proof of the students’ alleged misconduct. The Spectator reached out to both men for comment.