Letters to the Editor

Service, adventure after Princeton

Some of you might be wondering where you will be a year or two years after Princeton, and not have the faintest idea. If so, you're in the same position I was a couple of years ago. So I thought I'd tell you where I am and what I'm doing right now, as well as extend an offer to join me to those of you still looking for something to do this summer and/or afterwards.

Princeton, like life, has many little pockets of interest that can hide right underneath your nose. I've been involved with two of those pockets since graduating. Last year I was the fellow for Princeton Programs with the International Community and spent 8 months living in Central America and 5 months back in Princeton organizing, fundraising for and getting ready to lead a student volunteer trip there. Now, I am in my third month working at the Princeton-Blairstown Center in northern New Jersey. My typical day involves getting up and walking out of my cabin (complete with electricity, toilet, shower, stove and heat) to encounter a beautiful view from the edge of a lake. I then walk across a bridge over the lake at the side of a dam to meet a group of 8-12 school kids and their chaperone and take them on an all day adventure in the woods. There they are faced with challenges like walking across a cable one foot off the ground with the help of a rope and the support of their teammates, getting to know a tree blindfolded using their sense of touch and then trying to find that tree again once their blindfold has been removed, or getting their entire group out of a giant "spiderweb" without disturbing the spider. At the end of each challenge we "debrief," which is a time of reflection about what group had trouble and success with, the difficulties of working in a group and having everyone involved and heard, and how the challenge could be a metaphor for another aspect of life.

Sometimes we'll take a night hike through the woods, walking without a flashlight, and listen to the night noises. It is a rewarding job because I see kids learning, growing and enjoying being in nature. Also, as a relatively shy person, I've had to overcome my own quiet tendencies to be a leader. If no groups are scheduled, I spend my day working on the organic garden digging, planting or weeding. That's my "area" of responsibility.

The Princeton-Blairstown Center was founded in 1908 by undergraduates as a summer camp, though the Center is now a non-profit organization an hour and a half north of the university.

In the summer, the focus is on at-risk urban youth from Trenton and Newark who come to the center and stay for a week or two to learn and experience leadership skills, living in the outdoors, teamwork and adventure. If this sounds like something you'd like to be a part of this summer, guess what? You're in luck. Search for "Princeton Blairstown Center" on the Princeton web or call (908) 362- 6765 and join me in a couple of weeks. Oh, and by the way, when people ask me if I think my undergraduate years will be "the best four years of my life", I say no. I've already had as good or better in the two years since. Catherine Archibald '00

Evaluating calls for divestment

A statement is being circulated at the University calling on Princeton to "divest" from companies doing business in Israel. The statement, which has been signed by a number of our faculty colleagues, aims to remind us of the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1980s and to identify Israel with South Africa as it then was. We find it incomprehensible that anyone with even minimal knowledge of the two cases can make such a comparison.

Let us recall that the opponent of the South African regime in the 1980s was the African National Congress. This organization, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, became deeply committed to the establishment of a democratic and multi-racial state and was ready for a historic compromise with the white minority. If Israel were dealing with such an organization, and a leader like Mandela, there would long have been peace in the Middle East.

Instead, Israel confronts the Palestine Liberation Organization (and all its official and unofficial offshoots and surrogates), led by Yassir Arafat, who rejected a historic compromise, a two-state solution, in the fall of 2000. The settlement proposed then would have involved an Israeli withdrawal in strict accord with UN Resolution 242, from "territories occupied in the recent [1967] conflict."

Since that time, Palestinian politics has been driven increasingly by nationalist hatred religious fanaticism. It has culminated in terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians that clearly promote a strategy of massacre and evacuation. We find it astonishing that colleagues of ours have signed a statement that fails even to mention, let alone condemn, this terrorism, but seeks instead to weaken the state that resists it.

At the same time, we recognize the political and moral necessity of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. We favor the two-state solution that was being negotiated at Camp David and Taba. But it won't help to bring that moment closer if the international community (including the international academic community) refuses to recognize openly the evil of terrorism and its cult of death.

Signed

: Ezra Suleiman Ted Rabb David Bellos Martha Himmelfarb Harvey Rosen Paul Starr Jeffrey Herbst Robert Willig Sean Wilentz Sheri Berman Stuart Schwartz Elias Stein Elizabeth Bogan Gary Bass Mark Watson Maurizio Viroli Nolan McCarty Peter Kenen Tali Mendelberg Aaron Friedberg Adam Berinsky Adam Meirowitz Alan Blinder Anna Seleny Burton Malkiel Christine Stansell Kathryn Stoner-Weiss Patrick Deneen Tom Spiro Joshua Tucker Deborah Nord Neta Bahcall Phil Holmes Julian Wolpert Jose Scheinkman Suzanne Keller Yolande Cohen Emily Mann Ruth Holmes Marcel Fournier Jacques R. Fresco Lionel Gossman Peter Schaefer