Robert Durkee '69, in his role as the University's Vice President for Public Affairs, is Princeton's lead spin doctor, representing the University and its interests to the press, to legislators in Trenton and Washington and to community residents for whom the University campus is a backyard fixture. Although his more than 20 years of high-level service make him one of the most experienced members of the Tilghman administration, he began his career as a student and a journalist, working to dig beyond the official pronouncements of the University he now represents.
In the years that he wrote and edited for the 'Prince', Durkee managed to break some of the biggest stories in the paper's history, making a name for himself as a hard-driving reporter who would not accept passively the accounts of events offered by administrators.
Issues of race, sexual politics and rebellion against authority predominated, making Princeton during Durkee's undergraduate years a much more charged place than today's campus.
"Those were interesting days for trying to put out a newspaper, because of the political climate on the campus," he explains.
His time at Princeton also included a turn at writing the "On the Campus" column for the Princeton Alumni Weekly, a job that gave him primary responsibility for keeping Princeton's alumni up to date about what undergraduate students were thinking and feeling at the time.
After graduating, Durkee spent just three years away from the University — teaching fifth grade in Trenton — before he was pulled back to Princeton.
"[President] Bowen came in in '72, and wanted someone to come in as assistant to the President," Durkee explains. "A recent alumnus who could write quickly."
It was his experience writing for the 'Prince', and describing the campus for Princeton's alumni, that led Bowen to tap him for the job, he says. Bowen wanted someone who could help keep the President's office in touch with all the people who expect to be kept up to date about the happenings in Nassau Hall.
"I agreed to join the new administration. After that, it's all on the job training," jokes Durkee. After a few years as Bowen's assistant, and a year in Washington polishing his lobbying skills, he was promoted to Vice-President for Public Affairs, a post he has held ever since.
The biggest story ever
The biggest story Durkee broke during his time at the 'Prince' — and what many consider the biggest in the paper's history — was the news in 1967 that Princeton would soon begin admitting women.
Durkee's beat that year included the President's office, and he had an interview with President Goheen, during which he was free to bring up any topic he desired. He still remembers that fateful May meeting.
"There had been some talk around campus that maybe Princeton was evaluating moving to some form of coeducation. If anything, it was probably thinking about it in fairly modest terms. It was that vague," Durkee explains.
But when he asked Goheen about the administration's current thinking on the co-education question, the President dropped a bombshell: It was "inevitable" that women would eventually attend Princeton.
"I wish I could say I immediately knew I had a page one story and could rush out the door saying to hold the presses, but that's not what happened. I probed the details," Durkee says. "I wanted to know how this was going to be implemented."
"This was during reading period . . . it was a couple of days before the article appeared. [Goheen] said at the time that he thought he was just talking on background."
Durkee, like most undergraduates, welcomed the news. Earlier that year, he had written a column expressing his view that unless and until Princeton went co-ed, he would not recommend the school to anyone. "I was delighted to hear it, myself," he says now.
Taking a prescient look at race
Durkee also won recognition for a feature titled "The negro at Princeton."
The article [see box, top right] marked a watershed moment in campus awareness of race, and attracted considerable public attention to the issue of minorities at Princeton. It was singled out as the best article published by a college paper in 1967.
When he wrote the article, African American Princeton students were a rarity, Durkee says.
"Princeton made a major effort beginning with the class of 1967," he explains. "A couple years after that, the numbers grew. It was still a very new phenomenon for this campus. There were white students having difficulty accepting the changes on this campus."
Back then, Durkee recalls, the University worked hard to find families in the Princeton area who could provide familiar culture for what were then described as "negro" undergraduates. The handful of African American administrators then at the University played a key role in this process, Durkee says.
"All of the issues that were there 20 to 30 years later were there in the late 1960's. People were working hard to make things work, but there was a lot of learning that had to go on."
Durkee says he has seen the University continue to change for the better during his time as an administrator. "The most positive [change] is certainly the still ever-increasing diversification and the improving minority experience at Princeton." He points to improvements in the University's financial aid program, such as the replacement of loans with grants as the most recent in a string of developments making Princeton a more friendly place for minorities.
The here and now
"It's been interesting for me to be able to participate in issues that start in this office but branch out," Durkee says, reclining on a couch in his Nassau Hall office.
One of the most interesting topics he has dealt with recently, he says, is the campus anti-sweatshop campaign that began four years ago under the leadership of Students for Progressive Education and Action. The group called on Princeton to stop having its logo merchandise manufactured in third-world sweatshops, and Durkee eventually came to agree with much of the group's platform.
Working with Durkee, the students got the University to join the Fair Labor Association, a group of 175 schools that work against sweatshop labor, monitoring factory conditions around the world. The University now refuses to do business with suppliers who violate the Fair Labor rules, Durkee says. He continues to be involved in the group, even though his work on the issue is now 'extra-curricular' to his job responsibility.
Durkee says he has come full circle from his days as a 'Prince' reporter.
"I guess it's fair retaliation, having scooped I get in a position of being scooped."
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