A surprised expression of regret for offense caused

Editors' Note: Professor John Fleming's weekly column from last Monday ('A Free Ride at Princeton') drew sharp criticism from some graduate students, including leaders of the Graduate Student Government. We invited them to frame their concerns in a brief essay, and asked Professor Fleming to reply in kind.

In anticipation of my being away from Wednesday to Sunday last, my editors chose to schedule my weekly column for Tuesday rather than Monday. But that plan was abandoned, so as to invite me to respond in "counterpoint" to concerns about last week's column raised by the Press Secretary of the Graduate Student Government.

As the Press Secretary expresses uncertainty as to how to take my meaning and motive, I shall in this paragraph attempt, in irenic spirit and unironic language, to offer explicit clarification. My column was intended to be lighthearted, indeed humorous. Like many of my columns published over many years, its principal subject matter was Princeton history, viewed from a perspective of changing mores and structures, a topic of interest to a large number of my readership, especially among alumni. Though I sometimes write with a controversial motive, my ambition for this column was far from that of giving offense; and I am as astonished as I am regretful that it could have done so. I have no comprehensive opinion concerning Princeton graduate students, but in general I hold them in respect and esteem, and in many specific instances in friendship and affection. I do not really believe that the graduate student "thing" is to depress the value of my real property. I really do believe that the shuttle-bus service for Butler and Lawrence is a welcome amenity. I do not really believe that Princeton students widely exhibit the characteristics of ancient Sybarites. I really do believe that the international character of the graduate student body is a strength in which we should take pride and hope. My essay did not poke fun at students or make light of their just aspirations to shuttle-buses.

I have for many years written columns for the student newspaper, attempting a mode of the periodic essay with a long tradition in English literary history. I have regarded my efforts, rightly or wrongly, as logically consistent with my professional contributions as a teacher of undergraduates, graduates, and alumni, as a college master and as an active participant in university governance. My hopes, like Horace's, are to instruct and to delight; my ambition is to stimulate discussion and intellectual community.

But any writer presenting work to a public must be prepared for an adverse public reaction. The Press Secretary for the Graduate Student Government, representing a part of my public, has told me what she thinks of my essay; I shall now tell her what I think of hers. I think it is angry, stuffy, and terminally humorless. Based in a tone-deaf reading, it violates Chaucer's first law, laboriously making earnest of game. Dear Press Secretary, please lighten up a bit. I ask you to constrain the grim hermeneutics of suspicion that ransacks my essay for Rorschach inkblots in which to find vague outlines of hideous thought-crimes present only in your mind, not mine. I really am sorry if I have hurt your or anyone else's feelings; but I find it nearly fantastic that you can wax wroth over the joking oxymoron "student sybar-itism," or conclude that my mention of a "fast, fun, comfortable" bus ride "clearly telegraphs . . . discomfort at feeling like a minority." I haven't telegraphed anything in years. Stop. But as a scholar who has spent my life studying and explaining intentionally difficult medieval allegories, I find your readings warranted by neither text nor context.

It is especially wrong of the Press Secretary to impute a malign meaning to my empirical observation that numerous Chinese students ride the Butler bus, speaking Chinese the while. In a country in which native speakers of English vastly outnumber native speakers of Mandarin, the phenomenon is one that would fail to pique the curiosity of only a somnolent mind. As to Admiral King, I cannot certainly know what he would think, but I meant to hint that, like those Princeton officials who named a street after him, he might be very surprised indeed at the geopolitical developments of a half century that have so greatly advanced an international perspective and transformed the sociology of an institution dedicated to the nation's service and the service of all nations.

I continue to believe that both a sense of humor and a capacity for irony, qualities helpful in so many aspects of life generally, are particularly useful for professional academics. Nor have I found them incompatible with my roles as a proud alumnus of the Graduate School, an active member of APGA, and the personal teacher of hundreds of Princeton students, several of whom are now among the world's leading scholars of their generation. From numerous private apologetic and embarrassed emails, I know that not all current graduate students share the anger of the Press Secretary and the several entities she represents, but to any who do I repeat my expression of regret. Pax vobiscum.

John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 Professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.