University responds to Iraq war with alert notifications, protests

Throughout the months leading up to the war with Iraq and during the war, the University remained subdued, acknowledging changes in the national alert level and accommodating campus discussion and protest.

There were no great flareups. Police arrested a few students protesting the war, but most resources were focused on readiness in case terror hit the University community, which it didn't.

Still a new turn to tightening campus security and heightening awareness was evident this year, even more than in the months after Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps most emblematic of this was the posting on the University homepage of a link to emergency guidelines.

A task force created after the Sept. 11 attacks led this effort, informing the community each time the government raised the national terror alert level. Vice President for Administration Charles Kalmbach '68, the task force's chair, said the University had not received any direct threats but acknowledged that it could be a target.

In February, FBI Director Robert Mueller '66 said universities could be a target of terrorism. The FBI has concluded that several envelopes containing anthrax sent in fall 2001 were mailed from a postbox across the street from the University, according to several reports.

The University has trained security personnel to spot suspicious behavior and to minimize campus traffic. When the war started, the task force's emphasis shifted from readiness to helping people directly affected by the war.

Employees in action

Two employees in the reserves were called up, though no current student in the University's Army ROTC program is eligible to be called to action. In addition, prominent alumni involved in the war garnered some attention, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld '54 and Maj. Gen. David Petraeus GS '87, the commander of the 101st Airborne out of Camp New Jersey, Kuwait.

The war also affected foreign study plans, as the University refused to pay for travel to places considered too dangerous, such as in the Middle East.

Protests

Three students were arrested during antiwar protests near the University on March 20, the day after war began. The students were sitting in the middle of Nassau Street, the main Princeton Borough thoroughfare, allegedly obstructing a highway and acting disorderly.

Antiwar groups on campus and local police have had friendly relations. The graduate student dominated-Princeton Peace Network, the leading antiwar campus group, held protests across the street from Rockefeller College most Saturdays in the months before war.

The Princeton Committee against Terrorism, composed mostly of undergraduates, was founded after Sept. 11 to support U.S. policy, including in Iraq. PCAT held less frequent demonstrations of support for the Bush administration and allied troops.

The grandest effort by PPN came on Feb. 15, when scores of students and local activists went to New York to take place in massive antiwar demonstrations there.

"I felt I wanted to do something," said Fernando Delgado '04, one undergraduate at the New York protests. "This is an organized way to express dissent."

Samantha Taber '04, another undergraduate at the protests, decried the lack of campus debate, saying she had found people watching an ESPN tire-throwing contest on the television at Frist Campus Center briefly after Secretary of State Colin Powell had pressed the U.S. case against Iraq to the United Nations.

University debate

Though some debate took place in campus publications, including several focused on international relations that sprung up after Sept. 11, professors inside and outside of class spearheaded much of discussion. About 50 of them also signed a national petition opposing a war that had circulated among universities.

Six days into the war, the dean of the Wilson School, Anne-Marie Slaughter '80, spoke on a panel with noted professors Michael Doran, an expert on the Middle East; Paul Krugman, an economist and New York Times columnist; and, Deborah Yashar, a specialist on democratization.

Doran was the staunchest supporter of the war, suggesting it could pave a new road of peace in the Middle East. An international lawyer, Slaughter argued that though the war was illegal because the U.N. Security Council didn't approve it, it could be legitimate.

"In the end, if the aims may be right," she said, "I cannot oppose it simply because the rest of the world does not agree."

Krugman and Yashar opposed the war. "I fear that this war will generate more terrorism, not less, in the short term, and that this will lead to more stability rather than greater stability and democracy," Yashar said.

The Princeton Colloquium on International Affairs held at the end of April also discussed many issues raised by the war in Iraq. The topic was the role of morality in foreign affairs.

(This article also included reporting by Senior Writers Andrew Bosse, Sam J. Cooper, Daniel Lipsky-Karasz and Zack Surak and by Staff Writers Mimi Chubb, Raquel Frisardi and Melissa Gao.)