Reimagining our cities, ourselves

In a country where nearly 40 million men, women and children live in poverty, it is almost impossible for us to conceive of an America free of destitution. An end to poverty was the part of Dr. King's dream that we didn't buy. When we memorialize him, most of the time, we elide the last years of his struggle, the time he spent rallying garbage workers and poor people in Memphis and Chicago to demand something beyond equal rights: the possibility of a better life.

Dr. King would cringe to know that in 1968, the year of his death, the working poor were actually at an economic high water mark. The Census Bureau records that families in the bottom income quintile then commanded 4.2 percent of the national income. Now, that figure has declined by a fifth, and we have descended into Dr. King's worst nightmare. The urban poor constitute what sociology professor Douglas Massey calls a "permanent underclass," a population far removed from the kind of hopes and dreams that Princeton students would recognize.

The discouraging signs in our cities including, if we care to take a 10 minute train ride, Trenton — failing schools, a resurgence of gang violence, epidemic levels of obesity and asthma — engender feelings of indifference or pity. Outrage is absent because we have largely given up any notion that we need to integrate our inner cities into the context of our lives. Those who do work for change — like Raj Vinnakota '93, founder of the nation's first urban boarding school, or Marty Johnson '81, founder of the Trenton community development corporation Isles, Inc. — make a difference in their spheres but cannot fuse an America split by prejudice and policy.

The job of Princeton University, as I am reminded many times each week, is to do topflight research and give students a first-class education. It is not Princeton's job, I am told, to heal our broken cities, to resuscitate the American dream.

The thing is, I can think of no better place to turn.

America has always looked to Princeton in times of national crisis. In 1918, all but 60 undergraduates served in the armed forces. At the outset of World War II, Princeton President Harold Dodds telegrammed Franklin Roosevelt to tell him "Princeton is yours," and allowed the Army to transform the campus for military use.

Now, in 2005, America's cities need President Tilghman to tell them that Princeton is theirs. The crisis in urban America takes a different form than the great wars of the last century, but the casualties are sometimes worse. The choice to fight poverty and its symptoms should be as clear as Dodds' choice to support the war effort in the '40s.

Let's not delude ourselves into thinking the resources are not here — our endowment is $10 billion and growing by $1 billion per year. In a sense, the boldest step we must take is not to commit resources, but to imagine that America could win a war on poverty and that we at Princeton could lead the charge.

We must take a leap of imagination because history has turned on such leaps. pyschology professor Eldar Shafir reminded me that in the late 18th century, freedom as we know it was an unusual condition. Over three-quarters of the world lived under a master, and few questioned servitude as a common condition of human existence. Only a century later though, slavery existed legally almost nowhere. The permanence of societal hierarchies is more perceived than real — it is within the grasp of our generation to eliminate urban poverty, and within the ability of Princeton to lead the movement to do so. Thomas Bohnett is a sophomore from Princeton Junction. He can be reached at tbohnett@princeton.edu.