Welcome to Change

Welcome to Princeton if you're new here, and welcome back if the ways of Old Nassau are already known to you. As you can see, I am not the Louis W. Fairchild '24 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, though I confess that so majestic a title would suit me just fine. When my remarkable colleague John V. Fleming GS '63 retired in June after 41 years on the faculty, his perspicacious column in the 'Prince' retired as well, thus depriving our campus of a booming, distinctive voice. Not having the good fortune to be blessed with a basso profundo, I cannot but worry about my inability to fill Professor Fleming's shoes, which he tells me are a size 13. But since I regularly exhort my own students to take risks, I could hardly give in to terror and turn down the offer to give regular pieces of my mind to the readers of what may (or may not) be America's second-oldest daily college newspaper. If I do my job right, I will say some things you agree with and others you consider ridiculous — and you will find it worth your while to give pieces of your mind back.

One member of my department regularly mocks me for being "Mr. Princeton," a designation I find both unsettling and ironic. Ironic because I do not have a Princeton degree and, indeed, actively disdained Princeton before I began teaching here, in the spring of 1998. (I was an undergraduate at Yale, home of the self-described "Oldest College Daily." Contrary to widespread t-shirt wisdom among 08544-ers, it does not "suck.") And unsettling because professors are the last types who should become corporate yes-men. (I refuse to write "yes-people." No doubt some of you are sharpening your quills.) I have every intention of using this space to say no as well as yes, but in this inaugural message I would like briefly to reflect on my own change of heart and to draw some lessons about both personal and institutional change.

Here's a statement that seems trite but is in fact worth thinking about: Change is inevitable. Things change, people change. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes they change for the worse and sometimes they just change. (Others of you are now sharpening your quills — Talk about change: Would you, dear reader, have any idea how to sharpen a quill? — to tell me that some things don't change, like Avogadro's Number and PUDS fare.) My feelings about Princeton have changed, and continue to change, because I have had the chance to live in, become part of and shape this community. When I was in high school, Princeton was not a university the most academically minded students were interested in; it had no department of linguistics, the subject in which I wished to concentrate; its reputation was for social elitism, heavy drinking and athletics; and when I visited once, I attended, in addition to an entertaining microeconomics lecture by Professor Uwe Reinhardt, a truly awful German class taught by someone who is now, thankfully, at another university.

Since then, though, I have watched Princeton become ever more serious about attracting young scholars, while also coming to relax my own view that academics are pretty much all that matters; I have learned to appreciate many Princeton traditions, while also coming to recognize both that the student body is not monolithic and that traditions are anyway as liable here as anywhere to be invented and to change; and I regularly recommend Princeton's excellent German courses to my advisees. (Unfortunately, there is still no department of linguistics. But I'll take up that vexing matter in another column.) Neither I nor Princeton is exactly the same as we once were, and it is good, I think, to reflect on and assess the causes and nature of the shifts. In any case, it is a simple fact that I now love this place — thanks to many mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart conversations I've had with truly remarkable colleagues and students like you, thanks to all the over-salted food I've consumed in your lively company up and down the Street and thanks to your camaraderie as we cheer together for the Tigers in Jadwin Gymnasium (yea, verily, even against Yale).

Whoever you are and whatever your interests, I urge you to show your prejudices by joining and reveling in groups of like-minded people. At the same time, though, I urge you to consider actively what others are thinking and doing. Perhaps this will make you infuriated as well as informed; perhaps it'll make you change your mind; ideally, you'll make your thoughts known by sharpening your quills, exercising your vocal cords and doing what needs to be done. Because here's one more trite but true statement: Like it or not, Princeton will continue to change — but how is up to you. Joshua Katz is a professor in the Department of Classics, Senior Fellow of Forbes College and the John Witherspoon Bicentennial Preceptor. He can be reached at jtkatz@princeton.edu.