Princeton's alumni have done a wonderful job of financing a year or two of public service for graduates. That's great. But by themselves, these programs won't integrate service into students' lives at Princeton — much less turn it into one of the central threads that link and direct students' four years in the bubble, as academics, athletics and social life do now. To make this happen we need money and determination.
Some of the money could be what academics call FTEs — the paper money that pays for courses. This fall, as we all know, students in politics Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell's POL 337: "Disaster, Race and American Politics" course analyzed the context, progression and meaning of the damage done by Hurricane Katrina. More importantly, they arranged to travel to New Orleans, where they gutted ruined houses and salvaged left behind family treasures. On their return, they challenged politicians to do the same — to confront the meaning of Katrina not in hearing rooms or at photo ops, but on the ground. Think about it: Princeton students being rude, getting in the face of authority figures, telling them to face facts. Some real learning has gone on here: experiential learning, rare but vital in universities. So, for starters, we need to build a panoply of courses — including freshman seminars — designed to bring students face to face with life at the sharp end, not just outside the bubble but outside the comforts of middle-class America — and ideally, in some cases, outside America itself.
But we also need real money — money that will inspire students to apply their creativity to service projects. Duke could be our model here. Two recent gifts, each of $15 million, will support Duke students who devise ways to engage in serious, full-time civic projects in the summer or during the academic semester. The funds will cover travel, living expenses, faculty and staff mentoring. Richard Brodhead, the president of Duke, hopes to see a quarter of the student body take advantage of this program. That sounds like a reasonable number: Why shouldn't Princeton match it? Why, indeed, couldn't we beat it?
So here's my first request, to President Tilghman, Dean Malkiel and the University's wonderfully generous alumni: Please, make service a priority of the next campaign. Let's take a little of that vast flow of green that mows the lawns, cuts the stone and equips the labs, and let's use it to engage faculty and students, together, in thinking and working outside the bubble.
But it's going to take more than money — it always does — to make Princeton remember, every day, that there is life — and death — outside the bubble.
The residential colleges, in the first place, ought to do whatever they can to turn students' passions outwards. It's great that we have college spirit and intramurals and support systems, and we could use more of that. But the colleges could also push the other way: They could push students to think about, and go out to face, real problems in the real world. The presence of large numbers of upperclassmen in the college system should make this easier and more natural than it has been in the past.
And then there are the elephants in the room, the faculty. We too inhabit a civic realm, and we too could do a lot more for it — even if we stuck to the area we know best, postsecondary education. A former colleague, Theodore Rabb, worked for many years with local community colleges. He arranged for Princeton graduate students to teach in the colleges and for their faculty to enjoy immensely rewarding mid-career fellowships at the University. Imagine what a larger group of engaged faculty could do. We could provide extra seminars and labs for their students. We could work to gain entrance to selective four-year colleges and universities for their high-achieving students. We could even admit some of them here and mentor and work with them more intensely. And that's to say nothing of the schools, the prisons and the other institutions where we could — dare I say it? — be doing a lot more than we do.
Creating change at Princeton has never been easy — just ask the ghost of that supremely effective agent of change, Woodrow Wilson. A collective commitment of this kind would require not only money, but also thought and energy and creativity. It would force us to rethink the purpose this institution, what the careers of its faculty, staff and alumni could look like, and what skills and concerns students should take with them as they leave the campus. But it would build on strengths that already exist. Princeton students already put in thousands of hours every year, invisibly in most cases, on civic projects. Connecting these efforts with one another and with the curriculum would add concrete, local experience to an education that many find abstract and disconnected from the real world. Princeton will always produce people who can run task forces, crunch numbers and formulate policies. But they will do these big jobs better if they have worked in the dust of an African village or the back streets of a New Jersey city. Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.
Read More
Keep academic authority in human hands
Lily Halbert-AlexanderThe Trump administration’s attacks on research and higher education as well as a blind reliance on AI chatbots are reflective of a societal backslide: a commodification of knowledge that prioritizes “efficiency” over the messy process of getting to an answer, where nuances are flattened and the truth is fungible.
The Trump administration’s attacks on research and higher education as well as a blind reliance on AI chatbots are reflective of a societal backslide: a commodification of knowledge that prioritizes “efficiency” over the messy process of getting to an answer, where nuances are flattened and the truth is fungible.
What do we owe society for a Princeton education?
Jia Cheng ShenThe social and moral responsibility that comes with receiving a degree subsidized by both private generosity and public trust is significant.
The social and moral responsibility that comes with receiving a degree subsidized by both private generosity and public trust is significant.
Notes from a so-called enemy’s classroom
Jennifer JenningsIt wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about together. And caring about each other’s experiences and opportunities, it turns out, isn’t something you can outlaw.
It wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about together. And caring about each other’s experiences and opportunities, it turns out, isn’t something you can outlaw.