In March, Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Ph.D. candidate in the politics department, disappeared from an area frequented by international citizens in Baghdad, Iraq. Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Tsurkov was being held by the Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah.

The New York Times confirmed with her family that she was conducting research for her Princeton dissertation in Iraq. She is the second Princeton doctoral student to be held in the Middle East within five years. Doctoral student Xiyue Wang was held in Iran for more than three years after his arrest in 2016 while traveling for research through the Department of History, resulting in a lawsuit against the University.

In a guest contribution today, Jacob Olidort GS '15 argues that Princeton should not seek to be neutral in international affairs when students are being captured. Olidort references a controversy at the time of Wang's lawsuit. In February 2022, guest contributors who worked in the Trump administration criticized Princeton for employing Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat who had appeared to laugh when discussing death threats against an American diplomat. The American diplomat in question had worked to free Wang.  Allies of Mousavian claim the clip has been taken out of context.

Olidort backs Mousavian's opponents, writing that Princeton should both "curb adversaries’ influence on campus and advocate more assertively for their students’ education and safety."

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Analysis by Olivia Chen

• Grad student kidnapped by Iraqi militia while conducting research for dissertation

OPINION | The three ways Princeton can respond to the affirmative action ruling

Members of the board of Princeton’s Progressive Law Society argue that there are three ways to preserve diversity on campus – each with benefits, complications, and legal and financial risks for the University. They write, “We implore Princeton to take steps as far as the limits of the law provide to progress on the issue of race, not to turn backward as our highest court suggests we do. and to do so in a way that truly promotes diversity on campus and invests in the potential of historically underrepresented groups.”
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Progressive groups: Princeton needs class-based affirmative action: Two guest contributors Nate Howard ’25 and Lake Liao ’27 argue that the current “holistic” admissions process does not practice resource-conscious admissions to an equitable degree. They write, “Princeton should use its influence to promote an admissions process that utilizes class-based affirmative action more thoroughly, while continuing to lower financial barriers for applicants and students.”
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