Who governs Princeton? Austerity and the need for democratization

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.

Princeton’s austerity program is already well underway. The University calls it a transition “from growth to focus,” but it has meant 5–7 percent cuts to departmental budgets, more than 3 percent of staff positions disappearing through layoffs and unfilled vacancies, and increased employee contributions for benefits such as medical insurance. Fewer people and resources are left to support a recently expanding student body, and more reductions are coming.

In his February letter announcing this “focus,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 emphasized Princeton’s financial strength, but pointed to lower expected long-term endowment returns, from 10.2 to 8.0 percent annually, as forcing the University’s response. But lower expected returns do not by themselves determine how much of Princeton’s $36 billion endowment to preserve or spend, or what to spend it on. Those are choices. Who has authority to make them, how, and who bears their costs are questions of governance. Those decisions should not be made solely by Princeton’s governing authorities. They should be made by elected representatives of the people who teach, research, run things and study here. Democratizing Princeton’s governance depends on us. 

Princeton’s administration argues that the University is ruled through shared governance. Faculty serve on committees; students and staff have representatives on certain University bodies; administrators consult the University community. But the governing authorities are not obligated to listen to our community. The president’s cabinet — the two dozen or so senior administrators and deans who run Princeton’s day-to-day affairs — is chosen by the Board of Trustees from among the president’s nominees. Faculty, staff, and students may participate in Princeton’s governance through elected bodies, including faculty committees, student governments, and the Council of the Princeton University Community. But these bodies exercise only the authority granted to them within Princeton’s existing governance structure; they do not have authority over the University’s overall allocation of resources or its priorities. Ultimate authority over those matters remains concentrated in the Trustees and senior administration.

The budget process makes that structure clear. In May 2025, the administration required every unit to prepare for 5 and 10 percent permanent cuts; by February 2026, it reported that units had made 5–7 percent cuts. Faculty and staff were then invited to provide input through governance processes and town halls — but only after the administration had established the cuts and the parameters for discussion. 

Austerity reorganizes work and shifts its costs onto those who do it. At Murray-Dodge Café, for example, after the May 2025 directive for permanent budget cuts, the student staff was cut roughly in half. Most baker shifts that had employed two students were reduced to one, increasing the workload of those who remained. Such a policy has effects far beyond cookies: reduced staffing affects teaching, advising, lecturers’ assignments, and student support.

Antidemocratic governance gives the people who do Princeton’s work little say over what work is needed, why it is needed, or how it is organized and evaluated, even though they possess knowledge of that work that administrators may not. Increasingly, administrators use systems that define, record, and evaluate work without giving those who do it authority over those decisions. For example, Interfolio replaces the annual submission of a CV with a continuously updated electronic record of teaching, research, and service, which the University uses for salary reviews, promotion, tenure, and other institutional purposes. Faculty are required to maintain and annually update this record, and the University encourages them to update it continuously as new activities occur. The transition also requires faculty to review, validate, and supplement information imported from existing CVs and institutional data. While under the previous system faculty could update their CVs and activities annually, the new system turns that work into the ongoing maintenance of an institutional record, imposing additional labor that takes time away from developing their teaching, research, and service and comes at the expense of worker well-being.

Antidemocratic governance has not protected academic freedom at Princeton, either. Princeton tells us that academic freedom is fundamental to its mission. The federal government has threatened Princeton’s research funding, sought greater control over universities, and attacked fundamental rights and freedoms. Yet academic freedom also requires the freedom to challenge the decisions that govern university life. At Princeton, those decisions remain concentrated in the administration, which is imposing permanent budget cuts while tightening controls on protest and dissent.

These are distinct threats to institutional freedom: government pressure from outside and administrative control from within. In 2024, Princeton arrested students participating in Gaza solidarity protests and subsequently expanded and clarified its restrictions on where and how protests could take place. Today, the University expressly reserves the authority to determine the “time, place, and manner” of protest. Academic freedom requires the freedom to challenge the decisions that govern academic life. At Princeton, those decisions remain concentrated in the administration, which has imposed permanent budget cuts while tightening controls on protest and dissent. Members of the University must also be free to speak, organize, demonstrate, and challenge those who govern them.

Faculty in all positions, staff, and students need to organize across the University around the costs and consequences of austerity, and demand elected representation with authority over how Princeton allocates resources and sets priorities. The question is not simply how much Princeton cuts, but who decides whether to cut, what, where, and what alternatives should be considered.

For students, austerity is not an abstract budget issue: Cuts to staffing and resources affect their courses, advising and campus life. Students therefore have a stake in organizing with those who teach and support them over whether and how cuts are made and where they fall.

Princeton’s administrators say that austerity protects the University’s long-term strength. Yet austerity is already costing those who sustain it through lost positions, heavier workloads, reduced support, and higher benefit costs, while administrative control over work and protest increases. Princeton’s strength depends on preserving the quality of its education and services and the freedoms of its community, not on deciding from above how those who sustain it must bear the costs of adjustment.

These issues are hardly new. More than a century ago, students at the University of Córdoba, Argentina, rebelled against a university elite and fought to democratize university government and reshape the university’s relationship to society. Their struggle transferred control from entrenched officials to democratically elected councils representing professors, students, and graduates, alongside academic freedom, scientific modernization, and a commitment to serving society. It transformed university governance in Argentina and beyond. That history brings us back to the fundamental questions at the heart of this debate: What is the university for, and who has the right to govern it? 

As president of the Princeton Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which fights for the rights of teachers, researchers, and staff in universities and to defend education, I believe these questions cannot be settled through committees and consultations controlled by the University. Faculty of all positions, staff, and students need to join forces in a democratically organized coalition to demand that those who teach, work, and study here have elected representatives with authority over the decisions that determine their work and education.

Vera S. Candiani is an associate professor of history at Princeton University and president of the Princeton chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Born and raised in Argentina, she is a historian of Latin America, and author of “Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City,” as well as an advocate for universal access to free higher education and its democratic governance. She may be reached at candiani[at]princeton.edu.

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