Newsletter: Happy New Year
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On Jan. 7, 1919, the editors of The Daily Princetonian announced, with “exceeding” regret, that their daily paper would run only three times a week. “War and influenza have played havoc with the PRINCETONIAN’s press force,” they lamented.
When another admission cycle came to a close last month, I felt a familiar sense of unease with my place on campus, as it brought back memories from the first few months after I was admitted to Princeton. My father is a professor here, and my uncle was an undergraduate student, so my admission was almost guaranteed, so long as I maintained a good academic record in high school.
The emotional power of the recent March for Our Lives movement is undeniable — the sheer numbers speak for themselves: at least 1.2 million people marched in one weekend. Although unprecedented in scale, it’s also hard not to see the march as a continuation of the horrific cycle that has occupied the U.S. social and political atmosphere for the last few years: a young boy, usually in a relatively well-off suburban neighborhood, terrorizes the local school, killing innocent young (mostly white) children and tearing apart the sense of safety and protection expected in schools. Then, emotional trauma, outrage, and calls to action ensue. And then nothing else substantive happens, and the cycle repeats.
In his recent letter regarding the state of the University, President Eisgruber pointed to this year’s pre-read on free speech as an extension of the important conversations on campus surrounding academic freedom. He used Charles Murray’s failed attempts to speak at Middlebury College as an example of the breakdown of intellectual spaces for the free exchange of ideas. Eisgruber calls the incident “outrageous and unacceptable,” pointing to how Murray was “prevented from speaking and assaulted.” There is a problem with this example, though, and I believe a recent event on campus provides insight into Eisgruber’s flawed perspective into what academic freedom really is.
I am sitting in the back row of Professor Rosen’s anthropology seminar, when a word pierces through the auditorium. “N****r,” he says. This word, for me, triggers a feeling of immediate unease and discomfort, and as he continues to use the word a few more times, I scan the room for reactions. There are some pained faces, hushed words, and a student raises his hand to question Rosen’s reasons for using the word. He responds, saying that it was necessary: He wanted to illicit a “gut-punch” reaction in order for students to understand the power of speech, a power that can be far stronger than action.