“It may be grading on a curve,” Senior Writer for Princeton Alumni Weekly Mark F. Bernstein writes in fall 2023, “but at least as of mid-November when this issue went to print, Princeton had avoided the uglier incidents that had taken place at other schools.” He praises the restraint of the campus discourse on Palestine: volatile, but not out of control. He praises the campus: contained. What Princeton can be praised for is something it has avoided, something it has not done.
Princeton appears on the surface to have a long history of resisting change and sticking to the status quo. In response to a sparsely attended February 2023 demonstration for divestment from fossil fuels, Elizabeth Stewart writes in The Daily Princetonian (The Prince), “[s]uch lackluster turnouts at demonstrations are the norm, not the exception at the University, contributing to Princeton’s notoriety as a deeply apathetic campus—one where the vast majority of students are seemingly uninvolved in and unaware of campus politics while a select few activists take the spotlight.”
Bernstein tries to explain this phenomenon: Princeton has a “relative lack of graduate students, who tend to be more politically engaged,” one source said; there is the “relative absence of ‘scholar-activists’ on the faculty”; “the war broke out when students were distracted by midterms and fall break.” One of Stewart’s interviewees, Professor Joshua Guild, attributes this to “‘a certain kind of preprofessional culture here’ that keeps students focused on their post-graduation trajectories.” Princeton’s corporate aims are well-served by presenting its student body as apathetic, apolitical, and careerist. Princeton remains civil above all else: ground zero for respectability politics.
The story of Princeton’s apathy might be just that: a story that is both self-perpetuating, designed to attract a certain kind of student, and also repeatedly disproven by its student body, as documented by The Prince this past April. Notably, the movement to divest from South African Apartheid at Princeton spanned 16 years and actions by different organizations—including an 11-hour occupation of New South in 1969 and a 27-hour sit-in at Nassau Hall in 1978 with more than 200 students. In 1981, 88 students blockaded Nassau Hall in protest, all of whom were arrested.
By praising the relative peace and containment of campus and offering difficult conversations as the solution to keeping it that way (“The point after all, is […] to keep talking and listening”), Bernstein makes Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW) a parrot for the appeasement of the university administration.
Perhaps to the inattentive ear, the language of the administration has an inoffensive, inclusive ring: University President Christopher L. Eisgruber wrote in May, “I ask for your compassion toward those around you, and your help to build bridges across campus differences and to heal the ruptures we now confront.” There are listening campaigns. Students are asked to engage in conversations across divides. The metaphors are all reparative.
But these words obscure the school’s true values. Individual conversations buy time from collective protest and action, from negative press, from any meaningful change.
The ideal outcome for the neoliberal institution is a continuation of its establishment norms. These norms are left conveniently inexplicit, the better to favor an individual’s vigilant self-regulation and self-censorship. The onus is on the individual to change themselves, which might trickle down to a change in the world.
Protest becomes both an indecorous expression of a private opinion via one’s outside voice, as well as an irrelevant, external force preying upon a private space. Protesters become people without social cues, encroaching upon the hallowed, private property of Princeton.
This is what might undergird what Eisgruber means in his May statement, as well as when he invokes the term “tradition.” Otherwise, the idea of Princeton “tradition” lends itself to untenable euphemism. In 2016, Eisgruber stated, tradition is at “the heart of this great liberal arts University” and at the heart of Princeton’s informal motto, “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.”
The informal motto is in part a citation of Woodrow Wilson. As President of Princeton, Wilson refused to remove de facto Jim Crow barriers for Black students at the University. In 1904, Wilson flippantly dismissed the idea of Black students at Princeton stating: “The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no negro has ever applied for admission, and it seems extremely unlikely that the question will ever assume a practical form.” As President of the United States, Wilson kept enacting racist policy when he re-segregated all government offices. This is the racist legacy from which the university draws—smuggling in strains of radical conservatism through Wilsonian notions of “nation” and “humanity.”
Coverage of recent protests appear eager to emphasize oblivious, Princetonian distance, if not business “as usual.” In a PAW article titled “Rise Above,” the coverage of Palestine solidarity protests at Reunions in June emphasizes that for the “sea of paraders sporting orange and black tiger stripes,” the events “proceeded as usual, with marching bands and music from floats often drowning out the chants.” Over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters enacted multiple disruptions throughout the weekend, including the dyeing of Princeton Fountain of Freedom red, attendance of President Eisgruber’s annual Q&A with red hands, and a temporary obstruction of the P-rade. The article elides the protesters by repeatedly emphasizing that “many alumni told PAW they were unaware of the incidents. Indeed, for a large majority of the roughly 25,000 alumni, family, guests, faculty, staff, and graduating seniors, Reunions 2024 was celebrated as usual, under warm and sunny skies.”
Embedded within the PAW editorial decision to title this coverage “Rise Above,” a phrase which functions like “tradition,” is the suggestion that to take on Princeton’s heedless attitude is to not only stay the course, but to take the moral high ground. The divestment protests are construed to be the meaner stuff with which one must take care not to get dragged down. Protest is a petulant effort to throw one’s weight around—to “exert special leverage,” to quote Eisgruber. Students are configured to be spoiled, Ivy brats with no real sense of the world. The conversation must be on their terms by way of “established channels,” which is another phrase obfuscating the University’s reactionary politics through deferral tactics.
Students have repeatedly attempted to have conversations with the administration through “established channels” only to be met with stonewalling. Furthermore, these competing agendas often reveal themselves to be insoluble and beyond reductive compromise—thus boiling over into protest.
This is not only an administrative tactic; it is also one performed by campus media, perhaps following the institution’s lead. This is evident in a PAW article by Peter Barzilai from May 6, 2024, which repeats the administrative move of playing up conversations at the expense of any of their content or what is at stake in them. Barzilai reports on a May 6 University administration meeting with Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) members, quoting University representatives at length only to quote one student protester saying “Eisgruber gave us nothing.” The latter quote, excerpted from a longer one published in The Prince, stands at the center of the PAW piece without elaboration, receding into the nothing of prose about a meeting evacuated of any of its content.
This empty discourse joins Bernstein’s and Princeton’s refrain of “talking and listening,” which is presented as an end in itself. What remains unacknowledged is the originary catalyst that has propelled recent protests: Princeton’s collusion with apartheid and genocide.
Preliminary findings by PIAD, as detailed in their divestment proposal presented on June 18, have found top holdings with “heavy investment in AI, defense, and military startups,” for which Gaza has been a disastrous testing ground. Princeton’s pithy coaxing to “talk and listen” does not meet the urgency of the current genocide in Gaza. As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza exceeds 40,000 people, with medical journal The Lancet putting the number as high as 186,000.
As long as the problem remains one of discourse untainted by the specter of violence outside of the impenetrable orange bubble, dialogue will be pro forma sit-down meetings that do nothing in the way of meeting the student movement’s demands. Until Princeton divests, there is nothing to talk about.