The Pyne Prize is “the highest general distinction conferred on an undergraduate ... awarded to the senior who has most clearly manifested excellent scholarship, strength of character and effective leadership.” In other words, the winner is the model Princetonian.
Alex Barnard ’09, who was a co-recipient last year with Andy Chen ’09, and Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10, this year’s recipient, both seem like excellent scholars and, more importantly, decent people. I have no doubt they deserve their awards and wish them nothing but the best of luck. The purpose of this column is not to comment on them as people, something I couldn’t do anyway because I don’t know them that well. Rather, I wish to comment on the message Nassau Hall tried to send with its selections and the accompanying statements published on the University website.
The narrative surrounding Barnard can be best described as “much ado about a hairdo.” Every biography featured a picture of him with his mohawk and stressed his penchant for dumpster-diving. His thesis research involved spending the summer with “freegans,” a group of people who seek to live outside the market economy by trying to live off others’ garbage. The not-so-subtle subtext was clear: Barnard was a radical. President Tilghman said that this activist’s “quest for understanding in the service of social change will make him a force to be reckoned with wherever life leads him.” If Barnard represents any type of change agent, he represents a radical one.
Academic institutions, particularly ones with as long a history as Princeton’s, have conservative tendencies. One could easily dismiss Barnard’s selection as an aberration, but I think there is more to the story.
Last February, America’s troubles were so great that they managed to pierce the Orange Bubble. Princeton’s finances were in doubt, and many students’ financial security disappeared as the stock market plummeted. Previously sacrosanct experts — everyone from Robert Rubin to Alan Greenspan — came under attack. It was a radical time that called for radical change. And with President Obama’s inauguration, it seemed that radical change was possible.
Things are different now. It turns out change isn’t as easy as we thought it would be.
Nassau Hall’s Pyne Prize decision suggests a new model for these decidedly less hopey-changey times. The official statement about Diemand-Yauman’s selection quoted psychology professor Michael Litchman as saying, “He is not what I would term a ‘radical’ political force, demanding instant change or insisting that the University act immediately on a particular issue. Rather, he successfully works within the system, and what he accomplishes is radical in that the entire undergraduate student body benefits.” Whether accurate or not, it is telling that the administration believes that Diemand-Yauman is not a “radical political force.”
What a difference a year makes. Last February, we were rewarding people who tried to circumvent capitalism. Now the best change we can come up with is to redefine the meaning of radical. “Working within the system,” to borrow Litchman’s phrase, may have previously been a model for yielding occasional success. But it is not usually considered radical.
Nor, considering our current predicament, is the model of “working within the system” likely to yield results. A previously hopeful legislative agenda laid out by President Obama has been stymied by a small minority of 41 Republican Senators. According to his administration’s own projections, unemployment is likely to remain above 7–8 percent for the foreseeable future. Even though no one is happy with the status quo, Washington and New York seem unable to turn things around. It’s becoming clear that the problem isn’t just healthcare or just the economy; it’s the political and financial systems as a whole.
A good liberal-arts education is about arming yourself to both see and question society’s structures. The University should encourage us undergraduates to combine our energy and the knowledge gained to shape our times, not just to work within the established confines.
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, Nassau Hall is exhorting us to see things and ask, “Why?” Instead, they should push us to dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?”
Adam Bradlow is an anthropology major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at abradlow@princeton.edu.
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