“It really is a pleasure. I forgot my orange — I’m so sorry,” U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Elena Kagan ’81 joked as she addressed a crowd of approximately 900 attendees in a packed Richardson Auditorium. More people watched from a live simulcast from an overflow room in McCosh 50.
Kagan was given the Woodrow Wilson Award, one of the University’s top alumni awards, at the awards ceremony of Alumni Day 2025. David Card GS ’83, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was awarded the James Madison Medal, and the recipients of the Pyne Prize and Jacobus Fellowship were also honored at the ceremony.
The Woodrow Wilson award is presented annually to an alumnus or alumna who exemplifies former University President Woodrow Wilson’s phrase, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” After an introduction by Dean of the College Michael Gordin and a standing ovation, Kagan spoke in conversation with University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.
Kagan’s conversation with Eisgruber centered on her Princeton days, moments in her early judicial career, and the inner workings of the Supreme Court. A native of New York City, Kagan was a History major at Princeton and served as editorial board chair for The Daily Princetonian.
Kagan first spoke about her time at Princeton and how it shaped her life. She spoke about creating lasting friendships, learning how to write through her experiences at the ‘Prince,’ and completing her junior paper and senior thesis under history professor Sean Wilentz.
“I spent a lot of time in that building [48 University Place] in all hours of the night, and I learned to write fast, and I learned to write clearly,” Kagan said. 48 University Place is the location of the ‘Prince’ offices. Princeton, Kagan recalled, was “an incredibly formative experience in terms of my friendships and my life on campus.”
Moving beyond her undergraduate years, Kagan reflected on clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall, who she described as “the greatest lawyer of the 20th century” and “the world’s best storyteller.” The audience erupted into one of multiple bouts of laughter when she mentioned Marshall’s nickname for her: “shortie.”
When asked about what values have guided her throughout her career, Kagan singled out public service. Being “in the nation’s service and in the service of others,” Kagan said, “ends up not being a sacrifice, because it turns out, it’s been the most meaningful part of my life.”
Kagan did not mention President Donald Trump in her remarks but addressed the workings of the court, speaking to the difficulty of finding consensus and the art of crafting judicial arguments.
“Within a particular case, there is often an ability to compromise things out and, hopefully, to reach principled compromises,” Kagan said. “I don’t think anybody can say that the court isn’t working hard, and trying as best they can to take their vision of the law and put it into play,” she continued. “It’s a very serious institution, internally.”
Kagan also spoke about the importance of narrowing issues to reach agreement on a divided court, saying, “if you narrow the issues, it tends to get greater consensus. Whereas, if you want to decide like every issue, maybe you’re going to see all the disagreements emerge.”
Kagan has historically been considered a “consensus builder,” though she seems to have become increasingly critical of the conservative end of the court in recent years. Kagan is “widely admired by legal scholars for the clarity and accessibility of her opinions, and for her ability to find common ground over her 14 years of the court,” Gordin said in his introductory remarks.
When asked about her favorite case, Kagan referred to Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), which ruled that federal courts cannot intervene in claims of partisan gerrymandering. Kagan dissented, arguing that gerrymandering claims should be justiciable and addressed by the courts.
“The foundation of our democracy is supposed to be: [that] the voters pick the representatives, not the representatives arrange the voters so that they get to entrench themselves in office — but that is too often what gerrymandering does,” Kagan said.
Eisgruber — who has largely kept Princeton out of the national spotlight — has hinted at taking on a more public presence in the past few months. As the University grapples with Trump’s executive orders, Eisgruber has advised the community to “Keep Calm and Carry On” and wrote that the University is “proceeding carefully” to make sure that actions are “in compliance with applicable laws.” In his recent annual State of the University letter, Eisgruber wrote, “I am devoting larger amounts of time to Washington.”
Kagan’s Princeton appearance came shortly after the Supreme Court ruling on President Trump’s exercise of executive authority in his second term, determining on Friday that Trump cannot dismiss the government lawyer overseeing the agency responsible for whistleblower protections. Meanwhile, federal courts nationwide have temporarily halted several of Trump’s executive actions, including blocking efforts to suspend federal grants and loans, revoke birthright citizenship, and dismantle government support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Kagan concluded by talking about navigating polarized environments and the importance of listening to dissenting opinions. “We can take our own views, our own beliefs, but we have to be able also to listen to other people who are saying different things, and to learn from those people … you can’t persuade those people unless you understand them — and sometimes in understanding them, you’ll even come to have some second thoughts for yourself,” she said.
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, Kagan studied at the University of Oxford. She had been a recipient of the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholar Fellowship, one of the University’s most prestigious postgraduate honors that enables recipients to study for two years at Worcester College, Oxford. Kagan later clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall and became the first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School before being nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 by President Barack Obama. This public visit to Princeton is her first in six years.
Kagan’s conversation with Eisgruber followed a lecture by Card, the winner of the 2025 James Madison Medal, an award given to “an alumnus or alumna of the Graduate School who has had a distinguished career, advanced the cause of graduate education or achieved a record of outstanding public service.” Card is best known for his work in labor economics, particularly research on minimum wage, immigration, and education.
The recipients of the University’s two top honors for undergraduate and graduate students were also honored at the ceremony. Avi Attar ’25 and Jennifer Nwokeji ’25 received the Pyne Prize, and Pietro Cibinel GS, Rama Hagos GS, Tung Nguyen GS, and Zhiyi “Allen” Ren GS received the Jacobus Fellowship.
Sena Chang is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Tokyo, Japan. She typically covers campus and community activism, the state of higher education, and alumni news.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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