Given the importance of the leadership of the new Princeton and the ease with which students can vote, we will begin opening our Opinion page to the debate about the mayoral race.
Aug. 10, 2010 was a momentous day — probably one of the most significant days of my youth. It was the last day I ever put a relaxer in my hair.
Cool air has arrived even in Princeton, so it must be true: My 37th summer between years of teaching is over. No part of academic life matters more, and none provokes more derogatory comments.
Our studies at Princeton often seek to address human struggle, be it through technology, medicine, policy or the arts. To do so, we must often stray from the ivory tower and go out into the world. The opportunity to study abroad is vital to the academic and professional success of many students. Unfortunately, the current study abroad program does not always allow for students to engage with the cultures and issues that they study.
On Tuesday, Sept. 25, The Daily Princetonian published a guest column from Dr. Ana Samuel, a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute.
Ana Samuel’s Sept. 25 opinion piece in The Daily Princetonian, “Understanding gay parenting: research or romanticism,” contains an awful lot of politics and very little empiricism. There are literally dozens of published critiques of the Regnerus study, from those that suggest he didn’t really capture gay parents at all to others that argue he was motivated by purely political, rather than intellectual, goals.
Princeton last searched for a new president more than a decade ago when the University looked to replace Harold Shapiro GS ?64.
Last month, a firestorm erupted when Todd Akin, a Republican Congressman and Senatorial hopeful from Missouri, made his now-infamous comments about “legitimate rape.” The reaction from the Republican establishment, seeking to quash any renewed talk of a “Republican war on women,” was rapid: Mitt Romney and others urged Akin to remove himself from the race — a suggestion that he refused — and sought to clarify that Akin’s beliefs about rape were not those of the Republican Party. To be fair, we should not conflate Akin’s ideas with the GOP platform (although Newt Gingrich was back on the campaign trail for Akin on Monday, and Rick Santorum offered his endorsement yesterday).
Opinions are delicate creatures. Frequently asked for, seldom remembered, the opinion lives on its candor or provocativeness. Opinions lose themselves somewhere in the purgatory between conviction and statement and have the ability to create a martyr or destroy a statesmen.
Undecided voters could be forgiven for believing that the fundamental issue of the 2012 race is whether or not the government will stand between women and the pill. At the Democratic National Convention, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards warned of a Republican Party “committed to ending insurance coverage of birth control.” President Obama’s campaign website warns that Mitt Romney will “give employers the authority to limit women’s access to common forms of birth control.”
Whether we state it out loud or just think it to ourselves, there is a notion that minority students and athletes are somehow less deserving of an Ivy League education than their peers. Proponents point to laxer SAT and GPA standards for blacks and Latinos, claiming these students are chosen over more deserving applicants. There is a fundamental flaw in this way of thinking, a way of thinking that is not only insulting and demeaning to many students at Princeton but also one that perpetuates racial and social misunderstanding and mistrust between student groups.
It is important that bullying from abroad does not force policies and mindsets that infringe on local rights or norms, but at the same time there is an obligation for those that create art and media to be mindful of the worldwide community.
There is something very interesting in the manner in which the Office of Information Technology chose the replacement for Princeton’s Webmail system: The transparent process shows how important emailing tools are to our everyday workflows. But email today remains problematic in many ways, and it may be worth our time to think about how we want to communicate.
