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.
Just a few days ago, The Daily Princetonian reported that new security guards have been placed at the Labyrinth Books entrance along with an electronic gate. In addition, just within this past month, we’ve seen our own University ID cards being used to gain access to not only certain buildings on campus but also to our own rooms with the addition of a pin code. The latter example proves that Public Safety and the University are successfully working together to reduce the hassle it takes to issue new keys and charge students.
In the firestorm that followed the publication of the NFSS, I reflected a lot about the role of descriptive academic research in the gay parenting debate. So far, much of the debate has appealed to normative principles of justice, fairness, equality, civil rights, natural rights, children’s rights, etc. Very little of the conversation has been about just plain understanding what the gay parenting phenomenon is.
It is vital for students to take responsibility and channel their own ability and voice to speak out for or against important issues that matter to them. We support student efforts to raise awareness and promote campus discussion, as apathy can be one of the greatest barriers to progress. We encourage all Princeton students to find their own role in Princeton’s political activism and make a push against the stereotype of apathy toward a more politically active and aware student body.
This September, I watched the DNC catalyze debates and discussions on both sides of the political spectrum. Let’s bring some of that back to Princeton. After all, we don’t need to agree; we just need to talk.
If you probe your superstar friends and colleagues a bit, you will find that they often suffer from the impostor syndrome, too. It affects the newly arrived most of all, of course — new faculty members and especially new freshmen — but everyone has a twinge from time to time. So take pleasure in having amazing people as friends, and take solace from the fact that you’re not entirely an impostor either.
