I'm a proud member of Princeton's Great Class of 1978, cum laude with an A.B. degree in Mathematics. I can be proud of my own accomplishments and the accomplishments of Princeton University and still have doubts and reservations about the morals and values of the institution. It is about those morals and values I am writing here.

     I have a lot of positive, nice stuff to say about my alma mater before I get to the more-negative part. Click here if you want to skip directly to the part about Princeton and all the Trump politics, my reason for writing this missive.

     First of all, Princeton's classrooms were all they were cracked up to be. I sat in classrooms with luminary professors and smart classmates for my four years. Not only was the intellectual-climate-in-the-classroom part of my undergraduate education stellar, the facilities were marvelous, the campus was beautiful, and the Computer Center was state of the art, an important part of my life then and now. On the subject of this essay, my own educational experience was unsullied by concerns of lapses in values and judgment in the larger organization of Princeton University.

     The Princeton Experience is about having a community. By the way, they repeat those three words often in their self description, "The Princeton Experience," to emphasize that a Princeton education and, therefore, a Princeton degree, represents more than an accumulation of academic classroom knowledge. There is a strong push to have as much as possible of the undergraduate community housed on campus in dormitories and dining on campus. Again to Princeton's credit, this was a positive part of my Princeton Experience. My college colleagues were my college neighbors and my life was enriched by their proximity. If I wanted to see a classroom friend, then it was simple matter of strolling to a nearby dormitory and knocking on the door. There were social spaces, often with a piano, where music became a part of my life as well. I even had access to a photographic darkroom.

     Finally, again to Princeton's credit, I saw little sign of any anti-Jewish animus. (I say "little" instead of "no" sign as there were loud and intrusive protesters when Golda Meir came to speak at Princeton, loud enough that she commented on their noise, and I would have thought the university would have protected an important guest from that sort of abuse.) When one of my zealously-Zionist classmates was whining about antisemitism on campus, I pointed out, once, that I didn't feel any such thing from the community and, also, that over twenty percent of our students were Jewish complete with a Hillel Jewish place of worship in campus center and a kosher eating club. Think about that for a second, Princeton had Stevenson, a real kosher dining facility. I don't believe any other Ivy institution had anything like that and it was a center of Jewish life. I'll point out it wasn't a center of my life as I don't keep kosher and it was out of my way, but a lot of Jewish engineering students appreciated that it was close to the Engineering Quadrangle where technical, engineering classes were held. There was significant negative history in this area, but I sensed none of it during my time there 1974-1978.

     As a student, as a math-geek, and as a Jew I felt welcome at Old Nassau, the traditional name of Princeton University. The campus setting was pleasantly pastoral with lovely buildings that made us feel safe. I don't recall locking up my bicycle there. It wasn't entirely safe as Princeton had its first rape on 1974 November 22, but we didn't have Stanford's eight rapes in one quarter, the urban threats of University of Pennsylvania, or the appalling theft rates of Harvard and MIT. The setting outside the campus was idea for a long-distance runner with lovely farmland in almost all directions, rolling hills with lovely vista views. For good or for bad Princeton University took good custodial care of its student inhabitants. The drinking age was eighteen and they took care that those staggering from the pub to their dorm rooms were cared for and, for those sending their pub-beer bills back home those charges came from the CHANCELLOR GREEN ASSOCATION lest Mom and Dad wonder how their sons and, now, daughters, could spend $400 on beer and pizza in one month.

     I'll point out, on a broader scale, not only was Princeton University a haven for a bright student like myself, it appeared to be a haven for quite a range of bright students. I certainly was different in many important ways from so-called normal and so were many of my college colleagues, not only different, but different in different ways, and we were accepted and embraced by Princeton. (I have no idea how graduate students were treated as they were clearly separate from undergraduates, but I can speak with praise about my own undergraduate Princeton Experience from 1974 through 1978.)

     Now we get to the not-so-good stuff about Princeton University.

     Something was different about Princeton for me. So many decades later I have friends from primary and secondary schools, graduate school, every company I worked at for more than six months, music organizations, running groups, hifi-audiophile people, aviation clubs, et cetera and the one gaping hole is Princeton where I have no lasting friendships from people my own age. One of my professors was a dear friend for thirty-nine years and I finally made may way to the office of another forty-seven years later, but something about Princeton made it uniquely not-friend-making in my life.

     My Princeton Experience had a serious division between whites and blacks. We lived in different rooms in different parts of campus, we took different courses, their night-party hours were quite a bit later than ours, and it was clear the academic standards were shockingly different. The Action allegedly Affirmative was quite Extreme to the point where new courses were provided for students utterly ill equipped to survive the basic courses in mathematics, there was specifically a department of African American Studies, and the Sociology Department was shamefully preempted for black students banding together to denegrate their white classmates. I saw few black faces in my classes. I'm told the academic bar in the admissions process was 200 SAT points, two full grade points, lower for black candidates and there was a similar-but-less-severe difference for female candidates. One interesting practice I noticed immediately is my white college colleagues walked on the right side of walkways while my black college colleagues walked down the middle. Princeton vigorously denied there were significant differences, only an attempt to level the playing field in some way. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     While we were comfortable with all same-sex roomates after coeducation became a reality in 1969 October, the fraction of mixed-race rooms was close to zero. While this may be blamed on roommate choice for sophomores, juniors, and seniors, Princeton assigned roommmates to freshman and claimed energetically these assignments were random by race. They also claimed similarly-random selection when my freshman friends recruited for the cross-country and track teams found themselves with other team members as their random roommates. If we do the math, as I am a mathematics major, a twelve-percent-black population with random roommates will have twenty-two percent of its rooms mixed race, not the near zero we observed. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     Most colleges are proud of their athletic programs and recruit for their victories. It gets silly at the big-sports schools, but we can take Stanford University as an example where they have a number of paid-by-scholarship positions for athletes with the understanding that those may be weaker students than the campus norm but they are strong enough to attend classes and to graduate with their non-athlete classmates. I think that is a reasonable concession for an Ivy-level school that simultaneously respects excellent athletes as a positive part of their society and wins sporting events. The Ivy Group, which is the name for the Ivy League plus MIT, has an agreement that not only precludes recruiting athletes but that requires sports teams to be representative of the student population. Not only would following that prohibit recruiting, it would even disallow taking athletic excellence into consideration for the value of an admission candidate. I got some serious heat from students and a dean when I published a letter in The Daily Princetonian expressing my concern at increasing athletic recruiting when there wasn't supposed to be any at all. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     There was a large suite atop Blair Arch (see the picture up above) which had been inhabited by the Rugby Team for a long time. They used their majority-underclassman status to retain the room year after year after year. They also used the suite's elevated position to piss out the windows on passers by and to throw things at people. Rather than try to control pissing and throwing things, the University thwarted the room retention by declaring the room would be female the next year. The reason was obviously to get these animals out of there while the admistration's bullshit story was it made the room available to women. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     I had my own room-draw story. Let me explain how Princeton room assignment works. Given the importance of dormatory life at Princeton, it's important that rooms are assigned in some sort of egalitarian fashion, hence the room-draw process. Groups of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors looking for next-year's rooms are ordered by class from junior down to freshman and randomly within each class. (Presumably seniors are graduating and not drawing rooms.) My two roommates and I drawing a triple in 1975 thought being next to a bathroom was important to us, so we specifically chose a room next to a MEN'S bathroom. We came back next fall to find some enterprising person had painted WO next to MEN and converted it to a WOMEN'S bathroom and female residents in the dorm were using it. There was much fuss, even an article in The Daily Princetonian about it (with elipses for the word "not" in quoting me), and it took until 1976 March to get a hearing in front of the Dormatory and Food Services (DFS) committee. When I mentioned "Little Miss Paint Can," I was immediately censored and castigated as this was not to be part of their consideration in deciding the fate of our bathroom for the three remaining months of the school year. I was appalled as I considered that an essential part of the issue, the inappropriate behavior taking something like a bathroom assignment from somebody else rather than selecting a room next to a WOMEN'S bathroom in the first place. Again, Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     The theme for all of this is an amoral hypocrisy, that it's okay to lie about values and principles, that's it's okay not to have a moral compass. Once Princeton decided to be our in loco parentes I felt they had an obligation to live by a moral code in matters large and small. I felt strongly enough that it tipped my scale against contributing to Princeton's Annual Giving. This was a responsibility shirked and, as Princeton takes great pride in training tomorrow's leaders, it's an important responsibility.

     With the obvious and egregious exception of their Affirmative Action program, this is simply amoral behavior. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with lying about random roommate selection, room-draw, recruiting athletes, et cetera, just that it's a stinky, smarmy way to treat people. If this is the pattern of values inculturation at our big-name universities, no wonder its graduates exhibit such a culture of corruption in political life.

     The trouble is that amoral becomes immoral and these universities not held accountable for their behavioral, cultural, and personal values are eventually going to support things that are economically, socially, and politically wrong and terrible, just as their race policy has been before and after Affirmative Action.

     Having flagrantly biased commencement speakers like Al Gore and Eduardo Bhatia is shameful. Having grossly anti-constitutional organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hailed as defenders of American values at Alumni Day was similarly shameful. In 2016 Princeton's president Christopher L. Eisgruber stood for the massively-corrupt Clintons and a political party with a river of hate going back to the Klan and eugenics. If they took no public money, then I suppose it would be their right to do that, but they did take public money, a lot of it in fact, and have stood by the horrific history of their decisions. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.

     Now we have Columbia blocking Jews having access to buildings while standing up for so-called Palestine terrorists in the name of academic freedom. Academic freedom my ass! This is horror and these big-name similarly-slimy Ivy schools should be held accountable. Of course they should lose all their federal funding immediately, that part is easy. Princeton felt comfortable living a lie and they should pay for it.

     Right thing to do is have them give back all federal money since Affirmative Action began at these colleges, at least going back to 1973. Shame on them, a shanda as we say in Yiddish, that they energetically supported and continuingly defended judging applicants by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character for half a century! Shame on them every day of those fifty-plus years! Princeton felt comfortable living a lie and they should pay for it.

     Eric Cohen, a member of a new Jewish organization called Tikvah, gave a talk about the urgency of American Jewry finding a new collegiate home with its own more-conservative culture.

I have to admit, being a smart person with an Ivy-League diploma, I learned nothing new on 2023 October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel. I knew the hate was there, I knew it would happen somewhere and sometime, it did happen, and three thousand Israelis were killed. Come to think of it, when the American left was gaga supporting America's New Deal and Germany's National Socialism, we conservatives were trying to tell them that it was wrong and that bad things were about to happen. We didn't know more in 1945 than we did in 1933 because we knew what was about to happen and, apparently, our progressive, liberal friends also didn't learn anything from the Nazi horror show.

Now that our favorite universities are openly antisemitic, including Princeton, now that Jews are actively being kept from accessing campus buildings at Columbia, now that openly-admitted hate is the new normal, we really have to look elsewhere. It's hard to abandon an educational heritage we have embraced for centuries and its associated prestige, but it's a decsion we have to make. I'm told Georgia Tech and University of Alabama are both actively recruiting Jewish students. I'm also utterly and totally delighted that President Trump is calling these lying bastards hiding behind a shameful myth of human rights and academic freedom the liars and cheats they are. The Talmud may direct me to kill the Ivy administrators (and MIT and Stanford) as they are planning to kill us, but the U.S. penal law is more charitable. At least we can make them repay a huge debt and subject them to the same tax law as other private, politically-biased organizations.

     I'm proud of my Princeton-degree, Great-Class-of-1978 achievement without being happy about Princeton's lack of values at the time and the horror show it has become. By analogy I have a friend who is immensely proud of his Eagle-Scout achievement without being happy about what the Boy Scouts have become. We have to cut off their public funding, all of it, get as much back as we can from morally-bankrupt years past, and find someplace else to send our smart Jewish kids to college.