Egalitarianism at Princeton

Plus a review of the new Adichie novel, the future of local PBS, and more

The big news of the past week was that I had a terrific visit to Princeton University’s SPIA (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School), not to be confused with Columbia’s SIPA (read quickly and you’ll miss the difference). I had the honor of being invited to speak on a panel about antisemitism with Deborah Lipstadt, President Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Of course, at the lunch after our discussion, all I really wanted to talk about was the time that she was portrayed in a movie (Denial) by Rachel Weisz:

I mean, how often do historians get portrayed in Hollywood movies? The list is two: Lipstadt and Gordon Wood, who was name-checked in Good Will Hunting:

This raises the eternal question of who would play me in a movie. I have to say, I think I look like Mark Duplass, but my wife thinks that’s crazy. I have recently been told that I look like a) Daniel Radcliffe, b) Mark Ruffalo, and c) Dr. Oz. Of all those, (a) is the one I get most often. I can live with it, me as Harry Potter.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation with Deborah, moderated by the school’s dean, Amaney Jamal. You can watch it here:

The angle isn’t great for my face, but is good for catching the hue of my corduroy. With that suit and my orange bow tie, I tried to honor the Princeton colors.

By the way, here is Lipstadt, in a piece that ran days after our colloquy, on why she won’t be teaching at Columbia. Key excerpt:

On February 26, a group of protesters—it’s unclear how many were Barnard students—outraged by the expulsions, took over Milbank Hall, which houses both the dean’s office and classrooms, and demanded the reversal of the expulsion and amnesty for all those involved in the protest. They entered the building—masked and screaming—with such ferocity that an employee who confronted them was physically abused and had to be taken to the hospital. Students trying to go to class were locked out by university officials.

The same administration that had expelled two students a few days earlier engaged in multi-hour, drawn-out negotiations. The dean offered to meet with three representatives of the group—the group insisted on four—but stipulated that they come unmasked and provide identification to prove that they are indeed Barnard students. The students refused. The dean asked for permission to use the bathroom, which the student protesters were blocking. After some discussion, the students agreed. She was greeted with a chorus of boos as she made her way to and from the facility.

Classes that were to be held in that building were canceled. Consequences? None.

And so, the negotiations dragged on, effectively putting the university administrator and the protesters on equal ground. Faculty members who were present insisted that they were neutral and only wanted to prevent an escalation. Farcical. The students had already escalated the situation by their takeover and assault.

Finally, after some six hours, the students were told by the dean’s office that “we will not pursue disciplinary action for your presence in the building” if they left by 10:30 p.m.

They left. Consequences? None.

There have been too many humiliating dramas like these to count over the past year and a half. But I watched this saga with particular interest because Columbia has been urging me to consider taking a leave of absence from Emory University, where I’m a professor, to spend a semester teaching on its campus.

But watching Barnard capitulate to mob violence and fail to enforce its own rules and regulations led me to conclude that I could not go to Columbia University, even for a single semester.

I conveyed this to Columbia’s administration on Friday, which prompted Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, to call me. She pointed out that the two institutions, Barnard and Columbia, while affiliated, have separate administrations, security teams, and policies. I know this is true. But its recent history regarding demonstrations suggests that it has far less than a firm commitment to the free exchange of ideas, or to preventing classroom disruptions or even condemning disrupters and their demonstrations.

During the Barnard protest, Columbia issued an anodyne statement disclaiming responsibility because the “disruption” was on Barnard’s campus, not Columbia’s, and asserting its commitment “to supporting our Columbia student body and our campus community during this challenging time.” No condemnation.

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Let them eat cake, alone

The day after the public event, I went to Princeton’s Mudd Manuscript Library to do research for my forthcoming book (not my next book, but forthcoming in the future still), The Dirty Bicker: Princeton and the Antisemitism Scandal of 1958. I was rummaging around in the archives, learning more about the eating clubs, the status of Jews in the late 1950s, the late President Robert Goheen, and the endless pique of alumni. One of them wrote this letter, which speaks for itself:

For those of you who don’t want to squint to see the whole thing, the best line has to be this one, about sophomores who don’t get into the exclusive eating clubs, and thus are forced to take their meals “in town,” at coffee shops or cafeterias (the alumnus is angry that Princeton might, out of compassion, try to change the system so that all sophomores get into at least one club):

I would let those who fail stew in their own juices, believing that the lesson of failure will not be lost, or if lost, that the individual is not worth teaching.

Well, Alfred T. Carton has spoken!

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And over at Arc …

At Arc, the magazine I am proud to edit, we have just published a review of the new Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel, Dream Count. Our critic,

Naomi Kanakia

, gave the book somewhere between one and two cheers, not three:

There is much that is excellent in Adichie’s work, and at her best, she really does read like a modern-day Balzac, laying bare the entirety of the human heart, with neither pity nor judgement. But whenever she writes about America, that magisterial quality abandons her. The core issue faced by Chiamaka and Omelogor is their disappointment with life in America, and their inability to really believe in anything resembling the American dream, but this disappointment tends to be obscured by a mass of petty arguments that suggest that if liberals in America were to express themselves slightly differently, then the pain of dislocation would suddenly fall away.

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What is PBS for?

The Substack writer

The Ivy Exile

has an interesting post about the problems of PBS and NPR. This topic has been an obsession of mine (and of, say,

Mike Pesca

) for a while now. I dislike what NPR has done to our collective sense of being “informed”: people who used to get a local newspaper have let that subscription lapse and now see themselves as informed because they listen to Morning Edition, which gives almost no local news (just the couple minutes every hour, when they kick it to local affiliates). NPR, along with the New York Times app, have replaced local news sources for the cultured class. It’s been devastating.

But what interested me about Ivy Exile’s piece was a claim about PBS. Whatever my beefs, it seems clear national PBS does some good work—but can any of us even name a local PBS show? But Ivy Exile says it’s local PBS that should be preserved:

My hometown station, the Nine Network of St. Louis, Missouri, is one of the lodestars of the entire national system, helping knit together whatever civic interchange our highly polarized region can claim, not just in the city and suburbs and exurbs but rural counties with little access to other cultural resources. It’s awfully easy for relatively affluent professionals who grew up close to museums and symphonies to say, “Just look it up on the internet,” but if it’s not already seeded into many other folks’ realities, they might never be exposed to it at all. And that’s what consistent broadcast reruns of programs such as Antiques Roadshow help make possible, translating people’s regional memories into being that much more relevant to themselves, their families, and their cultural inheritance as Americans.

So my proposal is this: excise national news shows from what PBS subsidizes and redirect all that funding to licensing classic back content plus supporting individual stations’ local programming. The staffs of the NewsHour and Frontline are quite talented, and the pockets of activist progressive foundations are quite deep, so their essential output could easily be repurposed for syndication or cable without the general public having to pay for it.

Local PBS is knitting together a community? Maybe the ecosystem in St. Louis is pretty different from that in Connecticut, but I honestly can’t think of a soul who watches local PBS here, not since PBS Kids became streamable. Looking at the website of CT Public, it looks as if they produce a few limited series, but nothing regular, and certainly nothing necessary. (What I’d love from them is a daily news show.) I am sure there is talent there—really, I am sure, and I suspect they are being ill-served by the corporate structure—but they aren’t making an impact. I usually say that local PBS should fold up shop and give their money to local NPR (for better or for worse).

There is a rich history of alternative, counter-cultural, and public-access TV, but all that energy is, I suspect, forever gone to YouTube, with none left for broadcast or cable. But maybe I am wrong.

Do you ever watch local PBS? Any of you?

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Should we call it “Arc with Mark”?

Finally, for those of you who wondered when the host of Unorthodox was going to start podcasting again, the answer is … April 22! That day will make the debut of Arc’s new podcast, hosted by me. No title yet, not sure who our first guest will be. It’s the germ of an embryo of an idea. If you listened to my other podcasts, and have an idea of what you want to see from me, let me know. Drop me a line.