Princeton University released its annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion report last week, touting the many DEI initiatives and programs implemented over the previous academic year, which include awarding “inclusive pedagogy grants,” hosting “faculty diversity salons,” and hiring a DEI librarian.
The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton issued ten “inclusive pedagogy grants” in 2023, which award $1,800 to teachers tasked with revising a given course “to more strongly reflect equitable and inclusive teaching practices.”
The McGraw Center’s recommendations for “equitable and inclusive teaching” include 1) “Be thoughtful about identity language, making sure you are using terminology that is up-to-date and inclusive, not essentialist or divisive” and 2) “Connect course material to contemporary concerns, if possible. Create activities and assignments that help students apply the course material to broader issues of equity.”
The Office of the Dean of the Faculty and the Office of the Provost for Institutional Equity & Diversity hosted a new year-long series of “Faculty Diversity Salons,” which are described as monthly sessions with international artists to build on-campus community. Mahogany L. Browne, one of the featured artists scheduled to speak this semester, authored the book Woke Baby and the poem “Black Girl Magic.”
“Woke Baby, up before the sun smiles, eyes open,” reads the book Woke Baby. “Look at your fists, fingers curled into a panther’s paw pointing up up up, reaching for justice.”
Another featured artist, poet Chen Chen, has written openly about his Chinese heritage and gay identity.
“I couldn’t stay in the restaurant. Looking around that room, I know that if they’d voted; most of the folks there had voted for Trump,” Chen wrote in an essay titled “Dinner,” which describes the days after the 2016 election in Texas.
“This country has always been a white supremacist, sexist, homophobic place; in fact, it was built on those values,” Chen adds.
In late 2022, Princeton named “strong, proven DEI thought leader” Ufuoma C. Abiola as the inaugural Executive Head and Associate University Librarian for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Princeton University Library. The library’s “North Star statements” say that “diversity, equity, and inclusion will be the foundation of our culture” and “we will leverage library resources to help identify, reveal, and combat systemic racism.”
The library hosted a student-composed focus group to implement measures that prevent visitors from encountering materials they might find “harmful,” according to an email obtained by National Review. The library does so “predominantly through the use of content mediation, warnings, and descriptive notes in the Finding Aids website.”
Princeton launched its “Amplifying Voices Distinguished Lecture Series” and hosted Raven Baxter, sometimes known as “Raven the Science Maven,” a black woman who gained popularity on social media making videos about science education. Baxter’s undergraduate and master’s degrees are in biology, and her Ph.D from the University at Buffalo is in Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning.
“As a scientist with a transgender parent, I need you to SIT DOWN. You don’t know the science OR the history,” Baxter tweeted in response to a post by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. “You trust the science? Science draws a difference between sex at birth and gender identity. The systematic institutionalization of gender is a product of colonization.”
In 2022, the graduate school welcomed one its “most diverse cohorts in history.” Twenty-two percent of the 743 new students were from “historically underrepresented racial or ethnic groups,” while 27 percent were from “first-generation/low-income backgrounds.”
The population of white master’s students has fallen from 56 percent to 45 percent since the 2019-2020 academic year, while the black/African-American population rose from 6 percent to 11 percent and the Asian population rose from 30 percent to 38 percent during the same time period.
From the 2021-2022 to the 2022-2023 academic year, the number of undergraduate and graduate students receiving accommodations from the Office of Disability services rose from 802 to 1,203. Across that time period, an additional 309 undergraduates received disability accommodations. Given the campus-housing expansion projects, the undergraduate class size will increase by roughly 125 each year from 2022 through 2025.
A brief section of the DEI annual report addresses academic freedom and mentions the freshman orientation event on free expression, which was first implemented in fall 2022.
“A new class of Princeton students were subject to an hour-long, highly ideological exhortation by Romero, who repeatedly urged them to embrace progressive ideas and badly misrepresented the importance of free speech by rooting its value in its ability to advance socially progressive causes,” undergraduate Matthew Wilson wrote in National Review about the most recent iteration of the mandatory orientation event.
The annual DEI report mentions that the university collaborated with PEN America for free-expression related programming, including workshops for staff.
In 2022, PEN America criticized Princeton University for firing Classics professor Joshua Katz.
“Princeton University’s decision to fire classics professor Joshua Katz, in the aftermath of Katz’s controversial but protected speech in an op-ed, raises serious questions about free expression and due process on Princeton’s campus,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel.
The annual report addresses the unresolved controversy about the John Witherspoon statue, which was erected on campus in 2001. Witherspoon served as the university’s sixth president from 1768 to 1794.
The Council of the Princeton University Community on Naming is still reviewing a proposal to remove or replace the statue, which it began deliberating in 2022.
A petition written by graduate students in fall 2022 argued that the statue should be removed entirely and replaced with an “informational plaque” that details “the positive and negative aspects” of his legacy. The petition had nearly 300 signatures at the time of publication.
“[W]e believe that paying such honor to someone who participated actively in the enslavement of human beings, and used his scholarly gifts to defend the practice, is today a distraction from the University’s mission,” reads the petition, which had nearly 300 signatures at the time of publication. “Unless the statue is removed, this distraction will remain, and indeed may only continue to grow, going forward.”
In response, the council hosted several “listening sessions” during which speakers debated Witherspoon’s legacy and the statue’s appropriateness on campus. The university must abide by its policies on renaming and altering campus iconography, which were approved by the Board of Trustees in 2021 and state that changing iconography should be “exceptional.”
According to the most recent annual DEI report, the council will continue evaluating the Witherspoon statue this year.