October 6, 2016

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Thursday october 6, 2016 vol. cxl no. 81

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BEYOND THE BUBBLE

U. committee to look MacArthur into dining options Fellow Subhash { Feature }

contributor

A new University committee is hosting a series of focus groups to generate student input on meal plans and dining options on campus in an effort to recommend more efficient and more flexible options that best suit the University’s diverse student body.

The Princeton University Board Plan Review Committee was created last semester as an extension of the University’s strategic planning process and the strategic planning task force on the residential college model.

The committee is co-chaired by Executive Director of Campus Dining Smitha Haneef and Dean of Rockefeller College Oliver Avens and consists of staff and two undergraduate students, Undergraduate Student Government President Aleksandra Czulak ’17, and Michael Zhou ’19.

Haneef said that the University employed “a nomination

process to identify key administrators and leadership members” who would be best suited to develop recommendations for campus dining options.

While describing how the committee would inform their recommendations, Aven noted that they were analyzing data from different dining sites to determine how and when they were used. He said that he hoped student input from focus groups and online comments would better help PUBPR understand how dining options fit into students’ lives and schedules.

“We’re taking a look at both qualitative and quantitative data,” Haneef added. “PUBPR is split into three subcommittees with specific focuses: space and usage, student experience, and financial modeling. Each subcommittee is charged with specific facets of PUBPR’s initiative.”

“For example, the space and usage subcommittee would be entrusted with gathering and

analyzing data from dining halls while the student experience subcommittee is more closely involved with the undergraduate members of the committee and centers more on student feedback,” he said.

According to Avens, one reason for the committee’s formation is that the University “hasn’t had a careful look at its dining and meal plan options” since 2005, when a Universitywide committee chaired by faculty and staff reviewed dining options on campus as a part of the planning for the 2007 expansion of residential colleges.

Avens said that now, twelve years later, “history requires” PUBPR to do a similar sort of indepth review in search of ways to enhance the student experience, just as the 2005 committee’s report led to the creation of two free meals per week for upperclassmen.

Haneef said that another inspiration for PUBPR is to supSee PUBPR page 3

LECTURE

LeBlanc ’99 discusses privacy and protection in telecommunications

By Norman Xiong contributor

Chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Bureau of Enforcement Travis LeBlanc ’99 discussed the necessity of privacy and consumer protections in a lecture and Q&A session on Wednesday afternoon.

LeBlanc’s talk underscored the need for both preventative and enforcement measures against violations of rights for American consumers online and in telecommunications. He proceeded to explain how he addresses those issues in his capacity as FCC Enforcement Bureau chief and clarified the misconceptions surrounding the role of the FCC in the eyes of Americans.

“Most people… if you were to

ask them what they knew about the FCC, they would probably say something along the lines of Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl. They thought of the FCC as an agency that dealt with indecency,” LeBlanc said. “And really what the FCC does is regulate, essentially, the industries of broadcast television, radio, telephones, both landline and wireless, cable, satellite, and now Internet Service Providers, or ISPs.” Following his description of the roles of the FCC, LeBlanc then identified and explained some of the most prominent issues consumers today face surrounding privacy and protections in telecommunications.

“The risk of privacy today, and personal data, given how much we all use our electronic devices

ROBERTSON AT NIGHT

is not just financial harm. It’s not just that someone is going to steal your credit card information and go out and run up a bill,” he noted.

“The risk is really to your personal reputation, and there are dignitary harms that people now really do risk in these privacy and security breaches.”

LeBlanc drew on examples from his work, including cases he has pursued against ISPs regarding issues such as cramming and limiting net neutrality in order to emphasize the dangers to consumers’ privacy and rights in the telecommunications arena.

The discussion drew a sizable audience which consisted of both University undergraduates and listeners from outside the UniverSee FCC page 2

COURTESY OF NSF

By Alexander Stangl contributor

Mashad Arora contributor

Subhash Khot GS ’03, an alumnus of the University’s graduate computer science program, has received the MacArthur Fellowship for his pioneering work in computational complexity.

Khot is currently a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 2010, he won the Waterman Award, which is awarded for “exceptional individual achievement in scientific or engineering research” of “significant impact on the field so as to situate him or her as a leader among peers.” In 2014, he was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize by the International Congress of Mathematicians “for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences.”

Khot’s dissertation, as well as much of his subsequent research, expands greatly on the

Q&A

discussion of P versus NP problem, an open question in computer science regarding the existence of efficient algorithms for general problems.

Khot’s work builds upon that of his doctoral advisor, University professor Sanjeev Arora, and that of Johan Håstad, professor of theoretical computer science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, with whom Khot worked very closely as a graduate student.

“The next question was whether you can compute approximation solutions, and there’s also been a body of work, and Khot’s work fits in that body [...] whether or not many of these problems have good algorithms for computing approximations of solutions,” Arora noted, given the difficulty of approaching the P vs NP problem and doubt in the field that a positive resolution exists.

When it comes to researching bounds on computational complexity, algorithms have See KHOT page 3 ACADEMICS

Q&A: Travis LeBlanc ’99, chief U. professor of FCC Bureau of Enforcement denounces exiled preacher

By Ruby Shao

News Editor Emerita

Travis LeBlanc ’99 has advised President Obama’s administration as a Department of Justice attorney, and currently serves as Chief of the Bureau of Enforcement at the Federal Communications Commission. He sat down with The Daily Princetonian before his Wednesday lecture to discuss his education, prevention of crimes, and regulation in the Digital Age.

MARIACHIARA FICARELLI :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

Khot GS ’03

The Daily Princetonian: You crafted an independent concentration of philosophy, politics, and economics at the University.

How have your studies here influenced your career?

Travis LeBlanc ’99: I wanted to create an independent concentration in philosophy, politics, and economics because I thought those three disciplines were the basis for how to analyze a public policy issue. The

three questions that you almost have to ask for any public policy are “What should we do?”, which is the philosophical question; “Do we have the authority to do it – what’s our power?”, that’s the politics question; and “How much does it cost?”, that’s the economics question. For me, the independent concentration was very much intertwined with a career… I knew I wanted to be both a lawyer and someone working on public policy issues… It wasn’t necessarily a desire to prepare for a career exclusively in government, but it was definitely a desire to have a role in public policy and in public discourse.

DP: What inspired that desire to affect public policy and public discourse?

TL: I would probably say that there is a part of me that is inherently empathetic, and wants to help. I feel blessed, truly, to have had the education, the faSee Q&A page 2

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Contributing columnist Jack Bryan reflects on having a one-track mind at Princeton, and columnist Marni Morse supports a more inclusive debate around freedom of speech on college campuses. PAGE 4

4:30 p.m.: Latin American Studies will host the PLAS Fellows Series featuring University visiting lecturer Antonio José Ponte and Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas through a panel discussion. Green Hall 0S6.

By Samuel Oh contributor

Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies Michael Reynolds GS ’03 published an article on the Foreign Policy Research Institute on Sept.26 that accused supporters of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen of allegedly orchestrating the attempted Turkish coup in Jul. Reynolds further called for Gülen’s expulsion from the United States.

Reynold’s essay outlined the existence of a struggle between pro-government forces led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğ an See REYNOLDS page 2

WEATHER

By Rose Gilbert

HIGH

74˚

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Sunny. chance of rain:

10 percent

The Daily Princetonian

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Thursday october 6, 2016

U. students LeBlanc: Everything I’ve done, from graduate studies applauded to being a lawyer, plays a role in my job today Q&A LeBlanc Continued from page 1

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sity community. Immediately following the lecture, LeBlanc entertained questions from the audience regarding the FCC’s responsibilities in protecting consumer rights in telecommunications.

“We at the Enforcement Bureau should be focused on the issues that matter most to American consumers in the 21st century. Every time we take any action, we should ask ourselves ‘How are we protecting customers? How are we safeguarding competition? How are we securing critical communications infrastructure? How are we policing the integrity of our programs from fraud, waste, and abuse? How are we going to work to prevent companies from engaging in unlawful activity, not just respond after the fact, after they’ve done it?” he explained.

LeBlanc’s lecture was well-received by its attendees.

“I enjoyed it,” Nick Sileo ’20 said.

“It was insightful, thoughtful, and interesting to think about.”

Prior to shifting the focus of his talk to the subjects of privacy and consumer protections and the way in which the FCC addresses these issues, LeBlanc briefly chronicled his journey from living in a singleparent household in New Orleans to obtaining degrees from Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Cambridge University. LeBlanc then gave a short overview of his work as a lawyer at the federal and state levels with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and as Special Assistant Attorney General of California, respectively.

The lecture was held Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Whig Hall Senate Chamber as part of the Whig-Clio Speaker Series. It was co-sponsored by the University’s Program in Law & Public Affairs.

milial support, and the ability to get where I am today — even then, to get where I was then.

There was a part of me that wanted to give back, and wanted to leave my community a better place than I found it.

DP: How has your extensive academic background, with an A.B. from Princeton, an M.P.A. from Harvard, a J.D. from Yale, and an LL.M. from Cambridge, affected your decision-making in your current position?

TL: Everything that I’ve done really does play a role in my job today. I’m in government service, running the largest bureau at the FCC. In addition to headquarters, we have 24 field offices around the country. As the manager of a public organization, I’m able to take advantage of my graduate studies in public policy. …As a lawyer, I’m inherently involved in legal proceedings, when doing enforcement, and so my legal education helps.

Because we are a federal government agency, we have counterparts that are around the world. My training in international law helps me there as I’m working with colleagues across the world, particularly on the kinds of technology issues we work on, which are very largely borderless. Email doesn’t really know borders. You just put in the address you want to send it to and it goes. So having that background in international law has helped there. And then a foundational background in philosophy, politics and economics — and really what I learned at Princeton not only in the classroom, but outside the classroom. I was very active in various organizations around campus, including on the service side as well, and I think that has set a framework for me to continue that I took with me

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throughout my education all the way to where I am. But I don’t want to say that my education solely prepared me for this. You can’t really prepare. You can’t expect these kinds of jobs, and you can’t prepare for these kinds of jobs. There’s definitely a lot of on-the-job learning, and there’s also a lot of learning that you do in working in other organizations. You learn how to work with people. You learn how your agency or organization operates.

Those are skills that you can’t necessarily learn in a classroom, but that you learn by doing.

While it’s certainly great to have a strong academic background, it’s also equally important to have a strong experiential background as well.

DP: You have said that you differ from your predecessors in emphasizing not only enforcement, but also prevention. How has this focus emerged in the programs you have overseen?

TL: Typically, in the past, the Chief of Enforcement at the Federal Communications Commission was a communications lawyer. I am the first Bureau Chief who has come with a law enforcement background. That background taught me that it’s better for everyone if you’re able to prevent a violation of the law rather than having to respond after the fact.

Almost inherently after the fact, when there’s been a violation, there’s been a victim.

If you can prevent someone from being victimized, that’s a much better world, even than just holding accountable the person who broke the law.

I approach my job borrowing really from the public health model about an ounce of prevention, and recognizing that before we take an enforcement action, we should work to educate the industry on what we believe is lawful and unlawful. Where we see a widespread problem, we raise an alert to the public, including the industry, to let them know that we have those concerns.

When we settle a matter, we make sure to include provisions in our settlement agreement that would help ensure that in the future, the target of our investigation would not engage in the same kinds of misconduct… Overall, I think it’s a lot more efficient than an agency trying to wait and be reactive … and find every single violator … If we at the

FCC can put out an enforcement advisory and 50% or 70% of the people or companies that were engaging in this activity stop, we’ve succeeded.

I mean, imagine trying to go after 70% of an industry. Government agencies don’t have those kinds of resources. One of the best examples of work that I did in a prior life that really shows the success you could have is, when I was in the California Attorney General’s office … we negotiated a global agreement with the leading mobile apps platforms really in the world at that time … Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft … to ensure that mobile apps had privacy policies. …We could have thought, ‘All right, every app developer out there who’s violating California law by not having a privacy policy, we should go out and we should try to bring them all to justice.’ But you can imagine the number of app developers that there are, even at that time? And the fact that even someone in France could put an app into the App Store that people in California could get. The idea that we’re going to go around the world finding everyone who somehow developed or sold or marketed or distributed an app in California, the largest state in the country, wasn’t possible. Instead, we brought the platforms together, because they are the gatekeepers for everyone to get their app … and we got them to agree, to begin to ask developers for privacy policies, to make sure they were aware of California law and their requirements. …

Working with companies can be equally beneficial, if not more, I would say, than just going after them after the fact, and that’s why I say prevention is important. You have to work with the industry to prevent.

It’s very much like community policing, where you work with the community to help protect the community.

DP: How should society approach regulation in an age when technology is evolving so fast?

TL: The technology that we all have available to us today is iterating so quickly that it is difficult for regulators to keep up with the pace. … The first iPhone came out in 2007, so nine years ago now … In the state of California … there was

not one law in 2013 or so that referred to the Cloud in a nonatmospheric sense. It didn’t exist. Yet imagine how many of us rely upon the Cloud for everything. … The way our regulatory system was designed was to some degree … to ensure that creating a law was a fairly cumbersome process, and that once you got to the end of it, that law would have a shelf life of years …

After the president signs it, many times, particularly if it’s around technology, there’s some time period before it goes into effect – six months, a year. Maybe there’s not much of a time period and it goes over to a regulatory agency, which then has to promulgate regulations. It starts a process of putting out a proposal, and then it gets comments back, then it has to finalize a proposal, then it has to publish it, then it has some time period to go into effect. And not only until it goes into effect can anyone really do enforcement.

If you go on day two once it’s gone into effect, you’re really not being fair, so you have to give some amount of time for the world to get together.

Then you finally investigate a case and then you bring the enforcement action, and then there are appeals. … That process from the idea of a legislature until finally getting conclusion in the Supreme Court is probably four, five years.

Imagine how quickly the technology world has changed in those four, five years. … I analogize it to … the government taking enforcement actions against MySpace. … We have to avoid the temptation of being overly prescriptive. It’s probably better to focus on principles and standards so that we don’t have a regulatory regime that is designed about regulating a particular technology.

What we’ve seen now is that with convergence in industries, with the disruption that we’ve seen in the tech sector, a phone company may also be a cable company … an Internet service provider … a provideyour-home-security system … a data analytics company … a search engine … It has so many different facets to it that it’s hard to just regulate one industry because many of them are now getting connected together.

Owen: Reynolds’ article only draws attention and false claims REYNOLDS Continued from page 1

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and underground, “insidious” forces purportedly led by exiled Gülen.

Gülen is an Islamic cleric currently residing in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

100 schools and universities inf luenced by his teachings are established in multiple counties including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, according to RadioFreeEurope.

Gülen did not respond to requests for comment.

According to Reynolds’ article, Gülen has allegedly been trying to bring religious fervor back to the government in Turkey and raise a Golden Generation from the corrupted masses of secularism.

Reynolds said in an interview on Tuesday that Gülen’s network was directly involved in the attempt to overthrow Turkey’s government by means of infiltration and internal sabotage.

“He [Gülen] looks to be tied up with it [the coup],” Reynolds said in the interview. “The [Gulenists’] objective, clearly, is to destroy the government [of Turkey],” he explained.

Reynolds added that the United States is responsible for inadvertently destabilizing Turkey because of its reluctance to expel Gülen.

“Gülen is well known by CIA officials, especially former CIA and ambassadors, who vetted him to remain in the US, even though the [Department of Homeland Security] categorically rejected his application,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds refused to accuse the United States of supporting Gülen’s accused actions in Turkey.

“Still, it looks odd,” Reynolds said. “It’s one of the questions I’m raising.

Why is he surrounded by controversy but yet is allowed into the US by the inf luence of a few US officials? ” The Gülenists have been allegedly attempting for ages to infiltrate Turkey’s governmental apparatus — including its military — and slowly lower the Turkish people’s trust in the government, according to Reynolds.

As a video released on the preacher’s website by Gülen’s followers — selfdeclared “Gülenists” — shows, Gülen himself wishes to bring Turkey back to the glory days of

the late Ottoman Empire.

Reynolds said.

– whose aim is to make “We [Turks] have left He added that he doubt- Turks better Muslims, as nothing but rot… We saved ed any controversy over well as how he operates lie our material [possessions], Gülen’s guilt in subverting contrary to the actions of we saved our bodies, but the Turkish republic. the coup perpetrators.” our hearts remained in Reynold’s thesis has nevOwen said anti-Erdoğ an someone else’s hand,” Gül- ertheless been met with forces used the extensive en said in the video. criticism and suspicion.

Gülenist network to orga“There is something Edward Owen, professor nize but had no reasonwrong with using the of Middle East history at able ties to Gülen him‘Golden Generation’ to take Harvard, said that he did self; Reynolds’ article only control of the state,” Reyn- not believe in Reynold’s draws false alarms and atolds said. “And he [Gülen] certainty of Gülen’s guilt. tention. has been combative in try“I think it’s very sensa“I think there were antiing to do that.” tional. I think it puts in a Erdoğ an forces who used the Reynolds described an line of conspiracy theory. Gülenist network. That incident in 1986, when It is possible that there was Gülen locating himself on Gülen’s followers were at- a coup enacted by people the Eastern corridor and tempting to infiltrate using or following the Gül- being the center of all this, Turkish military acad- enist network but might that sounds to me very fanemies. have nothing to do with ciful,” Owen noted.

“Gülenists framed peo- Gülen. It doesn’t mean GülOwen added that when ple in Turkey, got them en approved it. They could a person writes “alarmimprisoned, lowered peo- have used the Gülenist ist pieces” like Reynolds’ ple’s faith in police forces… network to get people on and “say that America is at Across the board, Erdoğ an board more quickly. That fault,” the main audience [the current President of seems to me the most like- for the pieces is WashingTurkey] and the opposi- ly thing,” Owen explained. ton. tion are in agreement, that Owen further noted that “It is a way of calling atFethullah Gülen and his Gülen most likely was un- tention to yourself, and I people are a major problem fairly painted in a hostile, imagine that Professor in Turkish politics,” he ex- scheming light by Reyn- Reynolds would like his plained. olds. name registered by the According to Reynolds, “It depends on how you people in Washington the most favorable way to interpret Gülen himself, as somebody to go to, to end the Gülenist move- whether he is the Machia- employ, when there is a ment, which the Turkish vellian, plotting kind of change in administration government named a ter- gentleman who fell out in Washington,” Owen ror organization, is to ex- with Erdoğ an as the article said. pel Gülen from the United describes. It doesn’t seem States. to me to be the Gülen I “The American people know,” Owen said. “The owe nothing to Gülen,” sense of the man himself

Thursday october 6, 2016

Committee to also seek student input PUBPR

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port a “diverse living, learning community” and added that the committee plans to create dining options that reflect the cultural diversity of the student body, though they have not yet formed any menu programs.

Avens said that the purpose of PUBPR is to find out how effective the University’s current meal dining plan options are for the choices students are making.

He noted that the committee is “equally interested in learning about other ways in which me might enhance the flexibility of dining option.”

Haneef characterized the committee as “a broader effort to develop choices that best suit a diverse group of students to support campus life goals” to think about “how to come together as a community and break bread together.” She said that PUBPR seeks to support a “diverse living, learning community,” and though she asserted that the committee has not yet created any menu programs, they eventually plan to provide dining options that reflect the cultural diversity of the student body.

Several students offered their opinions on the University’s current and prospective dining plan.

Chisom Chigozie-Nwosu ‘20 supported the initiative, saying that it is good that the University is collecting data on what students think of the food that they’re having to eat every day.

“I think that because our school is international and people come from all over and are very accustomed to certain types of food, it would probably be in the University’s best interest to make sure that the dining options are catered to not just one specific taste, and that we offer a variety of different foods.” Chigozie-Nwosu added,

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“I think a good way to execute this would be to create a list all the different places students are from and then maybe pick one simple dish from each of those countries and then try and rotate through them throughout the year . . . even though it’s not necessarily in your dining hall, knowing that there is the option to go somewhere else and eat food from your country is probably a good way to implement that.”

“I’m a student at Whitman, junior year. So right now I’m on the block 95 plan, I’m not a part of an eating club, so I have to get some meals at Whitman every week,” said Jonathan Stewart ‘18. “That’s something that I particularly don’t like.

I wish there was a little more flexibility in being able to go independent at a residential college. I mean, obviously that’s something I’ve signed up for, but I’ve noticed that there’s really no way to avoid it once you choose to go into a residential college, you kind of have to.

As for Whitman, Whitman always seems crowded, it seems like there could be a lot more space. No matter when you go, it seems pretty crowded. But overall, I mean, I just think the flexibility in dining plans for those upperclassmen living in the residential college system, could be perhaps a little more flexible.”

There will be open focus groups Monday, Oct. 17, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Rockefeller College Private Dining Room, and Friday, Oct. 21, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Campus Club. There will also be focus groups for sophomores, seniors, and independent and co-op students, the times and places of which will be announced on the PUBPR website. An RSVP sign-up will be sent via the residential colleges, and dinner will be provided.

The Daily Princetonian

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Khot: It’s possible that your Ph.D. work will define a large part of your career KHOT

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two bounds, an upper and a lower. With the upper bound one can try to design more efficient algorithms than those currently existing. With the lower bounds, one can try to prove that any algorithm which satisfies given constraints must take a given time to run properly. Much of Khot’s work fits into the latter field of research.

Khot formulated what is now known as the Unique Games Conjecture in his dissertation.

The Conjecture states that a particular computational problem is “difficult” in the sense that it cannot be efficiently computed.

Using this, Khot provided hard lower bounds for the computational complexity of various problems.

“The funny thing about this conjecture is that at first everyone thinks for it to be true, and then it turned out that it had lots and lots of implications, and there were these things you

could prove based on it. It took a couple of years before people realized just how powerful this conjecture was,” Håstad said.

The power in the conjecture, Arora explained, comes from the “nice classification of the difficulty of computing approximate solutions to many problems,” which one can derive from it.

When he first came to the University from India, Khot said the campus felt “almost magical.” Looking back upon his time as a graduate student, he described it as “some of the best five years I’ve had.”

He added that he enjoyed the academic environment and the small size of the computer science department. “[Khot] was one of our best grads ever, and he was very independent from the first year,” Arora noted. “He quickly took on some of the hardest problems in the field and started working on them by the end of his first year.”

Håstad also added that Khot was very independent.

“He was thinking about his own things that he wanted to think about,” Håstad explained.

Khot said that current and future Ph.D. students choosing their thesis topics should make their choices wisely.

“It’s possible that your Ph.D. work will turn out to define a large part of your career…

Choose the ones which may sound kind of ambitious at that point, but something that provides a long enough horizon, not just the limited focus of writing the thesis,” he added.

Despite his work in the field of computational complexity, Khot said that his true passion is for mathematics and its applications in other fields, which he focuses on currently as a professor at NYU. “Both in terms of research and teaching, the institute… gives a very broad view of all of the mathematical sciences together, as opposed to… thinking of different mathematical sciences in isolation,” he added.

Opinion

Thursday october 6, 2016

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Tunnel vision

vol. cxl

Jack Bryan

contributing columnist

N

Do-Hyeong Myeong ’17

OW THAT the frenzy of frosh week has died down, Lawnparties has passed, and classes have (at last) begun for real, a different kind of frenzy is beginning to set in on Princeton’s campus.

I’ve found myself oscillating between frenetic work and baggy-eyed late (or very early) nights on one hand, and on the other, the desire to check out and spend every interval of time developing my FIFA and napping skills, skipping readings, and Sparknoteing before precept. I’m confronted by the fact that neither of these does Princeton justice. We joke about “work hard, play hard,” but I am not sure that either is the answer.

Each one of us has been working our whole lives to get here. But many of us quickly slip into treating Princeton as just another hoop to jump through on the way to the next big, prestigious position. We forget that these four years matter a lot in and of themselves. They are central preparation for lives of work and service that will come after, but they are also a part of those lives.

Princeton is not just another stepping stone, a means of getting to a career or grad school. It is not simply a tunnel to the next part of life. I often wonder to my-

self, if I were diagnosed with a disease and given five years to live, would I spend my remaining two years at Princeton? How would my mentality about my time here change? What would it mean for me to get the most out of every day — would I still rush to class, mumbling a hurried “what’s up?” to friends without waiting to hear an answer? It would suddenly become abundantly clear that the people around me in my time here are just as important as any class or assignment, if not much more so.

I, for one, consistently find myself worrying about not taking all the right classes or getting the most out of Princeton academically in order to “do Princeton right” so much that I forget just how many people would kill to be here at all. Ten years from now, you will be able to look back and not just see what job these four years got you, but you’ll also see what this time was independently of that. You’ll remember friendships forged and late-night conversations about life and love, or those times you sacrificed a fifth of a point on a problem set or a third of a letter grade on a paper to talk to a friend in need of comfort.

Enjoying my time at Princeton doesn’t mean that I need to walk around smiling

and singing to myself all day — after all, as we love to say, the struggle is real — but this does mean that I need to have a keen sense that my time here is precious and valuable. Princeton is meaningful in very personal ways that the administration can’t tally up in exit surveys, employment statistics, or even GPAs. This sort of mentality can unlock an appreciation and joy in the daily grind here, that sort of joy and levity that comes from first having taken something very seriously.

On the other hand, by no means am I advocating treating this time simply as an end in itself — as a time to not work hard but to instead play hard. None of our lives ends at Princeton. Treating it as an end, justifying every lazy prompting of your soul by thinking “It’s okay, I got into Princeton and that is enough,” is just as much a waste of this precious time as treating it as no more a tunnel to the “real world.” Neither will do much to push, grow or develop you to become a person that can in any sense live in the service of this, or any other, nation.

Jack Bryan is an English major from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He can be reached at jmbryan@princeton. edu.

editor-in-chief

Daniel Kim ’17

business manager

140TH MANAGING BOARD managing editor Caroline Congdon ’17 news editors Jessica Li ’18 Shriya Sekhsaria ’18 opinion editor Jason Choe ’17 sports editor David Liu ’18 street editors Andie Ayala ‘19 Catherine Wang ‘19 photography editor Rachel Spady ’18 video editor Elaine Romano ’19 web editor Clement Lee ’17 chief copy editors Omkar Shende ’18 Maya Wesby ’18 design editor Crystal Wang ’18 associate news editors Charles Min ’17 Marcia Brown ‘19 Claire Lee ‘19

infestation elimination rita fang ’17

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associate opinion editors Newby Parton ’18 Sarah Sakha ’18 associate sports editors Nolan Liu ’19 David Xin ’19 associate photography editors Ahmed Akhtar ’17 Atakan Baltaci ’19 Mariachiara Ficarelli ’19 associate chief copy editors Megan Laubach ’18 Samuel Garfinkle ‘19 associate design editor Jessica Zhou ’19 editorial board chair Cydney Kim ’17 cartoons editor Rita Fang ’17 Blog editor Michael Zhang ’17

NIGHT STAFF 10.5 .16

Free speech for controversial speakers but not for protesters?

Marni Morse

senior columnist

S

OME SO-CALLED free speech advocates seem to be talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Take for example the Princeton Open Campus Coalition’s open letter to first years. The POCC was founded, it’s important to recall, in response to the Black Justice League’s peaceful sitin last year. In this letter they sharply criticize the “shutdown culture” of student protests and list examples of speaker events on campuses across the country that were canceled in response to such demonstrations.

The POCC warns that these “greedy” student protesters are creating “sterilized and repressive environments.” As the POCC notes, “it is only when we are exposed to new ideas, when our dearly-held beliefs are challenged, that we are able to determine right from wrong — to seek any semblance of truth.” And yet, the POCC concludes that we ought to stifle the protesters.

Wait. Seriously? Seems sort of hypocritical given that protests are one way of exposing us to new ideas, the very principle the group purports to support.

Let’s look carefully at the examples of the harmful effects of the campus protests that the POCC provided. In the first, Virginia Tech University leadership disinvited (and then reinvited) Jason Riley, a conservative journalist, “for fear of protests” against the speaker’s controversial book. The next anecdote

discusses how Condoleezza Rice decided herself to back out of speaking at Rutgers University after student and faculty protests. A similar situation arose at Brown with Janet Mock, when the speaker chose to back out of speaking at Brown in response to protests. A further example given was DePaul University’s decision to ban Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator, from speaking on campus as the university determined it could not (or more plausibly, would not) guarantee the speaker’s safety in response to a protest.

In only one of the given examples was a speaker prevented from speaking directly as a result of protesters. Evidently, at the University of Pennsylvania, “John Brennan, director of the CIA, was shouted down… by students protesting the American drone program” to the point where he couldn’t respond to their concerns.

I agree that what happened at UPenn closed off academic discussion about different viewpoints by actually preventing a speaker from responding to criticisms and continuing his presentation. However, the other examples are instances where university officials are actually directly accountable for disinviting the speakers or the speakers are at fault for deciding on their own not to come to the campuses. The responsibility does not rest with the protesters in those cases for choosing to also voice their opinions.

Student protests embody the concept of free speech and the academic sharing of ideas. It is oxymoronic to argue that we must condemn the student protests to allow controversial speakers to come on campus.

Both can and ought to co-exist.

Let’s be clear. Students peacefully protesting and voicing an alternative opinion as to speakers and issues does not actually prevent said speakers from coming, nor does it prevent other students from organizing a counter protest in response should they choose to do so. (I was part of a counter protest when the Westboro Baptist Church protested a production of “The Laramie Project” at my high school, and I would say both groups were able to convey their positions to the other side and third party observers quite effectively.) It was the speakers themselves who decided they did not want to engage with students and protesters, or university officials who decided that they didn’t want to deal with having opposing sides peacefully voicing their differing opinions about the speaker.

Just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 23, the students and administrators at Florida State University demonstrated that protesters and controversial speakers could co-exist and that a meaningful dialogue could ensue. Milos Yiannopoulos, tech editor of the ultra-conservative Breitbart News, spoke on campus at the invitation of

the FSU College Republicans and within the same hour there was a solidarity gathering of the Black Lives Matter group for Terence Crutcher, the African-American man shot by a police officer in Tulsa.

Yiannopoulos was met with dozens of student protesters outside of where he was speaking, condemning him as a racist who didn’t warrant free speech rights. They were confronted by his supporters who counter protested nearby.

Meanwhile, students at the rally for Crutcher came faceto-face with students headed to the Yiannopoulos event. All sides were able to voice their opinion and then proceeded to engage in a civil exchange of opinions with one another.

We have witnessed such productive encounters at Princeton in the recent past.

Students used posters to protest speakers arguing against gay marriage, and they waved placards when they heard ideas they disagreed with during a panel on affirmative action.

These protests occurred before and during said events, but the University and the speakers all decided to proceed and engage and further a dialogue.

Critics of protesters like to claim that this mode of speech “shuts down” discussion. However, choosing to listen to the other side and furthering a collective dialogue is a personal choice. I can honestly say that I’ve had conversations with

staff copy editors Katie Petersen ’19 Daphne Mandell ’19 contributing copy editors Michael Li ’20 Emily Spalding ’20 Todd Gilman ’20 Luke Henter ’20

people who supported both sides of the protests at Princeton — regardless of what means of speech they used to convey their thoughts. We can always choose to listen. Or we cannot.

That is on us, irrespective of the method of communication.

The freedom of speech argument inherently must protect both invited speakers and student protesters, regardless of politics or means of communication. I disagree with some of the speakers the open letter mentioned, but I think they can be allowed to speak at a university that values the open discussion of ideas. I would just stand proudly with protesters in response and engage in discussion with those who disagree on why I believe what I do.

If you criticize students for peacefully protesting speakers with whom they differ, that’s an assertion in and of itself. But, don’t do it under the false guise of protecting the free, open, academic exchange of ideas. This is just another manifestation of “the inequality of ideas” where “certain ideas are permitted while others are discouraged or silenced.”

If you are really just restricting one side’s method of free speech over another’s because of chosen means of expression, please just call yourselves what you are: anti-protest.

Marni Morse is a politics major from Washington, DC. She can be reached at mlmorse@princeton.edu.

Thursday october 6, 2016

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The Daily Princetonian

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Thursday october 6, 2016

Sports

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Men’s water polo vs.

Iona College Bethany Atkins:: Contributing Photographer

Tweet of the Day

“Not only did I mot attend @StPaulsSchoolNH but also the unisuit and sunglasses are blue! #photoshop” gevvie stone ‘08 (@ gevgevs), rower and 2016 rio olympic silver medalist, upon her photo being used in St.Paul’s campaign

Stat of the Day

12 goals The number of goals Men’s Water Polo scored against Iona College.

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