The Daily Princetonian: October 14, 2019

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Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Monday October 14, 2019 vol. CXLII no. 88

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ON CAMPUS

ON CAMPUS

Organizing from the margins

Wax defends remarks on immigration, race By Benjamin Ball Head News Editor

By Benjamin Ball Head News Editor

See MARGIN page 2

PHOTO CREDIT: JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Amy Wax

ON CAMPUS

U. endowment earns 6.2 percent return for 2019 fiscal year By Benjamin Ball Head News Editor

The University announced Monday that its endowment earned 6.2 percent for the fiscal year ending in June. Now, the endowment is valued at $26.1 billion, up $200 million from last year. This year’s return is a drop from last year, when the University reported a 14.2 percent return. According to the University announcement, the endowment’s annual return during the past decade is 11.6 percent, putting the University in the top percentile of 500 institutions

ranked by the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service. In the past, Andrew Golden, the President of The Princeton University Investment Co. (PRINCO), the University office that manages the endowment, has emphasized that the tenyear figure is the one that gives the better sense of the endowment’s performance over time. “… we remind ourselves … that a single year is so short that luck is almost always the single largest driver of relative results,” Golden wrote in the Report on Investments in the 2017-18 Report of the Treasurer. “We strive to keep all eyes on the long term.

A single year’s performance … does not give much information about past efforts or the likelihood of future success.” Golden emphasized that focus again in a recent interview with the Daily Princetonian, describing the timeframe of the University’s endowment as effectively infinite. According to Golden, given that time frame, focusing on the longer term is a more viable strategy. “The endowment’s mission is to spend as much as possible while preserving pursing power into perpetuity,” Golden said. “The idea behind an endowment fund is that there should

staff writer

FitzRandolph Gate

Princeton municipality institutes Indigenous Peoples’ Day to replace Columbus Day On Sept. 9, the Princeton Town Council passed Resolution 19-278, declaring that the second Monday in October would be henceforth known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the Princeton municipality. In an effort to “[reaffirm] the municipality’s commitment to promote the well-being and growth of indigenous commu-

In Opinion

See ENDOWMENT page 3

George and West GS ’80 discuss open-minded intellectual inquiry By Ian Shen

Senior Writer

be intergenerational equity, that students and professors 100 years from now should get the same benefit as students and professors right now.” “So if our mission is forever, it turns out forever is a long way off,” Golden said. Harvard University announced its returns in late September, noting a 6.5 percent return for fiscal year 2019. That brought Harvard’s endowment to $40.9 billion. The Harvard Crimson noted that while the rate was also lower than for the last two years, it was the first time the endowment had ex-

ON CAMPUS

IN TOWN

By Hannah Wang

See WAX page 2

nities” and “encourage the development and dissemination of truthful representations and acknowledgements of wrongs,” the council resolved to support the institution of Indigenous Peoples’ Day in lieu of the federal holiday Columbus Day. “The issue was recommended to [the] council about a year ago by a group of citizens who came to the council meeting and spoke during the public comment period,” Princeton Mayor

Guest Contributors Grace Collins ‘21 and Chase Lovgren ‘21 discuss Professor Amy Wax’s latest visit, Guest contributor Normal Finkelstein GS ‘87 responds to recent coverage surrounding his appearance on a panel and Guest contributors members of AJP voice their views on the Finkelstein’s words on the panel. PAGE 4

Liz Lempert explained. “We referred the idea to our Civil Rights Commission to do further research and come back to council with a proposal,” she said. “At the time, there was general consensus among Council that it was something we were interested in moving forward on.” The resolution also acknowledges the land of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation on which the municipality was See COLUMBUS page 1

Two renowned Universityaffiliated academics from opposite ends of the political spectrum came together in a talk to agree on what they see as the fundamental role of academia — truth-seeking and open inquiry. McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Robert P. George and Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies, Emeritus Cornel West GS ’80 spoke at an event titled “The Spirit of Truth-Seeking” on Friday night. The event took place during First-year Families Weekend and was sponsored by the James Madison Program as part of the University Humanities Council’s “Being Human” festival. The talk took place in McCosh Hall 50 on Oct. 11, at 7 p.m. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 began the discussion with an introduction of the speakers and an opening statement in which he accentuated the value of truth-seeking at the University. “Tonight’s discussion addresses a topic — truth-seeking — that resides at the heart of this university, and indeed, at the center of any research university worthy of the name,” said Eisgruber.

Today on Campus 6:00 p.m.: Princeton in Africa Information Session Louis A. Simpson International Building A71

Eisgruber quoted James Peebles GS ’62, the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science and a recent co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. “At his press conference on Tuesday, Professor Peebles said he hoped for many years that his theory was wrong,” stated Eisgruber. “He kept formulating alternative theories that might deepen our understanding of the cosmos by disproving the theory that eventually won him the Nobel Prize.” “The spirit of truth-seeking is first a spirit of humility,” George emphasized at the beginning of the dialogue. “It’s a spirit that recognizes one’s own fallibility, that whatever one’s convictions, beliefs, or judgments, they are fallible.” George affirmed some values that he believed to be essential for a research university. “For universities to be true to their truth-seeking mission, it is critical that they understand and that they be strict in their adherence to academic integrity and academic freedom,” George asserted. More important than the material benefits that a student can obtain with a degree from the University, according to George, is the “examined life” that can be offered to students. See WEST page 3

WEATHER

From “Ban the Box” to Title IX Reform, to the protests at last week’s dedication of the Woodrow Wilson installation, the University has been no stranger to student activism in the past year. On Saturday, at “Organizing from the Margins: Speaking Freely on Lived-Experiences, Protest, and Princeton,” student activists and University community members heard from activist leaders who, in the words of co-founder of the Newark Water Coalition Anthony Diaz, are “dealers in hope.” At the event, the Whig-Cliosophic Society hosted Anthony Diaz, Lydia Thorton, an activist with the N.J. Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement; Alexis Miller, lead organizer of the Patterson, N.J., Black Lives Matter chapter and a law student at Rutgers University; and Antonne Henshaw, Vice President of Women Who Never Give Up, Inc., in the Whig Senate Chamber at 2 p.m. on Saturday. The talk was moderated by Writing Program professor Dannelle Gutarra Cordero. Cordero asked the speakers what advice they would give to the student activists in the audience. Diaz emphasized that students needed “to have a team.” “You cannot do this alone,” Diaz said. “You will burn out, and the world needs you.” Diaz added that activists had to ask themselves “how far are you willing to go?,” and said,

At a talk Saturday in East Pyne, Amy Wax, a law professor who has garnered controversy over remarks she has delivered over the past two years, defended her advocacy for an immigration policy that would favor those from Western countries over non-Western ones. Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, reiterated that she believes immigrants from European countries would “assimilate” better into the United States. “Our country, because it was founded by people who are essentially Anglo-Protestant and therefore quintessentially Western … can more easily assimilate

people from … more similar cultures, and here I’m talking about Europe,” Wax said. Throughout the talk, Wax consistently used “the West” interchangeably with “the first world,” and “the non-West” interchangeably with “the third world.” “The main thrust of my remarks was that cultural compatibility should have a role, or we should talk about its role, in immigration selection,” Wax said. Wax gave this defense at an event, hosted by the Whig-Cliosophic Society, entitled “Speak Freely: A Conversation,” in which she and Keith Whittington, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at the University, talked about free speech on college campuses and related topics. The event took place in East Pyne

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