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Friday November 18, 2022 vol. CXLVI no. 23
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NASSAU HALL
ON CAMPUS
By Sandeep Mangat
Committee on Naming to consider proposal to remove Witherspoon Statue
The next 5 years: Q&A with Eisgruber Associate News Editor
By Lia Opperman
For the first time in four years, The Daily Princetonian was granted a sit-down interview with University President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83. The interview, which took place on Friday, Nov. 11 in Nassau Hall, included topics such as student mental health, affirmative action in the admissions policy, and the expansion of the facilities of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. This Q&A has been broken down into five sections by topic.
Assistant News Editor
During a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) on Nov. 14, Nakia White Barr, the assistant vice president in the Office of the President and the secretary of the CPUC Committee on Naming, announced that the Committee is considering a proposal to remove or replace the statue of John Witherspoon. “Over the next few weeks, the naming committee will be holding listening sessions for faculty, students, staff, and alumni to share their views on the issue,” Barr said. This announcement comes after a petition for the removal of the Witherspoon statue circulated in the inboxes of students and faculty this summer and was discussed with University Presi-
STEM Expansion The Daily Princetonian: You have recently been approved for at least another five years at the helm of this institution. If you had to pick just one, what would you say is your top priority for the next half-decade? Christopher Eisgruber: If it’s just one, it has to be rebuilding and fortifying our School of Engineering and Applied Science. I think we’ve got a terrific group of faculty working in a 1962 building that looks depressingly like my high school. That’s not the set of facilities we need for the 21st century, and you cannot be a great liberal arts university in the 21st century without having a great school of engineering. So if I had to pick just one, we’re not going to get it all done during the next five years, but we’ve got to make a lot of progress in that direction, basically, in filling in those holes right now that are out there above
dent Christopher Eisgruber ’83 earlier this fall, who referred the group to the CPUC Committee on Naming, according to the three graduate students who started the petition. The petition, which garnered almost 300 signatures by the time of publication, recommended that the statue be removed and that the current text surrounding it be replaced with a plaque with a description of Witherspoon’s legacy, in line with the language on the Princeton & Slavery project website. “John Witherspoon, Princeton’s sixth president and founding father of the United States, had a complex relationship to slavery,” the website reads. “Though he advocated revolutionary ideals of liberty and personally tutored several free Africans and African Americans in Princeton, he See STATUE page 3
SAMEER A. KHAN / FOTOBUDDY
Western Way [Ivy Lane]. DP: Staying on that same topic then, it seems like over the course of the past decade, B.S.E. departments, like computer science, have expanded while humanities departments, like English, have shrunk in popularity. For instance, engineering students outnumber students in the humanities by more than two-to-one. You mentioned expanding the engineering school; but at the same time, do you see the shrinking of
the humanities at the school as a problem? Do you think it changes the fabric of the school? CE: We think the humanities are essential to the liberal arts education that we offer at Princeton, and I frankly think they’re essential for every student. And I suspect that Dean Andrea Goldsmith in the engineering school would agree that one of the great strengths of our engineering school is the opportunities for See EISGRUBER page 4
FAC U LT Y
After visual arts professor used n-word in seminar, University finds no violation of policy By Paige Cromley Senior News Writer
On Nov. 3, visual arts professor Joe Scanlan said the n-word while posing a question to students during his VIS321: Words as Objects seminar. He used the word during a discussion about a poem by Black poet Jonah Mixon-Webster’s poetic anthology “Stereo(TYPE).” Scanlan, who is white, is a tenured professor and artist with a history of racially charged art projects. In the classroom on Nov. 3, he used the n-word when asking students how the word functioned in the text. Multiple students in VIS321 told the The Daily Princetonian that Scalan’s use of the word was not a direct quote from the poem, but his own words. Scanlan said he disagrees with the characterization that he didn’t cite MixtonWebster. In an email to the ‘Prince,’ he wrote, “In fact I was citing his poem ‘Black Existentialism no. 8: Ad infinitum; Ad Naseum,’
which runs for almost 20 pages and consists entirely of one word, the n word, spelled with an ‘a’ instead of ‘er.’” After Omar Farah ’23, a Black student in the class, raised an official complaint about the incident to the University, the Office of the Provost concluded that there had not been a violation of the Policy on Discrimination and/or Harassment following an initial assessment of the situation. Farah is a Managing Editor for the ‘Prince’; they recused themself from the news coverage of this incident. Following the use of the word, multiple students in the class told the ‘Prince’ they felt uncomfortable continuing to be taught by Scanlan, and some called for his firing. David Smith ’24, a Black student in the class, told the ‘Prince’ that he believes Scanlan should be fired. “They can’t fire him for saying that word, but they can fire him for being incompe-
tent and intentionally causing harm, of which I think he did both,” he said. Smith is a social media staff member for the ‘Prince.’ After Scanlan asked the question during the class, Farah told the ‘Prince’ that there was “shock in the classroom” and some silence before they asked, “Are we really having a discussion where you can say that word?” Scanlan responded with a defense that the word had ended in “-a” instead of “-er,” Farah and multiple other students in the seminar independently told the ‘Prince.’ After this exchange, Farah left the classroom. According to multiple other students who remained, Scanlan continued to defend his choice to the class, saying that he felt the use of the word was necessary to have an academic conversation about the piece. A few other students also left before the end of See SCANLAN page 2
HEADLINE FROM HISTORY
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NOVEMBER 18, 2010
U. AFFAIRS
CPUC discusses dissociation, institutional neutrality, campus grief By Olivia Sanchez and Abby Leibowitz News Contributors
On Monday, Nov. 14, University officials, staff, and students gathered for the second Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting of the semester to hear updates on dissociation from fossil fuels, reports from committees, and discussions on how to approach campus grief. The Council also discussed facility staff workers’ grievances, the new Learning and Education through Service (LENS) program, updates on the new minors program, and the upcoming Wintersession. Institutional neutrality, Witherspoon statue Sociology professor Shamus Khan announced that University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 requested he lead a subcommittee to create a policy for “statement-making by units of
the University.” Khan said these policies would not apply to individual faculty members making personal statements. These policies will not apply to individual faculty members making personal statements. Eisgruber said at the meeting that his request to Khan comes in the wake of “increasing concerns” brought by individuals “about statements that are appearing on websites, and are worried that those statements may at times create a sense that certain opinions are orthodox or required at the University.” Concerns on institutional neutrality and free speech have come to the surface in recent months in the wake of a series of incidents related to academic freedom. Earlier this month, Eisgruber announced the committee in Princeton Alumni Weekly. “I recently asked a faculty committee to consider whether Princeton should have a policy regulating the discretion of academic or administrative units See CPUC page 5
This Week on Campus ON CAMPUS | Minority Pre-Law Association Criminal Law Panel — Sunday, Nov. 20 @ 6 p.m., Robertson Hall Bowl 001
‘HARRY POTTER’ FEVER COMES TO CAMPUS
ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
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SPORTS | Princeton Football — Saturday, Nov. 19, kickoff @ 1 p.m., Powers Field at Princeton Stadium