Princeton University

University will be exploring a new “degree-granting program”

The university announced, "The University has established the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial Equity and Diversity-Related Professional Development. The cross-institutional committee led by Human Resources and Institutional Equity and Diversity has been tasked with making recommendations for expansion of educational and training efforts using a range of formats and delivery vehicles across all campus populations. In addition, Human Resources and the Office of the Provost offer several trainings, workshops and online resources for faculty and staff related to diversity, equity and inclusion, including 'Mitigating Bias in the Hiring Life Cycle,' 'Inclusive Mentoring' and 'Interrupting Bias in the Academic Search Process.'"

The Daily Princetonian reports, "The Class of 2025 was the first to engage with a new orientation training module designed to facilitate discussions of the University’s racist history and the power of student activism. The module centered around the To Be Known and Heard virtual gallery, which depicts vignettes of 'Princeton’s long and complex relationship with racism' starting from the 18th century to modern time, according to the site. During the training session, residential college advisers (RCAs) led their first-years through explorations of the virtual gallery and discussions on how to navigate conversations around race and identity."

Princeton University Keller Center has designed a program “for faulty, postdocs, and staff in the school of Engineering focused on the intersection of race and racism with engineering, technology, and innovation.” This program is a cohort-based and will run from December 2022 through May 2023 and will focus on education, community, and support towards action.

Princeton's Office of Human Resources offers unconscious bias courses for faculty and staff including "The Power and Impact of Unconscious Bias and Micro Messages for Employees" and "The Power and Impact of Unconscious Bias for Managers."

The school's Academic Inclusion page lists its many workshops and training sessions for "faculty, postdocs, graduate students and academic department staff" including: "Implicit Bias in the Graduate Admissions Process," "Responding to Bias: Bystander Intervention and Reporting for Princeton Faculty, "Interrupting Bias in Graduate Admissions" and "Responding to Systemic Racism."

There has been a "curricular redesign in the School of Public and International Affairs." Specifically, "The School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) is engaged in a comprehensive review of its graduate core curriculum to assess how to incorporate issues of diversity, equity and inclusion into the core training in politics, economics, statistics and behavioral analysis for its master in public affairs (MPA) degree. The goal is for all MPA core courses to include greater focus on the differential impacts of policies based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality. A similar review will be conducted for the undergraduate program next year."

The university stated, "The 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education gave its first set of faculty awards to support the development of courses that address systemic racism, racial injustice and/or the history of civil rights. New courses include the sociology class 'Police Violence, #BlackLivesMatter and COVID-19' and the English class 'Mourning America: Emerson and Douglass.'" It also said, "The Humanities Council has funded several projects to address and confront systemic racism, in collaboration with artists, activists, scientists and journalists. Recent examples include a faculty symposium 'Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America' and a student-led project to build broadband networks for Black and Latinx residents in Philadelphia."

The university announced, "A new general education distribution requirement in the area of culture and difference was established for undergraduates."

According to the university, "Thirty-three Princeton graduate students co-created and completed the Graduate School’s inaugural Inclusive Leadership Learning Cohort (ILLC) in fall 2020. The GradFUTURES Professional Development and Access, Diversity and Inclusion teams at the Graduate School led this new initiative, partnering with graduate students to shape the program as a platform for anti-racism efforts." The university also said, "In the first iteration of the ILLC, nearly half of the 33 individual action plans involved changes graduate students intend to lead on campus, often in conjunction with their departments. Action plans focused on a wide array of solutions, including promoting inclusive and equity-minded teaching, research and citation practices; designing equitable admissions recruitment processes; addressing voter suppression across the state; and building systems to support social and environmental justice for low-income communities of color."

In continuation of “support[ing] academic curricular and scholarly initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and addressing systemic racism,” the Office of the Dean for Research’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan, the Princeton Alliance for Collaborative Research and Innovation (PACRI) was announced. The goal of PACRI “grow a more inclusive research, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Princeton and beyond.” To achieve this goal, “Princeton is working with the United Negro College Fund, which has lent its extensive expertise to facilitate the selection of an initial cohort of historically Black colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for the pilot phase.” The colleges participating are: “Howard University Jackson State University, Prairie View A&M University, Spelman College, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. In addition, Princeton University Library (PUL) has partnered with North Carolina Central University School of Library and Information Sciences (NCCU SLIS) to launch the Early Career Fellowship Program. NCCU SLIS is the only program at a historically Black college and university that has been accredited by the American-Library Association. This program is in continuation of PUL “commitment to implement strategies aimed at recruiting and retaining staff from underrepresented group.” Lastly, the linguistics program at Princeton has officially expanded their language requirements to include American Sign Language (ASL) as well as offer a class, “American Deaf Culture,” as a part of an expanded focus on disability, accessibility and inclusion across the campus.

https://racialequity.princeton.edu

This webpage seeks to unveil Princeton’s roots in activism and intersectionality. They state, “for generations, Princeton students have used protest and other forms of activism to stand up for intersectional equity, inclusion, peace, and justice,” following the statement with the university’s history of activism and intersectionality which began in the 1940s when “a group of white, male students formed the Liberal Union, which fought for the admission of Black students to Princeton."

In celebration of the Lunar New Year – the Year of the Tiger – Princeton University decided they would be conducting interviews to evaluate different “voices of faculty, staff, students, alumni and researchers from the community,” by exploring questions of “identity, pride, hope, the lived experience of anti-Asian racism and meaningful steps that allies can take.” The Year of the Tiger series was designed to celebrate and reflect on Princeton’s Asian and Asian American community. In this particular month, Stephen Kim, associate director for communication and information at the Princeton University Art Museum joins the Year of the Tiger series to address the idea about how “to actually confront questions of racism and identity.” In the article, Kim discusses his identity in which he describes the reluctancy he has with identifying as Asian American and Korean America because of being “bullied and racially abused while growing up.” However, at the end of this section he explains that he “choose[s] to identify as Asian American because, to [him] claiming our whole selves is part of how we protect and bridge our communities.” As the interview goes on, Kim explains that to be an ally we must realize and acknowledge that just because we look alike does not mean we have same circumstances. He goes on to say, “don’t assume you know what the other person’s experiences, orientation or heritage might be.” He says, to take advantage of educating ourselves with the many resources that are offered on campus, to be intentional about self-reflection, and to acknowledge that racism is everywhere.”

Yi-Ching Ong, associate director at the John H. Pace, Jr. ’39 Center for Civic Engagement and director of the Service Focus program for Princeton sophomores, was recently featured in the Year of the Tiger series. In this article, she addresses how she identifies and why identifying as Asian American makes her have mixed emotions about that term. To her the term Asian American “has been very helpful in building a sense of solidarity and raising awareness about the many shared experiences that Asians and Asian Americans have faced in the United States related to harmful stereotypes, xenophobia, and exclusion.” She explains that it is very important to recognized that Asian Americans are extremely diverse and is not a homogeneous term. She continues by describing why she is proud to be an Asian American as well as how allies can help combat anti-Asian racism. She explains the area she would highlight the most in terms of allyship is “learning about Asian American history in a way that highlights the nuance and complexity it enfolds and trying to extend opportunities for people to learn about it.” Overall, she believes this “helps to illuminate where bias and discrimination exist in the present day, and where certain tropes keep surfacing again and again.”

RISE Fellowship program established for students and faculty who want to research systemic racism, anti-racism, racial justice, and the history of anti-racist movements.

The university announced, "Twelve scholars from across the disciplines have been named Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellows for academic year 2021-22. They will be the third cohort of fellows appointed at Princeton with the aim of enhancing diversity in the professoriate."

In the midterm report of May of 2022, it was announced that this year, Princeton received a major gift which allowed for the establishment of the Effron Center for the Study of America, which supports “teaching and research on America from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives."

The academic and administrative departments at Princeton University are “actively engaged or invested in collaboration with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).” They are committed to encouraging “collaborations [that] may help build networks that expand representation of Black and other people of color in academic and administrative pipelines at Princeton and elsewhere; create student exchanges; and/or promote scholarly interactions.” Their efforts are a reflection of the university’s commitment to” racial equity and anti-racism requires recognition of HBCUSs and other MSIs important role in supporting student success and scholarly excellence as well as the ways these sister institutions have been inequitably resourced historically.”

The school's Humanities Council "strategically incubates projects that examine systemic racism, and the inequality and injustice it engenders" and outlines its 2021-2022 "Council-Funded Initiatives" including "Visualizing the Medical Legacies of British Colonialism" and "Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies."

The university announced, "The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has convened the Public Safety Community Advisory Committee — made up of faculty, undergraduates, administrators and graduate students — to provide feedback, advice and suggestions for how Public Safety can best serve the University community."

In May of 2022, a midterm report was published to inform the community of Princeton about what the university was and is doing to combat systemic racism, as it states. During the 2021-2022 school year, Princeton made many efforts in its proclaimed ongoing goal to combat racism. To begin, Princeton has introduced two new positions that will support its “action plans to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campus, as well as to help address racial inequities embedded within society.” The first position is Vice Dean for Diversity and Inclusion in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty. This position has been designed to “support Princeton’s aspiration of increasing the number of underrepresented tenure – and tenure-track faculty members by 50% within five years.” Frederick Wherry began this position on July 1. The second position is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs in the Office of the Provost which will “explore the possibility of a new credit- or degree-granting program that would extend Princeton’s new teaching to a new range of students from communities disproportionately affected by systemic racism and other forms of disadvantage." Cole Crittenden began this role on July 1.

In continuance of “develop[ing] an institution-wide, multi-year action plan for supplier to contractor diversity,” Princeton’s Office of Finance and Treasury adopted a plan which “aims to establish a more diverse supplier base for the University that will broaden the pool of supplier expertise, capabilities and perspectives, and include more businesses that are at least 51% owned and operated by people of color, women, veterans or members of the LGBTQ+ community.” In addition, Princeton has also developed a partnership with New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority (EFA) to “expand opportunities for colleges and universities to invest with diverse asset manages.”

"Wintersession", an event commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will feature a roundtable discussion on "race and racism at Princeton University" and a virtual gallery titled "To Be Known and Heard: Systemic Racism and Princeton University".

There is a "new Inclusive Leadership Learning Cohort in the Graduate School."

The university said, "Princeton has also made a commitment to conduct an external review of its racial equity and broader diversity initiatives every four years. This process will help the University to assess the impact of all its activities towards its goals synergistically. The first external review will take place in academic year 2024-25."

The university said, "The Faculty Advisory Committee on Diversity (FACD) advises the President, the Provost, and the Dean of the Faculty with regard to diversity and inclusivity issues, including specifically with regard to faculty hiring, policies, curriculum and campus climate. A proposal for a re-conceived committee was approved by the full faculty last fall and new committee members elected by the full faculty in April 2021."

The university announced, "The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students is proud to announce that its central anti-racism initiative, FOCUS, now has a stand-alone microsite(link is external) and brand identity of its own." The website "will serve as a for hub information on past and future FOCUS Speaker Series events as well as other relevant information on University-wide Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) resources. As Princeton expands its anti-racist programming under its comprehensive recommitment(link is external) to overcoming prejudice on and off campus, FOCUS will continue to offer new opportunities for members of the Princeton community to engage with anti-racist thought, scholarship, and action."

Princeton has made “enhancements to the Employee Child Care Assistance Program, Children’s Educational Assistance Plan, Long-Term Disability, and Adoption and Surrogacy Programs as a means to “promote greater equity and access to employee benefits, such as doubling the amount that eligible employees may receive to help pay for their children’s college and trade school tuition and fees.” Following, in an effort to promote racial equity and diversity training to its faculty, Princeton not only offered “141 professional development workshops and other opportunities to faculty, postdoctoral researchers and staff members during the 2021-2022 school year,” but they have developed an “action plan focused on expansion of training resources and infrastructure.”

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Princeton University Library has published a guide of different recourses that highlight and “speak to the contributions of Hispanic leaders and communities.”

Eddie R. Cole author of The Campus Color Line sat down with Khalil Gibran Muhammad in 2020 to discuss his book. Cole describes the conversation to be quite lively as they discuss “power, racism, and the role of the university.” Cole’s book “is a study of how college presidents and university chancellors shaped racial policies and practices during the mid-twentieth century.” His book is centered around the predominate problem in U.S. higher education, power, which can be seen in the “demand to decrease budgets for campus policing alongside the critique over the disproportionate number of officer-initiated stops targeting Black people on or near campuses” and much more. The conversation revolves around topics such as critical race theory, the recent bomb threats at HBCUs, how the “American university is a site of power, and [how] academic leaders must learn lessons from the past to better understand and leverage their power to address, and not replicate, racism on their campuses,” and much more.

Step by Step: The March Towards Equal Employment Opportunity was “jointly developed by Princeton University Library (PUL) and the IR section” to create an exhibit aimed at “highlight[ing] the political origins of antidiscrimination in the workplace.”

The school's Academic Inclusion page lists all of the its departments that have "Standing Diversity, Equity, Climate and Inclusion Committees." (This list includes twenty-eight departments in total.)

The school's Office of the Provost published its Institutional Equity and Diversity resource guide for addressing systemic racism and offers its recommendations for "Anti-Racism Initiatives," "Anti-Racism Best Practices," "Teaching" and several other related topics. The guide also states that "Systemic racism cannot be reduced to individual prejudice and cannot be effectively addressed by focusing on the values or conduct of individual people. Best practices for rooting out systemic inequities involve identifying questions that can be rigorously explored through data driven answers."

The school's Racial Equity website lists many of its "Academic Initiatives" and states that "Princeton University’s academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs are committing to advancing racial equity, access, diversity, inclusion, and belonging within their communities and disciplines."

The school's Office of Diversity and Inclusion offers "Social Justice Retreats" which are "intensive, in-depth, and hands on experiences where students can focus on their own learning and development to increase their multicultural competencies and effectiveness as social justice change agents."

Renaming of the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.

The university said, "The Ad Hoc Committee on Principles to Govern Renaming and Changes to Campus Iconography was broadly charged with developing general principles to govern questions about when and under what circumstances it might be appropriate for the University to remove or contextualize the names and representations of individuals present on the Princeton campus."

In an effort to “develop general principles to govern questions about when and under what circumstances it might be appropriate got the University to remove or contextualize the names and representatives of historical individuals honored on the Princeton campus,” Princeton has aligned itself with the recommendations released by the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee to Govern Naming and Changes to Campus Iconography. In doing so, Princeton has added community-oriented artwork within Prospect House and sections of Nassau Hall, but this is not the end as an announcement is soon to come regarding “additional honorific naming opportunities on campus.”

Andrew Yang a junior at Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, is the Princeton Prize in Race Relations for his advocacy and “effort to increase national anti-Asian hate on the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in his school.” Andrew held a variety of webinars to help educate and “develop a cultural empathy among students” by teaching them about racism and how to become an anti-racist. Through this he discovered what little representation there was in children’s books, so he partnered with a local nonprofit to raise $1250 to “provide 336 culturally diverse books for all of the kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms in the district and organize groups of students to read the books to the students.” Yang helped advance racial equity amongst his community and for that he has been recognized by the Princeton Prize in Race Relations.