Service Through a New LENS first appeared in the January 2023 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

In the first PAW page of my presidency, back in September 2013, I emphasized that an ethic of service was fundamental to Princeton’s mission. I called…

I am thrilled to be one of more than 400 people leading a Princeton Wintersession course this month.  For me, Wintersession provides an opportunity to brainstorm with students about a question that keeps me up at night:  how do online media affect us, and what can we do to achieve a healthy civic discourse in this rapidly changing…

Published in the Daily Princetonian

Last month, a reporter from The Daily Princetonian asked for my views about the relationship between academic rigor and mental health.

I said what I believe: that a challenging, high-aspiration…

Princeton’s Tradition of Institutional Restraint first appeared in the November 2022 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

When I was a Princeton undergraduate, University departments communicated…

On Free Speech first appeared in the November 2022 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

This year, Princeton’s orientation program for incoming undergraduates included a new module on free speech. I spoke to the entering students at that session. Here…

Opening Exercises 2022: Place and Presence first appeared in the October 2022 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

For Opening Exercises on September 4, we gathered on the front lawn of Nassau Hall to welcome the largest…

For all of us who care about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the years-long fight over its legality has been frustrating. For the hundreds of thousands of individuals who rely on DACA’s protection from deportation, their precarious status is undoubtedly even more anguishing.

This…

Commencement 2022: The Value of Persistence first appeared in the September 2022 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. 

On May 24, 2022, I had the pleasure of presiding over Princeton’s 275th Commencement and my ninth as president…

As delivered

I am delighted to be with you here today as the University officially welcomes Princeton’s Great Class of 2026 and celebrates the beginning of a new academic year.  I have always enjoyed the energy of Opening Exercises and the feelings of renewal and promise that accompany them.

Our gradual…

Let me begin by welcoming Princeton’s Great Class of 2026 to campus!  You are already extraordinary in one way:  you are the largest class ever to enter Princeton University.  And I am confident that by the time you graduate, you will have proven yourselves to be wonderful and extraordinary in many other ways.

My first…