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PAW blogger Gavin Schlissel '13 checks in with his impressions of the film Admission, set (and in part, filmed) at the University.

Princeton returned to the big screen last week for the first time since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with the release of Admission, a new movie starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd as a pair of star-crossed lovers on opposite ends of the college admissions process.

From left, big-screen admission officers Tina Fey, Wallace Shawn, and Gloria Reuben. (Photo: Courtesy Focus Features)

The film, more of a romantic comedy than a documentary tell-all, follows a college admissions officer with a scattered personal life (Fey) and a high school director (Rudd) with what can only be described as a chronic need to solve other peoples’ problems.

Though the movie is far from documentary, it does invite reconsideration of the college admissions process from the perspective of an admissions officer. Notably, the admissions committee meeting (chaired by a pink-faced, balding admissions dean who could not be more dissimilar from our Dean Janet Rapelye in physical appearance or personal presentation) cast the admissions decisions as some kind of petty political game, in which officers have a personal interest in the fate of individual students and trade favors to secure votes for their favorite applicants.

In a theater full of Princeton undergraduates, scenes like the admissions committee meeting drew awkward giggles from students imagining their own application files in front of admissions officers. As applicants with perfect test scores and umpteen extra-curricular activities were discussed and often denied admission, murmurs of “I know a kid like that,” or “Oh my god, that seems just like bicker” rippled through the theater.

Though the movie was fiction rather than journalism, many students could not avoid watching the movie in the context of their own (successful) Princeton admissions bid. “I still can’t believe how lucky I am that I got in,” said Lauren Piana ’14 immediately after the screening. “The movie makes the whole process seem so arbitrary. I wonder what it’s really like.”

Tina Fey plays a Princeton admission officer in her new movie. (Photo: Courtesy Focus Features)

Princeton plays a prominent role in the new Tina Fey and Paul Rudd film, Admission, opening nationwide March 22. The stars were in town last summer to shoot a few scenes for the movie, which is based on a 2009 novel by former Office of Admission reader Jean ­Korelitz. 

Admission is the latest in a long line of films that feature the campus or the University — though the two don’t always go hand-in-hand. In Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (2004), for example, the title characters briefly visit Princeton, but the scenes were not filmed on campus; in Scent of a Woman (1992), on the other hand, real Princeton buildings stand in for a New England prep school. 

Princeton’s film debut came nearly a century ago in the 1915 silent film Satan Sanderson, according to a 1999 PAW feature story by film historian Steven G. Kellman. In the early days of talkies, the University was portrayed as a Roaring ’20s party school in Varsity (1928), starring Charles “Buddy” Rogers. The story did not go over well with administrators — or alumni. One letter to PAW called it “an infantile and unusually moronic screen exhibition.” 

Veterans of Future Wars founder Lewis Gorin Jr. '36. (Photo: Courtesy University Archives)

“The Manifesto of the Veterans of Future Wars” did not look like much — about 250 words of text, tucked in a corner of the March 14, 1936, Daily Princetonian, it could have easily been dismissed as a clever bit of humor and nothing more. Instead, it became a polarizing prank that rallied students, infuriated congressmen, and earned a lasting place in campus lore.

The basic premise was hatched by seniors in Terrace Club who, after reading that Congress had granted an early bonus payment to veterans of World War I, decided that they too deserved a $1,000 bonus, as an advance for future service in the “inevitable” war to stop the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. “It is but common right that this bonus be paid now,” the students reasoned, “for many will be killed or wounded in the next war, and hence they, the most deserving, will not get the full benefit of their country’s gratitude.”

When The Philadelphia Inquirer picked up the story, by way of the University Press Club, the news began to spread nationwide. Campus chapters of the Veterans of Future Wars sprouted like mushrooms — more than 500, reportedly, with a combined membership of 50,000 students — and the group adopted an official salute: the outstretched, itching palm. PAW reported that “the great majority of alumni are proud of the imagination, initiative, and sense of humor displayed by the undergraduate organizers.”

Prominent veterans, politicians, and some alumni, however, were not amused. Notable critics included James Van Zandt, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ohio Gov. Martin Davey. In this remarkable April 1936 newsreel footage, Rep. Claude Fuller of Arkansas said, “There is no danger of any of these so-called veterans ever volunteering to defend America. Their actions clearly show that they are yellow.” Fuller went on to blame communism and foreign influence in interviews with other news outlets.

Many observers of the Israeli election Jan. 22 might think that the results boded well for restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinians. At a panel discussion March 11, two experts – Daniel Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel; and Yael Berda, an Israeli lawyer, social activist, and Princeton Ph.D. student in sociology – were decidedly less optimistic.

The two spoke as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to try to form a government. Voting had left Netanyahu’s hawkish Likud party weaker, while a party focusing on secular economic interests – Yesh Atid (There is a Future) emerged as the second-largest party in parliament. After the election, many pundits argued that Yesh Atid’s strength heralded the rise of the moderate center that could get negotiations back on track.

Not so fast, the Princeton panelists said, noting that the peace process, and foreign policy in general, had largely been absent from the campaign. Almost seven weeks after the election, Netanyahu still was struggling to put together a government, and Yesh Atid had united with the pro-settler Jewish Home party in their coalition negotiations with Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the Likud party itself had moved to the right. 

“It’s not likely that this coalition will make advances” toward peace with the Palestinians, Kurtzer said.

The panelists did identify two things that could change that, however. Berda suggested that a grassroots social-protest movement that developed in 2011 “changed politics on the ground,” and that the movement might reassert itself. Kurtzer looked for change beyond Israel’s border: “We don’t know if Washington will make it a priority,” he said.

Anna Kornfeld Simpson '14, left, and Yingxue Li '13 test a robot at the project site in Malta. (Photo: Christopher Clark)

The complicated network of underground tunnels and wells under the island of Malta holds promise for archaeologists seeking to uncover more of the nation’s history. But to humans, they are largely inaccessible because of their narrow passages and the modern-day buildings that sit atop many. Archaeologists have resorted to using autonomous robots to explore the tunnels’ depths, and Princeton computer science major Anna Kornfeld Simpson ’14  has worked to improve how robots can navigate and understand where they are in the tunnels.

Kornfeld Simpson became interested in the project after a course in autonomous robot navigation with visiting professor Christopher Clark during her sophomore year. Looking for a way to get involved and apply what she’d learned, Kornfeld Simpson joined Clark’s team and set off for Malta last spring.

Kornfeld Simpson was tasked with finding a way to make it easier for a robot to move about the tunnels and create maps from the sonar information it collects. A robot lowered into an underwater tunnel is good at swimming, she said, but difficulties arise with how well the robot knows where it’s going. Sonar is helpful, but only up to a certain point.

“The biggest challenge with this data is that it’s really noisy, messy, and complicated,” she explained. “It’s just a whole bunch of numbers to the robot. ... [The robot] takes a ‘look around’ like a bat might do. It finds out roughly how far away the nearest obstacle is in all directions.”

Steve Forbes '70 said that the Federal Reserve has "flooded the engine" of the U.S. economy by supplying too much money. (Photo: Ellis Liang '15)

To revitalize the economy, the U.S. needs to return to a gold standard and simplify the tax code, Steve Forbes ’70 said at a lecture in McCosh Hall March 10. 

Forbes, the chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and a two-time Republican presidential candidate, returned to his alma mater for an event sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He told the audience that the recent economic decline was not the result of free market capitalism, but of flawed monetary and tax policy. 

“If the Federal Reserve does not supply enough money to meet the organic or natural needs of the marketplace, you’re going to stall the economy. If it prints too much money, you get the economic equivalence of flooding the engine,” Forbes said. With the right amount, he continued, you have the chance to grow. 

According to Forbes, the Federal Reserve in recent decades has “flooded the engine.” He added that an unstable currency also misdirects investment into illiquid assets such as land and buildings, which gave rise to the housing bubble. Furthermore, an unstable currency distorts market information, causes wages to stagnate, and undermines social trust, he said. 

What does Forbes think the U.S. should do? 

“The dollar will be re-linked to G-O-L-D,” he said. “Why gold? It’s the one thing in the world that keeps its intrinsic value better than anything else — like the North Star, Polaris, something you can fix off of.”

By Jasper Ryckman ’15

With the possibility of a federal budget sequestration taking effect March 1, the University is preparing for what may be large, across-the-board cuts to its federal funding. 

“Princeton has been participating in efforts with other research universities to argue strongly against the cuts to research and education that would occur under a sequester, and to present the case for robust investment in these areas and encourage a long-term, balanced solution to the nation’s deficit,” University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in a recent statement.

Though the University recognizes that sequestration poses a threat to certain types of funding, it is not clear what precise impact the sequestration would have on current research initiatives at Princeton. Much will depend on how agencies implement cuts and how long the sequester remains in effect.

“The University has advised its researchers that there are plausible scenarios under which grants could be scaled back, and that uncertainty and tight budgets may be the reality for the foreseeable future,” Mbugua said.

The sequestration would cut more than $1 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years. According to CNN, over half of the cuts would target military spending, while the remainder would cut funding to other domestic agencies and services, such as the FBI, federal courts, and scientific research.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), which receives federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, said in a recent statement that it has been advised that its “budget will be reduced due to cuts imposed as a result of the combined effects of a Congressional sequestration and adherence to the President’s recommendation for the 2013 budget.”

PPPL Director of Communications Kitta MacPherson said that the laboratory hopes to avoid forced layoffs and furloughs. “Based on discussion with the Department of Energy, we have decided not to take any actions until we receive further guidance,” she said.

An official at the Department of Commerce expects that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — which provides funding to Princeton’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) —  will have to furlough up to 2,600 NOAA employees, leave about 2,700 positions unfilled, and reduce the number of contractors by about 1,400. How these changes would impact the GFDL is not yet known.

Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, visited Princeton Feb. 27. (Photo: Ellis Liang '15)

Military commissions are necessary judicial institutions, Chief Prosecutor of U.S. Military Commissions Brig. Gen. Mark Martins said in a Feb. 27 lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School.

Martins, the chief prosecutor for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, emphasized that in contrast to civilian courts, military commissions have a different standard of evidence and jury composition, which are essential for dealing with cases related to armed conflict. However, Martins added that new forms of conflict, such as terrorism, blur the lines between civilian and war crimes.

“The nature of the threat is that something can be regarded both as a violation of the law of war — a war crime — and a violation of the domestic law. Those are not mutually exclusive categories, and that’s where the controversy of how you’re regarding this challenge comes in,” Martins said. 

Martins pointed out that one difference of military commissions is in allowing hearsay evidence, prompting Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs Kim Lane Scheppele to ask what that implies for evidence gathered through coercion.

“The hearsay rule in Anglo-American jurisprudence is the way that we screen out torture,” Scheppele said, “so when the hearsay rule is relaxed, it’s hitting the front line in the American system or the English system, the barrier that keeps out evidence collected by torture or by coercion.”

John Milton Cooper '61 (Photo: John Cooper k'61)

Historians of early 20th century America are often drawn to one of the era’s two towering figures: Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson 1879. For John Milton Cooper ’61, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, all signs seemed to point to the latter.

Cooper attended a Washington, D.C., high school named for Wilson. He then came to Princeton, where Wilson had studied, taught, and served as president. He even earned a graduate fellowship that bore Wilson’s name. But connecting those dots would be a “historiographical fallacy,” Cooper joked in a recent talk at Princeton. He chose Wilson primarily because of his scholarly interests in World War I and progressivism.

Regardless of the initial motivation, Cooper has made remarkable contributions to Wilson scholarship, including Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, which earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2010. With the 100th anniversary of Wilson’s presidential inauguration approaching, Cooper came to the Woodrow Wilson School Feb. 21 for a public conversation with professor and presidential historian Julian Zelizer.

In two terms as president, Wilson helped to shape important events — perhaps most notably by mobilizing the United States for its entry into World War I. But Cooper said that Wilson also “stands extremely tall” in terms of the skills that he brought to the office.

His first term, for example, brought the passage of an impressive legislative agenda, made possible by Wilson’s knack for influencing Congress.

“Woodrow Wilson went to speak before Congress more than any other president before him or any other president after him,” Cooper said. “This was his way to reach a national audience. … What Wilson was doing is what presidents do now when they go on TV. [Going to Congress] was a way of making sure that he got maximum coverage.”

danah boyd (Photo: Courtesy danah boyd/danah.org)

Internet expert danah boyd studies the intersection of technology and society, particularly in the ways that young people use social media. “I’m an ethnographer,” she explained in a Feb. 18 talk at the Woodrow Wilson School.“I spend most of my time trying to understand everyday practices and how to map what is going on in our lives.”

A senior researcher at Microsoft Research, boyd (who legally changed her name to include only lowercase letters) described the four “affordances,” or functional qualities, that accompany new technology: persistence, replicability, searchability, and scalability. In other words, information generated online will stick and spread; people can be searched, and their words can be seen by millions.

“Part of the online environment is that we often don't know what the context is, we're negotiating it, and again it gets complicated when you think about persistence or when you think about things spreading,” boyd said.

The idea that young people do not care about online privacy is a myth, in boyd’s view. “The first thing to realize is that a lot of young people have chosen to be in a public, which is different from choosing to be public,” she said, noting that this distinction colors the way young people try to control their social situations when online.

Edward T. Cone '39 (Photo: Robert Matthews/ Office of Communications)

Forty-two years after getting his Princeton diploma, Sir Gilbert Levine ’71 still remembers his studies with musician and composer Edward T. Cone ’39 — so much so that he has created a concert film centered on Cone’s music. A screening of his PBS film, Out of Many, One, will take place in Princeton’s Taplin Auditorium Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. The film showcases an April 2012 performance of Cone’s Psalm 91 by the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus in Chicago’s 2,522-seat Orchestra Hall. 

Levine said he hopes that more people will grow to appreciate the music of Cone, whom he describes as a rare talent in both performance and musical analysis and “a terrific person to study music with.” Cone’s music, according to Levine, is truly original.

“There’s no derivative aspect to it,” Levine said. “I think the hallmark of really important composition is that it just doesn’t sound like anyone else. It’s romantic without being cloying at all.” Levine also said he was enthusiastic about presenting the work of a remarkable but lesser-known composer to the public. The performance, which represents the first ever collaboration between the two Chicago ensembles, also features performances of Bach’s Magnificat and Beethoven’s Eroica.

The bulk of the snow from the Feb. 8-9 storm in the Northeast missed Princeton, but students were able to make the most of what did fall on campus (7 inches, according to the National Weather Service). Jackson Dobies ’14 captured these scenes for PAW.