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Princeton’s endowment declined by 23.7 percent to $12.6 billion in the year ending June 30, according to Andrew Golden, president of the Princeton University Investment Co. (Princo). The news came in a Sept. 29 letter to the University community from President Tilghman, who said that Princeton continues to face “significant challenges, but we have made excellent progress this past year.” She said the University has reached its savings goal of $88 million for the current academic year and is “well on our way” to identifying an additional $82 million in cuts from the 2010-11 budget. With 145 staff members accepting a retirement incentive program, layoffs still will be required, she said, but the number will be “significantly less” than at some of Princeton’s peers.

Tilghman said that while some have criticized the University’s investments as too risky, a “more traditional approach” would have led to an endowment about half its current size and would have prevented a number of “critical” initiatives. “In other words, our pre-eminence has depended upon the risk/reward profile that Princo has adopted,” she said. While the investment strategy is being reviewed, she said, “the University is weathering this economic storm with its commitment to excellence in teaching and research intact.” By W. Raymond Ollwerther ’71

By Brittany Urick ’10

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented his vision of a new global order in a Sept. 23 address at Richardson Auditorium. Erdogan carried an air of charisma as he outlined the political, economic, and cultural changes required to construct global solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues, including wars, the financial crisis, alternative energy sources, climate change, and terrorism.

Erdogan placed special emphasis on the importance of upholding universal norms through the implementation of international law, staking a claim that certain documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are wonderful in theory but ultimately meaningless unless their principles are enforced.

Brittany Urick ’10 interviewed three Rwandans at a reconciliation village. The two women are genocide survivors; the man is a former perpetrator who was permitted to move to this village to live among his former friends and neighbors after finishing a sentence handed down by the country’s Gacaca court. (Courtesy Brittany Urick ’10)

By Brittany Urick ’10

Woodrow Wilson School major and Weekly Blog contributor Brittany Urick ’10 visited Rwanda in August to conduct research for her senior thesis. In the following post, she describes some of what she discovered during her trip.

Bloodstained pillars, pews draped in piles of tattered clothing, and an altar bearing a machete are all that remain to represent the slaughter that occurred in the church at Nyamata in April 1994. Inside, the silence is deafening.

A few miles down the road from the church is a small cluster of cement houses that constitute one of Rwanda’s “reconciliation villages,” where funding and guidance provided by Prison Fellowship International have made it possible for genocide survivors and perpetrators to live and work alongside one another again.

While visiting a few of the village’s residents on the final day of my senior thesis research trip this August, I listened as my translator told me about their peaceful coexistence, their shared farm duties, how their children play together. But amidst the talk of reconciliation, forgiveness, and justice, I couldn’t help but notice that the silence that filled the pauses in conversation was marked by fear and mistrust. The words seemed forced, and the silence was more disturbing than that which I had found in the church.

In a Sept. 18 address at the Woodrow Wilson School, former New Jersey Gov. James Florio said that the United States will need to balance economic growth, energy production, and environmental sensitivity in order to achieve “sustainable prosperity.”

Florio, who authored the Superfund law as a young congressman and championed clean water legislation during his time as governor, delivered the keynote remarks at “Sustainability and the Obama Stimulus Agenda: Engaging and Connecting with Government,” a conference jointly sponsored by Princeton’s Policy Research Institute for the Region and The Earth Institute of Columbia University.

Caroline Clark ’12, behind tripod, worked as a surveyor at an archaeological excavation in Capena, Italy. (Courtesy Caroline Clark ’12)

By Katy Pinke ’10

Many undergraduates spend their summer months paving paths to their future, but few do so by venturing into the past. Caroline Clark ’12 was one of those few last summer, working as the sole surveyor of an archaeological excavation site in Capena, Italy.

Clark was the 2009 recipient of the Charles A. Steele Prize, given each year to one undergraduate majoring in classics for the purpose of summer exploration. “Unlike other fields of study, the thing about classics is you aren’t often given the chance to ‘see for yourself,’ ” she explains. “What excited me about the prospect of excavation was that as opposed to literature or word-of-mouth, I could interact with a real, tangible piece of history.”

About a dozen people gathered Friday in Murray-Dodge Hall to remember the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the 13 Princeton alumni who died in the terrorist attacks that day.

Normally held in the memorial garden between Chancellor Green and Nassau Hall, the short ceremony was forced inside Murray-Dodge by stormy weather. The names of the alumni who died were recited, and a small bell was rung for each.

PAW remembers these undergraduate and graduate alumni:

Robert L. Cruikshank ’58 was a vice president at Carr Futures.

Charles A. McCrann ’68 was a senior vice president for Marsh and McLennan.

William E. Caswell *75, a Navy physicist, was aboard American Flight 77.

Martin P. “Buff” Wohlforth ’76 was a managing director for Sandler, O’Neill, & Partners.

Robert J. Deraney ’80, a consultant, was attending a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World.

Joshua A. Rosenthal *81 was a senior vice president for Fiduciary Trust.

Karen J. Klitzman ’84 worked for e-Speed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Jeffrey D. Wiener ’90 worked for Marsh USA.

John T. Schroeder ’92 recently had joined Fred Alger Management as a Nasdaq trader.

Christopher N. Ingrassia ’95 was a partner with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Robert G. McIlvaine ’97 who worked for Merrill Lynch, was attending a conference on the 106th floor of Tower One.

Christopher D. Mello ’98 worked for Alta Communications and was aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

Catherine F. MacRae ’00, was a research analyst for Fred Alger Management.

Remembrances of these alumni, written by family members and friends, were published in the Nov. 7, 2001, issue of PAW and are available here. By Marilyn H. Marks *86

Temperatures in Princeton dropped to the 70s last week, but the Woodrow Wilson School’s Fountain of Freedom remained a popular spot for young swimmers. (Photo by Marianne Nelson)

If they were a circus act, they could be the Flying Slovenskis. Brothers Steve Slovenski ’09 and Dave Slovenski ’12 have excelled as Princeton track athletes — Steve was one of the Tigers’ top decathletes, and Dave won the pole vault at the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonal Championships last February — but they appear even more impressive competing against each other in an event they created: the unicycle pole vault.

The younger Slovenski first brought his unicycle to track practice to use it in warm-ups. (It’s similar to pedaling an exercise bike, he says, but it works more muscles.) When Princeton coach Fred Samara saw the brothers riding while carrying poles, he asked incredulously if they were planning to vault off of their unicycles.

“That sounds crazy and dangerous,” Dave said.

“Let’s try it!” Steve replied.

The results of their creative combination can be seen in the YouTube video below, which shows the brothers clearing the bar at up to 10 feet while big-top theme music plays in the background.

Last month, Woodrow Wilson School professors Paul Starr and Uwe Reinhardt offered their views of the current health care debate through two different perspectives.

In an interview with WNYC’s On the Media, Starr, the Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, discussed the past, recapping tactics used to bury earlier U.S. health reform efforts. During the late 1940s, for instance, Starr said that an American Medical Association PR effort hinted that national health care was akin to Soviet-style socialism:

“They suggested that Lenin had supposedly said that health care was the first step toward instituting Communism. There was a mythical quote that no one has been ever able to discover to that effect. And they argued that it was, you know, like a gateway drug and the beginning of a slippery slope toward government control of everything. In that period, given the Cold War, that argument was a powerful one.”

Click here to read or listen to Starr’s interview.

In a CNN.com commentary, Reinhardt, the James Madison professor of political economy, considered the future and what it might look like if the current round of health reform fails. The total yearly health spending by a typical American family has more than doubled in the last decade, and that trend, he argued, is likely to continue:

“… America’s currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.”

Click here to read Reinhardt’s commentary.

Sid Lapidus ’59 has donated to Princeton 157 rare books, pamphlets, and prints that are displayed in a new exhibition in the main gallery of Firestone Library. The exhibition, entitled “Liberty & the American Revolution: Selections from the Collection of Sid Lapidus ’59,” opened May 28 — just in time for the 50th reunion of Lapidus’ class.

The items span more than 150 years of American and British history, from the 17th century to the early 19th century, and are arranged thematically into four groups. “Revolutionary Origins” features documents relating to political theory and ideology, beginning with a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. “The American Crisis” displays a wide array of views on the 18th century controversy over taxation and the push for independence in the colonies.

Russian work premieres with a Princeton spin

Peter Schram ’09 leaps over, from left, Kelsey Berry ’10, Jennie Scholick ’09, and Elizabeth Schwall ’09 in a rehearsal for Music for Athletes. (Photo by Brian Wilson, Princeton University Office of Communications)

“Greetings, highest President Tilghman! And three cheers for Old Nassau!”

These are the cries that opened the world premiere of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Music for Athletes in Richardson Auditorium July 17. The piece, which Princeton music professor Simon Morrison *97 uncovered in 2006 at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow, was performed as part of the sixth annual Golandsky Institute International Piano Festival.

Russian-born pianist Ilya Itin played the music, while a Princeton undergraduate and three alumni — Kelsey Berry ’10, Peter Schram ’09, Elizabeth Schwall ’09, and Jennie Scholick ’09 — danced to Scholick’s original choreography.

The “greetings” to Tilghman are representative of Scholick’s concept for the piece. Playing on the Kremlin’s original intention of glorifying Soviet athletic prowess through the performance, her modern adaptation glorifies Princeton instead.

Princeton Summer Theater season continues with The Glass Menagerie

For Shawn Fennell ’10, Douglas Lavanture ’09, and the handful of other students and recent graduates who run Princeton Summer Theater (PST), July has meant 14-hour days in the cozy confines of Murray Dodge Hall and a schedule filled with rehearsals, set construction, and a range of odd jobs, from manning the ticket counter to designing playbills.

Each day may be tiring, says Fennell, the company’s artistic director, but with four plays in a span of nine weeks, the performers “never get tired” of the material. In mid-June, on the day PST debuted the musical Urinetown, the Musical, cast members also had their first read-through of the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie, which will begin its two-weekend run July 9.