It did not take long after com­ing to Prince­ton in 1994 for me to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of Robert Goheen and his place in Uni­ver­sity history. During his time in the president’s office, the Uni­ver­sity was trans­formed phys­i­cally, socially, and aca­d­e­m­i­cally and became the mod­ern Uni­ver­sity it is today. But as I stud­ied the records in the Uni­ver­sity Archives and came up to speed with his administration’s accom­plish­ments, I had no sense of the man who over­saw this water­shed era until one day Goheen vis­ited Mudd Library to con­duct research himself.

Expect­ing an over­size char­ac­ter on the order of Yale’s King­man Brewster—Goheen’s con­tem­po­rary who was a car­i­ca­ture in Doones­bury—I found just the opposite. He was a quiet, unas­sum­ing man who, if not for know­ing his name from the daily log, I would have assumed to be just another of the many senior schol­ars who vis­ited the library and duti­fully went about their work. He did not ask for nor expect any spe­cial treat­ment, nor did his demeanor call atten­tion to him­self in any way. I would learn that was the essence of Bob Goheen.

In the com­ing years, there were a num­ber of occa­sions where I crossed paths with Goheen, includ­ing one spring day when I went to his house to pick up his non-Princeton papers.  Later, Sec­re­tary of the Uni­ver­sity Robert Dur­kee asked me to con­duct a video oral his­tory inter­view with Goheen with the Alumni Council’s Kathy Tay­lor serv­ing as producer. The four, hour-long videos here are the result of our efforts, and they doc­u­ment the man’s remark­able 72-year asso­ci­a­tion with Prince­ton as a stu­dent, fac­ulty mem­ber, and president.

All four inter­views are described in a find­ing aid that con­tains links to the tran­scripts of the inter­views.  (The tran­scripts also have time stamps which closely cor­re­spond with the video time stamp.)

The first inter­view, con­ducted on Octo­ber 21, 2004, cov­ers Goheen’s early life, his under­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate, and fac­ulty careers at Prince­ton, and his selec­tion as Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent at age 37. He also reflects on his men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Whit­ney Oates, long-serving trustee Dean Mathey, his pre­de­ces­sor Harold Dodds, and Fred­die Fox. (In each inter­view, I asked Goheen to dis­cuss var­i­ous peo­ple with whom he crossed paths. He freely admited that recall­ing spe­cific anec­dotes is not one of his strengths, and so these tend to be impres­sion­is­tic.)   (Read the tran­script.)

In the sec­ond inter­view (con­ducted on Octo­ber 26, 2004), Goheen dis­cussed the state of the Uni­ver­sity upon becom­ing pres­i­dent, the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign, the growth and allo­ca­tion of the Uni­ver­sity bud­get, coed­u­ca­tion, the eat­ing clubs, and his con­tem­po­rary Ivy League presidents. Of spe­cial note is his dis­cus­sion of the 1963 Spring riots (15:35) as they related to the civil rights demon­stra­tions in the South.  (Read the tran­script.)

In the third inter­view (Novem­ber 4, 2004), Goheen dis­cusses coed­u­ca­tion in more detail, cam­pus archi­tec­ture, the estab­lish­ment of the Provost’s Office, William Bowen, the growth of the grad­u­ate school, and changes in Uni­ver­sity gov­er­nance and the Kel­ley Com­mit­tee. (Read the tran­script.)

The final inter­view (Jan­u­ary 6, 2005) cov­ers the cre­ation of the Coun­cil on the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Com­mu­nity (CPUC), the Viet­nam War and cam­pus unrest includ­ing the cam­pus strike of 1970, the Board of Trustees, his deci­sion to resign as pres­i­dent, and his life after­wards, includ­ing his foun­da­tion work and his time as Ambas­sador to India. (Read the tran­script.)