Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity cel­e­brated its 200^th anniver­sary with a year-long series of events, start­ing on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1946 and end­ing with a con­vo­ca­tion on June 14–17, 1947. The news­reel posted here was shot dur­ing the con­clu­sion of the bicen­ten­nial cel­e­bra­tions on June 17th, when thirty-six nota­bles received hon­orary degrees, includ­ing US Pres­i­dent Harry Tru­man, who gave the con­vo­ca­tion address.

The news­reel opens with footage of Harry Tru­man, pos­ing with for­mer pres­i­dent Her­bert Hoover (already a recip­i­ent of an hon­orary degree) and the wid­ows of US pres­i­dents Grover Cleve­land and Woodrow Wil­son, who were spe­cial guests. The first recip­i­ents fea­tured are Gen­eral Dwight “Ike” Eisen­hower, who would suc­ceed Harry Tru­man as US Pres­i­dent in 1953, and Admi­ral Chester Nimitz (0:37). Both were hon­ored for their lead­er­ship dur­ing the war, Eisen­hower as Supreme Allied Com­man­der, and Nimitz as com­man­der of the Pacific Fleet. Other recip­i­ents shown are Dr. Van­nevar Bush, wartime direc­tor of the Office of Sci­en­tific Research and Devel­op­ment (orga­nizer of the Man­hat­tan Project) and Bernard Baruch, pres­i­den­tial adviser dur­ing both world wars. They are fol­lowed by War­ren Austin, US rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the United Nations, and Vis­count Harold Alexan­der, gov­er­nor gen­eral of Canada (0:43–0:51). Albert Ein­stein, based at the Insti­tute of Advanced Stud­ies, but an hon­ored guest on cam­pus, also par­tic­i­pates in the pro­ces­sion (0:31). The film ends with Pres­i­dent Harry Truman’s ral­ly­ing address, in which he urges the adop­tion of uni­ver­sal mil­i­tary train­ing (1:28).