Opinion
Wednesday April 25, 2018
page 7
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Forget money and study what you love Sam Aftel
Columnist
A
pril marks the exciting — but also terrifying — time of year when fellow A.B. sophomores must declare their concentration. Some sophomores have known what they want to major in throughout their time at Princeton. But other sophomores have been, and still remain, unsure of what they should declare. Unfortunately, many of these sophomores will halfheartedly select majors based on what they consider to be the safest choice — that is, the discipline that will guarantee them a suitable post-graduation job. I believe the desperation for a high-paying career, which leads Princeton students to study what is profitable over what is fulfilling, is unhealthy. Princeton has a welldocumented risk-aversion culture. Princetonians often believe they must maximize their hard-won Ivy League degrees for such an education to have any long-term worth. Hence, why major in visual arts — even if it is your passion — when you can guarantee yourself a post-graduation, six-figure salary by majoring in economics? The careerist mindset of Princeton students is cynical and counterproductive. The worth of a Princeton education should be measured by the purpose and quality of life you achieve from your college experi-
ence. That is, the goal of Princeton students should be to study something that can guide them towards a fulfilling life. Success need not be measured in dollars and cents. Instead, success should be measured by the meaning and purpose of one’s life, including the meaning and purpose of one’s occupation. A teacher who educates and inspires disadvantaged students can experience a tremendous sense of meaning, despite receiving a low salary. Likewise, a Wall Street hedge fund manager who earns five million dollars a year could be miserable due to the job’s demanding hours. Of course, I am not saying no one should major in lucrative fields like ECO or COS. If a student believes they will be the most fulfilled by working for Goldman Sachs or Google, by all means, they should study economics or computer science and pursue a successful career. But Princeton students are shortchanging themselves existentially if they only major in ECO or COS because these fields often guarantee a prosperous future. Many people in finance or technology find it difficult to obtain a sense of moral purpose from their professions. For example, if you do not love finance, it is very difficult to enjoy working grueling and lonely sixteen-hour days helping to maintain and increase the wealth of billionaires. Where’s the purpose and fulfillment in that? Similarly, I believe the intellectualism and creativity of Princeton graduates should be harnessed
to make a social difference. The amount of income accumulated by Princeton graduates does not impress me. If you use your Princeton education to only achieve financial prosperity, the meaning and intellectual importance of your Princeton education is destroyed. In other words, Princeton graduates have a tremendous opportunity and duty to redistribute the privilege bestowed upon them and the knowledge they have acquired. Working on Wall Street does not necessarily mean you can’t do this. If you believe you can make a positive difference working in finance, you should major in economics and pursue a job in the field. But if you are just majoring in ECO and pursuing a career on Wall Street to make money, your Princeton education could’ve been more meaningfully employed elsewhere. The notions of purpose and meaning have deeply impacted my experience at Princeton thus far. I recently declared my concentration in history after realizing that I want to (perhaps) pursue a career as a history professor. Although other career paths are tempting, such as those that do not require five to seven years of graduate school or those that pay really well, I always revert back to my love of history, academia, and the opportunity to be a professor. Sure, as a history professor, if I am lucky enough to obtain a job, I will most likely never make an obscene amount of money, but that’s okay. The actual substance of a career —
that is, the intrinsic value of a job — is much more important to me than any extrinsic rewards. By majoring in history and seeking a career as an academic, I will be pursuing my intellectual passion and hopefully making a positive difference in my students’ lives and contributing to my field as a researcher. Money has nothing on that. Furthermore, the late and profoundly brilliant student writer Marina Keegan, a Yale graduate, penned a 2011 column about Yale students going into finance and consulting. In the piece, published in the Yale Daily News, Keegan lamented the fact that a substantial number of Yale graduates go into finance and consulting without considering a deeper purpose. She wrote, “to me there’s something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we’re not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we’re explicitly passionate about.” Princeton students, too, should consider this wise message. All in all, majoring in a field that will lead to a lucrative profession is not per se unethical. But so many Princeton graduates too easily sell out to finance, consulting, technology, and other related fields without considering other, more meaningful options. Life is short. Why not spend it doing something that fulfills you? Samuel Aftel is a sophomore from East Northport, N.Y. He can be reached at saftel@princeton.edu.
Looking for Latin America in the history department Aly Kersley and Kate Reed
I
Guest Contributors
n the fall of 2018, Princeton’s history department will offer sixtyfour courses. Of those courses, none are crosslisted with the Program in Latin American Studies. Only one, a junior seminar open only to juniors in the history department, addresses a Latin American topic: U.S. Imperialism in the Modern Caribbean. This dearth of courses is not a product of lack of demand for HIS/LAS classes. In the Class of 2017, there were 26 students in the interdisciplinary Program in Latin American Studies. Enrollments in LAScrosslisted history classes — when those classes have been offered — have been consistently high, especially in those classes covering the modern period. The last time the survey course HIS/LAS 304: Modern Latin America since 1810 was offered, in spring 2016, 48 students enrolled. Latin American history seminars offered since then have often been filled to capacity, or nearly so. When this issue was raised with history department faculty at a meeting to discuss the undergraduate program, the faculty members present seemed unaware of the lack of LAS courses. They responded to our concerns by referring to the tentative list of spring 2019 course offerings, which includes two Latin
American history courses. However, this does not resolve either the immediate problem of next fall’s offerings, nor the more systemic issue at hand: how could one of the best history departments in the country fail to offer, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, any courses on Latin America? Part of the problem stems from the lack of history faculty working on Latin America: only three history professors list “Latin America and the Caribbean” as one of their regions of interest. Of those professors, one will be on leave this coming year, and another has transitioned to teaching mostly global history. The third, who is teaching the two courses offered next spring, will be leaving the University at the end of the 2018-2019 academic year. This shortage of faculty, however, only speaks to a deeper problem. The history department overemphasizes both U.S. and European history at the expense of Latin American, African, and Asian history. Tellingly, the department’s distribution requirements for concentrators include one class each in U.S., European, Pre-Modern, and “Non-Western” history. The distribution of comprehensive exams (taken by seniors after the submission of the senior thesis, and worth five percent of their departmental GPA) also reveals the department’s bias
towards the United States and Europe (to the department’s credit, it is considering revisions to the comprehensive exam system, but it is unclear what form these changes will take, and what fields will be offered). Under the current system, Latin American history concentrators take a comprehensive exam that covers the entire region, including both colonial and modern periods. There is one “African” exam and one “Asian” exam offered. European concentrators choose from exams covering Ancient Greece and Rome, Europe since 1700, Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Russia, and the United Kingdom. U.S. history concentrators take their exam on the post-independence United States. What does this say about how the department values the histories of different parts of the world? Is it a coincidence that the areas of the world that the department focuses on are predominantly white? Princeton has historically been a place designed for white students and faculty members, and the department’s curriculum reflects this in its Anglo-American bias. To demonstrate our desire to break away from this history, the department must improve its coverage of people and parts of the world that have been traditionally marginalized by the discipline, through both courses and faculty hiring decisions.
It is not unreasonable to expect the University to hire more faculty and offer more courses in Latin American history. Brown University’s history department has eight faculty members focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, and Yale’s has six. This coming fall, Brown will offer four undergraduate classes on Latin American history. Yale’s course offerings for fall 2018 have not yet been released, but three undergraduate Latin American history classes were offered this spring, and four were offered last fall. We believe that this is a valuable and informative comparison, given that all three institutions have similar undergraduate student bodies: 5,232 at Princeton; 5,453 at Yale; 6,670 at Brown. Every region of the world deserves inclusion in Princeton’s history curriculum. Latin America comprises thirty-three countries and approximately 637 million people. Some of these countries are global economic powerhouses, some have been featured on the front page of The New York Times, and many have played central roles in global conflicts and the development and spread of ideas throughout history. Any understanding of the history of our world is incomplete without knowledge of this region, and the courses offered by our history department should reflect that. The stories of the
vol. cxlii
editor-in-chief
Marcia Brown ’19 business manager
Ryan Gizzie ’19
BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 Kathleen Crown William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Lisa Belkin ‘82 Francesca Barber trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73
142ND MANAGING BOARD managing editors Isabel Hsu ’19 Claire Lee ’19 head news editors Claire Thornton ’19 Jeff Zymeri ’20 associate news editors Allie Spensley ’20 Audrey Spensley ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 associate news and film editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 head opinion editor Emily Erdos ’19 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Jon Ort ’21 head sports editors David Xin ’19 Chris Murphy ’20 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Jack Graham ’20 head street editors Danielle Hoffman ’20 Lyric Perot ’20 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20 associate chief copy editors Marina Latif ’19 Arthur Mateos ’19 head design editor Rachel Brill ’19 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ’19 head photo editor Risa Gelles-Watnick ’21
NIGHT STAFF Chief Assistant Copy Editor Lydia Choi ’21 Copy Caroline Lippman ’19 Christian Flores ’21 Elizabeth Bailey ’21 design Dante Sudilovsky ’21
places and people in Latin America matter, just as much as those of the United States and Europe. We care deeply about the history department, and want it to provide the best education possible to its students and the many non-concentrators that enroll in its classes. We feel that a more diverse and inclusive program of study is integral to that goal. Aly Kersley and Kate Reed are juniors in the history department and Program in Latin American Studies. Aly is from Toronto, Canada, and can be reached at akersley@ princeton.edu. Kate is from Annapolis, Md., and can be reached at kreed@princeton. edu.