Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings Writes About Princeton and Judge Alito

Hilzoy (Princeton '1981) points out just what Samuel Alito was being proud of when he was proud of his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton:

Obsidian Wings: Alito And CAP :

The fact that Samuel Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and cited that fact on his 1985 job application, has been in the news recently; and it occurred to me that since I was a Princeton undergraduate (class of '81) while CAP was active, I might be able to provide some useful background on this one.

CAP is generally described as 'a conservative group'. But this is as misleading as calling the John Birch Society a 'conservative group' would be. There are lots of conservatives who are thoughtful and intelligent, and who have real intellectual integrity. Conservatives like this did not tend to join CAP. CAP was dedicated to finding outrages that it took to be caused by the horrible fact that women and minorities were being admitted to Princeton. The need to find outrages generally came first; any encounter with facts came later. For this reason, CAP tended to attract not conservatives per se, but the sort of conservative who is forever getting deeply hysterical about some perceived threat to a supposed previous golden age, who sees such threats everywhere, and who is willing to completely distort the truth in order to feed his (and it generally was 'his') obsessions.

(I mean: just ask yourself: what sort of person would devote time and energy to a group focussed entirely on combatting trends at his undergraduate institution, trends that the actual undergraduates of the time had no problem with? We used to wonder: don't these people have lives?)

CAP did a number of things to combat Princeton's slide into mediocrity and decadence, otherwise known as its decision to admit women and more than a token number of minorities. It published a magazine, Prospect, devoted to lurid stories about all that decadence and mediocrity and outraged editorials calling for a return to the halcyon days of the 1950s. These stories had the same relation to reality as the views of those fundamentalists who imagine that a life without Christ is necessarily composed of mindless and sordid sexual episodes, punctuated by periods in which one drugs oneself into a stupor, carried out in an attempt to avoid having to recognize one's own appalling inner emptiness: they were just plain false, and reveal more about the person who believes them than anything else. We used to read stories in Prospect aloud to one another for laughs. (CAP was very well funded, and copies of Prospect were everywhere.)

But CAP also did other things. The Daily Princetonian cites two:

"-- In 1973, CAP mailed a letter to parents of freshmen implying that their sons and daughters were living in "cohabitation," rather than simply coeducational dorms.

— In 1975, a CAP board member tried to disrupt Annual Giving by writing to alumni in the business community to consider whether their gifts were "being used to undermine, subvert, and otherwise discredit the very businesses which are helping fund private education.""

They really did mail letters to the parents of incoming freshman trashing the university, and they really did try to disrupt annual giving. These are serious things to do. About CAP's tactics generally, I agree with Stephen Dujack, who was Associate Editor of the Princeton Alumni Weekly during the period when I was an undergrad:

"So in 2005, we know that in 1985, Alito belonged to a group that was dedicated to pointlessly interfering with the functioning of a university because its student body had representative numbers of women and minorities, as required by law. A group which, for its entire existence, used as its only tactics dissembling and dirty tricks; the list above doesn't begin to do justice in describing the organization's destructiveness. A lot of people were hurt in the process. A great university was damaged."

CAP would have been just a destructive joke had it not been for what the joke was about. Princeton only started to admit women in 1969. Moreover, Princeton had traditionally been the school where Southerners who wanted their sons to get an ivy league education sent them. Why? Because for a long time Princeton did not admit blacks, and until (iirc) 1967, admitted them only in very, very small numbers:

"A significant development, more recently, concerned blacks and other minority groups. Although a few blacks studied privately with President Witherspoon as early as 1774, and although, beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, black students occasionally earned University degrees, the first appreciable influx did not begin until the 1960s when the University adopted an active recruitment policy for minority students."

To understand CAP, you really have to understand that until the late 60s, the almost total absence of black students at Princeton was a feature, not a bug. It was one of the reasons people went there.

Consider, against this backdrop, the following quote:

""Prospect" was founded in October 1972 by the then-newly-formed CAP, which was co-chaired by Asa Bushnell '21 and Shelby Cullom Davis '30. The latter, who was the University's largest donor at the time, was a strong traditionalist, firmly opposed to the many of the new directions Princeton was taking, including coeducation.

He wrote in "Prospect": "May I recall, and with some nostalgia, my father's 50th reunion, a body of men, relatively homogenous in interests and backgrounds, who had known and liked each other over the years during which they had contributed much in spirit and substance to the greatness of Princeton," according to an account in "The Chosen," a book by Jerome Karabel on the history of admissions at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

"I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future," Davis added, "with an undergraduate student population of approximately 40% women and minorities, such as the Administration has proposed." "

And:

"An alumnus wrote in 1974 in CAP’s magazine that “We had trusted the admissions office to select young men who could and would become part of the great Princeton tradition. In my day, [Dean of Student Affairs] Andy Brown would have been called to task for his open love affair with minorities.”"

For a sense of Prospect's general level of discourse:

"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place," fretted a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism." "Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children."

About coeducation, try this

"T. Harding Jones, Alito’s classmate and CAP’s executive director in 1974 (two years after they graduated) told the New York Times that “Co-education has ruined the mystique and the camaraderies that used to exist. Princeton has now given into the fad of the moment, and I think it’s going to prove to be a very unfortunate thing.”"

And this:

"CAP supported a quota system to ensure that the vast majority of students would continue to be men. Asa Bushnell, then chairman of CAP, told the New York Times in 1974 that “Many Princeton graduates are unhappy over the fact that the administration has seen fit to abrogate the virtual guarantee that 800 [out of roughly 1,100] would continue to be the number of males in each freshman class.”"

And for those conservatives who oppose affirmative action on the grounds that we should pay no attention to gender or ethnicity:

"Another article published that same year bemoaned the fact that "the makeup of the Princeton student body has changed drastically for the worse" in recent years--Princeton had begun admitting women in 1969--and wondered aloud what might happen if the university adopted a "sex-blind" policy "removing limits on the number of women." In an unsuccessful effort to forestall this frightening development, the executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that affirmed unequivocally, "Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposes adoption of a sex-blind admission policy.""

CAP was not about opposing affirmative action. It supported quotas that favored white men. CAP was about opposing the presence of women and minorities at Princeton. Period. Moreover, its tactics were despicable. In retrospect, it was one of the first instances of what has now become a familiar pattern: an extremely well-funded organization dedicated to spreading lies about some opponent in an effort to force that opponent to change course through the sheer volume of vitriol and harassment that a lot of money can buy. Samuel Alito pointed with pride to his membership in CAP in 1985. What relevance this should have now is open to debate; I just wanted to clarify what exactly it was that he was proud to be a part of.

Comments

[liberal]

Having attended a certain university in New Jersey myself, I echo Hilzoy's sentiments re CAP. A bunch of wingnuts if there ever were any.

[ogmb]

Expect Alito to claim that he was a member purely to socialize with fellow alumni and a number of Democratic senators to be dumb enough and fall for it.

[liberal]

Matt wrote, "My god, I wish that my life w/o christ really was..."

LOL!

Actually, that line "composed of mindless and sordid sexual episodes...avoid having to recognize one's own appalling inner emptiness" sounds like something out of _The Onion_.

[Maynard Handley]

Of course Princeton is the place with a "Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs".
What's next? The "Adolf Hitler Center for Jewish studies"? The "Rick Santorum chair in human sexuality"?

I mean, honestly, what is there to learn from Woodrow Wilson in international affairs (how to set the stage for a truly huge catastrophe?) or public affairs (how to toss aside the bill of rights and put your opponents in prison? how to create an all-white work force?).

[ozoid]

"To understand CAP, you really have to understand that until the late 60s, the almost total absence of black students at Princeton was a feature, not a bug. It was one of the reasons people went there."

I took the Princeton tour as a naive Midwestern high school senior nearly 40 years ago. I still recall going cold as the guide pointed out what had been slave quarters back in, I guess in the minds of some, what was the Golden Age.

[Matt]

Brad,
I'm curious about your editorial policy here. It seems my comment above was deleated. That's not a big deal to me- it was just poking fun at some fools, not adding much of particular substance, but it seemed to be a sort of poking fun that wasn't opposed to the point of the post, wasn't crude (any more than the post, which it largely quoted) etc. So, why deleat it? I gather that you deleat comments sometimes for various reasons, but why? I'm certainly not an enemy of this site or anything. Can you explain the editorial policy? As others have noted on other posts it certainly leaves a bad taste and looks a bit bad. Of course it's your blog and you can do what you want, but it, frankly, seems a bit weird to me, especially since there was nothing exceptional, I'd though, about what I wrote- neither on the good or the bad side.

[liberal]

Matt wrote, "Can you explain the editorial policy?"

Brad has said previously that he deletes comments in order to shape the direction of a thread, to keep it on track, as it were.

Not that I agree with his policy.

[liberal]

Lest one think that CAP is an obscure group with no influence on anything, note that some conservative stars were stabled there during the early phase of their careers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/politics/politicsspecial1/27alito.html?pagewanted=all

"The magazine's content also grew increasingly provocative under the editorship of conservative rising stars, including Dinesh D'Souza and later Laura Ingraham."

I remember despising D'Souza back then. Some things don't change.

[a different chris]

>>that a life without Christ is necessarily composed of (blah,blah)

Add me to the list of athiests that have to regretfully report that it is not nearly that much fun.

Seriously, though, the racism/sexism is just amazing. Listen to this guy:

>"a body of men, relatively homogenous in interests and backgrounds,...I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future,"

Of course Shelby Fuc...uh...Cullom Davis can't envisage it. Because people like him were in no way going to allow minorities or women into their little clubs, onto their sumptious golfcourses, a seat in their panelled boardrooms to get some of that "homogeneity" of background. How can you share treehouse stories with a woman when the most obvious feature of that treehouse is the "No Girlz Alowed" sign?

[WatchfulBabbler]

[U]ntil the late 60s, the almost total absence of black students at Princeton was a feature, not a bug.

Don't assume that things have substantially changed. Even at this late date, Princeton is not a particularly welcoming place for black students, though the reasons are primarily structural.

[Cal]

Shouldn't this stuff be put front and center at his hearing? Shouldn't he be asked to renounce it at the hearing: no conditions, no equivocations. Shouldn't the women Senators be called on to actually take a stand about this sort of person? Shouldn't the women Senators have to say, well let by gones be by gones if he truly recants in public.

Shouldn't the Democratic women Senators call upon their Republican sister Senators to take a public stand about this?

I focus on the women because Obama should also take a stand but their are more women Senators than African American Senators.

[MaryLou]

And ironically, forty years earlier all that 'harrumphing' would most likely have been directed at 'Italians' and 'Catholics' polluting the hallowed Princeton traditions.

[ralphd]

That is funny. As I was reading the article I thought of the Dartmouth Review, which by the time I was an undergrad (mid-90s) had fallen off of its glory days in the mid-to-late 80s (when Ingraham and D'Souza or their contemporaries tore down protests against apartheid, among other charming stunts) and was a group of paunchy guys who would sit around, smoke tobacco from pipes and publish a newspaper about the death of the Canon each week. Little did I know Ingraham and D'souza were involved in the Prospect as well.

[tjallen]

University of Virginia was another university admired by "Southern boys" who wanted a school with no women and no minorities. In 1972 the decision was suddenly made to admit women and, rather than splitting the usual class of 800 into half women and half men, they admitted the same 800 men that would normally have been admitted, plus almost 800 women. There were not enough dorms, classrooms, teachers, apartments in Charlottesville, eating facilities, etc etc etc. No thought was given to admitting fewer than the usual number of white men.

When I got there in 1978, there were still a number of signs, growing pains, of the doubling in size of the university. Classes in trailers, sitting in the aisles, not enough TAs and lecturers, so class sizes were huge, and so on. A number of groups similar to CAP operated at UVa. One made the claim that the UVa experience had been "diluted by the admission of women!" Yes, probably true, but it was diluted because the administration of the state university could not see how to admit half as many white men as had usually been admitted.

[Colin Danby]

Ah, college days. Dartmouth did more or less the same thing that tjallen describes, initially going co-ed in the mid 1970s by increasing the size of the entering class by a third and then keeping the enlarged entering class no more than 25% female, so that they could say to dismayed alums that the number of men admitted would not fall. They scrapped the quota only after some years of student protest. But the defense of affirmative action for mediocre white men, CAP's project, was certainly one of the animating features of the corresponding alum-financed reaction at Dartmouth that ralphd notes. (Though CAP seems to have been more militant and obvious than their Hanover cousins.) The word to watch for, of course, is "tradition."

[hopeful]

A lot of people are not the chosen of Princeton, Yale or Harvard yet manage to go on to success. Look at Warren Buffett.

There may be many market failures when it comes to higher ed. This is why land grant colleges were probably pretty important to the development of the U.S. And for all those who point out how private universities tend to overpopulate the list of top universities, there are still people like Andy Grove who get PhDs at state universities.

[hopeful]

one more: i never applied to princeton, yale or harvard, so i could not be chosen or not chosen by them. hopefully i will still be okay in life.

[Matt]

Stacy,
The post is about Alito's involvement in a group that lamented the loss of all-male (nearly) all white princeton many years after he graduated (and had graduated from law school.) No one is interested in what he was doing when he was 18. What we want to know is why he felt it was appropraite to be in such a group and whether he publicly repudiates it's views now, and why we should believe him.

[hopeful]

or how about Jack Kilby?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_S._Kilby

[Firebug]

What I find most stunning about CAP is their utter lack of shame in advocating despicable policies. Most organizations would shroud their opposition to blacks and women on campus with paeans to "meritocracy". Some of this might even have some level of validity (there really have been some questionable cases in affirmative action law), and reasonable people might wind up joining such groups before they learn the real reasons behind them. But CAP didn't even bother with the meritocracy fig leaf. Instead, they openly defended the Good Ol' Boy network, something very few people have had the audacity to do.

[William Rhoads]

The fact that Alito was active in CAP shows that he understands nothing about competition and economics. I was on the faculty at Wiliams College from 1960 to 1965, and we saw ourselves in bitter competition with Amherst, Wesleyan, Harvard, Yale and Princeton for the best students, and the Williams Clubs in each city were actively recruiting the very best students for Williams. We could not afford to discriminate on racial, ethnic, or social grounds because we had to get all the winners we could, for without the best students you cannot recruit the best faculty, and your graduates will not bring enough renown and donations to keep Williams in the first rank. I think some of my collegues would have liked to be able to discriminate, but they knew enough about economics and competition to know that if they did so they could fatally harm the institution. I bet academic competition in the late 1960's when Alito went to Princeton was even stronger than what I easily saw in the first half of the decade.

William G. Rhoads