Unprincipled at Princeton

"It is plain what the nation needs as its affairs grow more and more complex and its interests begin to touch the ends of the earth," Woodrow Wilson said upon becoming president of Princeton University in 1902. "It needs efficient and enlightened men. The universities of the country must take part in supplying them."

That, apparently, was what Charles and Marie Robertson had in mind when they gave Princeton $35 million in 1961 to fund a program at its Woodrow Wilson School. The money — part of Marie's inheritance from the A&P supermarket fortune — was to be used for training students to serve in the federal government, particularly in foreign relations.

Princeton seems to consider itself a bit too special for the low-glamour job of producing government workers and has been spending the endowment on other things. The Robertsons' children are suing on behalf of the foundation.

"We want the money removed from Princeton," says son Bill Robertson. The plan is to fund the sort of graduate program his parents envisioned, but at other universities. Possibilities include Tufts, Johns Hopkins, George Washington and Georgetown.

For Princeton, there's a ton of money at stake. The Robertsons' original gift has since grown to $850 million, or roughly 7 percent of the university's entire endowment.

Now, if you ran a university, and an alumnus handed you a bag of millions, wouldn't you try to keep the donor happy? For example, Yale got into a fight with Texas billionaire Lee Bass after he insisted on approving professors hired for a Western civilization curriculum he helped endow. Yale refused his terms but then did the honorable thing — it returned the $20 million.

The Robertsons' conditions — that the money be spent grooming high-level federal employees — sound far less outlandish. And the mission would seem not only noble, but also wholly appropriate to a school of public and international affairs named for the 28th U.S.

Princeton did not agree. Referring to the gift in a 1972 memo, then-Wilson School Dean John Lewis said he was bothered by the idea that the loyalty of an institution dealing in public affairs "automatically must be to the U.S. government." He added, "The university should resist a blind commitment to nation-state parochialism."

Fine, then return the money.

In addition to dissing the donors' values, Princeton seems to have been caught moving the cash piles to unauthorized places. Only about 14 percent of the Robertson money spent over the past decade has gone for instruction. The rest has been used for research, administration and overhead.

In 1999, politics professor Larry Bartels sent then-Princeton President Harold Shapiro a memo suggesting a way to siphon foundation money out of the Wilson School. He suggested "joint appointments as a mechanism for the school to subsidize the recruitment and retention of a first-class faculty in the Politics Department."

Well, well, well. Princeton did admit that it failed to disclose $750,000 spent outside the Wilson School and returned that sum to the foundation. But a former Harvard finance official has testified that, actually, Princeton spent well over $100 million on things not related to the Robertsons' intentions.

The children have had it. "After so many year of deception, they've had more than enough opportunity to get this right," Robertson says.

The university's motto happens to be, "Princeton in the nation's service and in the service of all nations." In his 1998 commencement address, Shapiro declared that "we have taken the words ... and placed them on the bright new orange banners that flank the corner of our venerable Nassau Hall."

In ordinary times, that sort of sentiment opens alumni checkbooks. Wonder how it's working for Princeton these days.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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