My friend Avi Zenilman has done an excellent interview with William Bowen, who was president of Princeton during Sonia Sotomayor's undergraduate years. Bowen selected Sotomayor as the recipient of the prestigious Pyne Prize for academics and leadership. He is also an expert on affirmative action.
My favorite part of the interview addresses the critique that because Sotomayor was a campus activist, she somehow wasn't "grateful" enough for the privilege of attending Princeton. As Adam has written, the underlying assumption behind that argument is that students of color are "guests" at these majority-white institutions and should thus keep quiet. Bowen responds:
Zenilman: Critics of Sotomayor have made a couple of complaints about her Princeton years. One is that she got preferential treatment, and the second is that she showed all of this resentment toward the institution and focused on the negative, even though she eventually joined Princeton’s board of trustees. What’s your response to that? And why do you think there’s been such an intense focus on a 54-year-old’s experiences when she was in college?
Bowen: Well, I think she has said, correctly, that her move from Cardinal Spellman High School to a different environment was a formative experience. I think that she grew considerably during her undergraduate years. They changed her, just as she changed the institution, so in that sense it’s appropriate for people to look back on those days.
But I think the criticisms that you identified are entirely off-the-mark. This is a woman of enormous ability. She was going to succeed and going to thrive wherever she was, in any setting. And she did. She accomplished what she accomplished because she was good! I mean, not only was she incredibly smart, as I think there's plenty of evidence to demonstrate, but she was ... very steady and mature. Remarkably mature. That's one of the things I remember about her.
And so she put her talents to very good use, to very constructive use. Now on the question of resentment, I don't think she resented the university at all. I think she saw the university as an excellent university, but she thought it could be better! And it needed to be better. So did I.
She worked very purposefully, but always constructively, to take a good place and make it better. When she received the Pyne Prize, she was certainly very gracious and very generous in her response. I think she's stayed involved in Princeton over the years because she cared about the place.
--Dana Goldstein
