November 6, 2002: From the Editor

Photo: A new department A Moment With . . . (page 56) kicks off with Cornel West *80. (Denise Applewhite )

In different ways, this issue of PAW tells the stories of people whose lives were changed by unexpected ventures.

Harrison J. Goldin ’57 describes the impact of a last-minute career decision four decades ago (page 18). As a student at Princeton and Yale Law, Goldin focused on a career on Wall Street. But as he was interviewing for jobs in his final year of law school, he learned that Robert F. Kennedy was building a team of trial lawyers to work on civil rights cases in Mississippi. Goldin signed on. Though he spent just two years with the Justice Department, one assignment — as the roommate of James Meredith when Meredith integrated Ole Miss — shaped his life. “It was an epiphany,” Goldin recalls, and it has guided his life in public service.

Argelio Dumenigo writes of a handful of students, now juniors, who deferred resume-building internships to explore the world — and themselves, thanks to a program funded by Martin A. Dale ’53 (page 20). Stepping away from their career plans for the summer, these students designed adventures that would let them follow old interests or discover new ones. And so an economics major indulged her passions for English literature and hiking by trekking from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, and a Woodrow Wilson School student put aside public policy as he sought to understand his homeland’s native people. “I’m seeing the world through different eyes now,” wrote Ananya Lodaya ’04, who hiked across England.

This issue also marks an unexpected venture for me as I begin as editor of PAW. I never expected to end up at Princeton — not for school, and not for work. Though I grew up 50 miles away in Philadelphia, I had never even visited until I applied to the Woodrow Wilson School’s graduate program. At the time, I was writing for a small newspaper, and I expected only to learn enough economics and politics to decipher what was really going on in the suburban governments I was covering. Like Lodaya, I began to see the world through different eyes, and I am grateful to be in a position where that experience continues.

In this issue, we introduce you to two departments we hope will bring additional voices to the magazine and convey the sense of vitality that exists on the campus today. A Moment With . . . , on our back page, will feature a short interview with a Princeton alum or faculty member. We also reinstate a department from PAW’s past: the first-person essay, called Perspective. As always, PAW will be an independent voice in covering the university and the challenges facing it.

I hope you find in PAW something of the unexpected, and that we grab hold of the ideas and opportunities Princeton presents every day.

Marilyn H. Marks *86