Letters: November 19, 1997
Celebrity professors Nor can I really be one of those "famous colleagues" whom he imagines to be persecuting him for his "obscurantist vocation"-faculty members, he says, "who seek the meaning of life in the quintessence of the here and now" and who believe that "to concern oneself with things that happened earlier than the day before yesterday is to exhibit a lack of intellectual hip." In reality, I've never had any reason or opportunity to give Professor Fleming "grief"; my own scholarship has always been largely about history, not "the here and now"; I know nothing about him or his re-search. I assume that unlike what he has written about his Princeton colleagues, Professor Fleming does a bit of fact-checking before passing judgment on his monks and nuns. On the other hand, it is odd, unless he confuses the word with obscure, that he characterizes his own work as "obscurantist." Publishing "these venomous things" in The Daily Princetonian for the titillation of students may have seemed "hip" to Professor Fleming. (Or are innuendoes such as "you know who I mean" a medieval teaching device?) It's harder to understand why the Princeton Alumni Weekly reprinted them. Stephen F. Cohen Professor, Department of Politics Princeton, N.J.
Mount Princeton David Reeves '48 Princeton, N.J.
The day after we climbed Mount Princeton I was in Beaver Creek, Colorado, with a member of the Harvard class of 1955. He said that about 20 years ago some Harvard alumni organized a Mount Harvard climb. He was asked to join them, but was unable to do so. Following an arduous ascent, they returned to the foot of the mountain to relax at a spa, only to find out that they had climbed Mount Princeton! Some Harvard guys get confused when they go outside. Linwood L. Davis '62 Winston-Salem, N.C.
Thanks for setting the record straight about Dave Irving '58 hiking all the way from the base of the mountain to the summit (Letters, November 5). His fellow climbers Hank Doll '58, Chuck Crick '59, and I also left from the base, and parted only near the top, when Dave left us in an awesome spurt of energy. As geezers, we were pleased with our performance. If I'm not mistaken, Joe Woods '57 and two or three of his classmates were the oldest alumni to reach the summit without driving up the jeep trail before starting their climb. Jim Proctor '59 Bethesda, Md.
|