Princeton University

• 1. Introduction

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  Princeton University sits on 600 acres in New Jersey, and it holds something no other university in the United States can claim: the largest endowment per student in the country, at over $4.4 million per student. But the institution that stands there today began in a very different place, shaped by a religious schism, a colonial charter, and a parsonage classroom. How did a small Presbyterian college founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, become one of the world's most selective research universities? And what does it mean that the same school that once turned away Black students now hosts the Princeton and Slavery Project, reckoning openly with that history? Those are the questions this documentary will trace.

• 2. A Charter Born of Conflict

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  The founding of what would become Princeton was not a serene act of civic ambition. It was a direct consequence of a split inside the Presbyterian church following the Great Awakening. In 1741, New Light Presbyterians were expelled from the Synod of Philadelphia over how a log-cabin seminary in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, ordained its ministers. Four of the founders of the College of New Jersey were themselves expelled from or withdrew from that Synod. They were dissatisfied with Harvard and Yale's opposition to the Great Awakening and underwhelmed by the narrow instruction at the Log College. Their plan was to build something more expansive.

  They chose New Jersey for a practical reason: at the time, no institution of higher education existed between Yale in New Haven and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. The acting governor John Hamilton granted a charter on the 22nd of October 1746, after the initial request had been rejected by the Anglican governor Lewis Morrison, who died before the matter was resolved. The following year, the trustees elected Jonathan Dickinson as president, and classes met in his parsonage in Elizabeth.

  When Dickinson died, the college moved to Newark, where presidential successor Aaron Burr Sr. kept his parsonage. A second charter was issued on the 14th of September 1748 by Governor Jonathan Belcher, a Congregationalist who had grown estranged from his own alma mater, Harvard, and chose to effectively adopt the young college. Belcher would go on to donate his 474-volume library, making it one of the largest library collections in the colonies at the time.

• 3. Nassau Hall and Revolution

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  Nassau Hall, begun in 1754 and completed in 1756, was the building that made Princeton's move to its present town possible. The structure was named for William III of England, a member of the House of Orange-Nassau. When the trustees first suggested naming it after Governor Belcher, in recognition of his support for the college, Belcher declined the honor himself.

  John Witherspoon, who became president in 1768 and remained until his death in 1794, gave the institution a more explicitly political dimension. A signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Witherspoon broadened the curriculum and pushed the college toward preparing both clergy and secular leadership for the new American nation. In 1777, British soldiers briefly occupied Nassau Hall before surrendering to forces led by General George Washington. In the summer and fall of 1783, the Continental Congress met in the building, making Princeton the country's capital for four months. It was in Nassau Hall that Congress learned of the peace treaty with Britain.

• 4. Woodrow Wilson's Curriculum

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  Woodrow Wilson arrived at the presidency of Princeton in 1902 as an alumnus and popular professor, elected 13th president after his predecessor Francis Patton was pressured to resign over administrative shortcomings. Wilson had noticed falling academic standards and moved quickly. Freshman and sophomore students were put on a unified curriculum, while juniors and seniors concentrated in a single discipline. Ambitious seniors could pursue independent work, a practice that would define Princeton's academic identity going forward.

  In 1905, Wilson introduced the preceptorial system, then a novel concept in the United States. Rather than relying solely on large lectures, small groups of students, called precepts, met with a single instructor, called a preceptor, for more personal instruction in their area of study. The changes attracted a wave of new faculty. Enrollment declined sharply through 1907 as academic standards tightened, but Princeton's intellectual character strengthened in the process.

  Wilson's record contained real contradictions. He created Lake Carnegie in 1906 when Andrew Carnegie funded the reservoir, and he broke the Presbyterian lock on the board of trustees. But when an aspiring Black student wrote to Wilson seeking admission, Wilson had his secretary send a reply directing the student to attend a university where he would be more welcome. Princeton would not admit its first Black students until 1945, when the V-12 naval training program came to campus. In 1947, John L. Howard, one of four naval cadets admitted through that program, became the first Black student to graduate with a bachelor's degree from Princeton.

• 5. Coeducation, Slowly

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  Princeton explicitly prohibited women from enrolling from its founding in 1746 until 1969, more than two centuries later. The community had a name for this arrangement: "monastery", used both affectionately and critically. For about a decade from 1887 to 1897, a nearby institution called Evelyn College for Women existed largely for daughters of professors and sisters of Princeton undergraduates. Princeton professors taught there and several Princeton administrators served on its board, though no formal legal connection existed. It closed in 1897 after the death of its founder, Joshua McIlvaine.

  The path toward coeducation moved in small, contested steps. In 1961, Sabra Follett Meservey became the first woman admitted as a graduate student, though the dean of the graduate school quickly issued a statement calling her admission an exception. The student newspaper ran four articles about her in a single issue, one of which warned that "Princeton is unique as an undergraduate men's college and must remain so." In 1964, T'sai-ying Cheng became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Princeton.

  By January 1969, after discussions with Sarah Lawrence College about a possible merger had collapsed, Princeton's trustees voted 24-8 in favor of coeducation. In September of that year, 101 female freshmen and 70 female transfer students enrolled. They were housed in Pyne Hall, which had a new security system installed. According to accounts from the time, the women broke the security system within a day. In 1971, Mary St. John Douglas and Susan Savage Speers became the first female trustees. Quotas for men and women were eliminated in 1974. Following a lawsuit in 1979, the eating clubs were required to go coeducational in 1991, after an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied. Princeton elected its first female president, Shirley M. Tilghman, in 2001.

• 6. The Eating Clubs and Campus Life

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  Eleven eating clubs line Prospect Avenue and Washington Road, and sixty-eight percent of upperclassmen belong to one. These organizations are not affiliated with the university, but they function as the center of social life for juniors and seniors. Five clubs admit members on a first-come basis through a process called "sign-ins"; six use a selective process called "bicker", in which prospective members go through an interviewing process. Membership fees range from around $9,000 to $10,000 per student, and Princeton adjusts financial aid for upperclassmen to help cover the cost.

  The clubs trace their origins to the 19th century, rising during the presidency of James McCosh, who also eliminated fraternities and sororities during his tenure from 1868 to 1888. Wilson tried to abolish the clubs and replace them with quadrangles, a proposal that foreshadowed the residential college system that would eventually arrive, but he failed to win support.

  The residential college system was officially established in 1982 under president William G. Bowen. Whitman College, designed by Demetri Porphyrios in the Collegiate Gothic style, was the most recent addition to the system before 2022, built in 2007 at a cost of $100 million. Princeton opened two new residential colleges, Yeh College and New College West, at the start of the academic year in September 2022. The university plans to construct another, Hobson College, on the site where First College currently stands.

• 7. Research, Libraries, and the Labs

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  The Princeton University Library system holds over 13 million items across 11 buildings, including seven million bound volumes, making it one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The main campus library, Firestone Library, was built in 1948 and serves as the repository for the humanities and social sciences. Among its holdings are the autographed manuscript of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and George F. Kennan's Long Telegram.

  Beyond the library, Princeton operates or manages two national laboratories. The Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory traces its origins to Project Matterhorn, a classified Cold War project launched in 1951 with the goal of achieving controlled nuclear fusion. Princeton astrophysics professor Lyman Spitzer became its first director, a role he held until the project was declassified in 1961 and received its present name. The NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, founded in 1955 and relocated to Princeton's Forrestal Campus in 1968, conducts climate research and modeling.

  For the 2020 fiscal year, Princeton's main campus received approximately $250 million in sponsored research, with over 80% coming from the federal government. An additional $120 million went to the Plasma Physics Lab, bringing the combined total to $370 million. As of October 2025-81 Nobel laureates, 16 Fields Medalists, and 17 Turing Award laureates had been affiliated with Princeton as alumni, faculty, or researchers.

• 8. Reckoning and Ongoing Debate

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  In 2017, Princeton launched the Princeton and Slavery Project, a large-scale investigation into the university's historical entanglement with slavery. The project produced hundreds of primary sources, 80 scholarly essays, a scholarly conference, a series of short plays, and an art project. In April 2018, the university's trustees announced that two public spaces would be named for James Collins Johnson and Betsey Stockton, enslaved people who had lived and worked on campus.

  The institution has also revisited some of its long-held academic practices. From 1893 to 2026, undergraduates operated under an Honor Code that relied on students to proctor one another during exams rather than faculty supervisors. In 2026, Princeton announced it was ending the Honor Code and introducing exam supervisors, citing an increase in students using artificial intelligence to cheat.

  A grade deflation policy introduced in 2004 by dean Nancy Weiss Malkiel, designed to address a steady rise in undergraduate grades documented since the 1970s, was ultimately removed after a faculty vote in October 2014. A 2020 analysis found no lasting effects from the removal, with the percentage of students receiving A grades higher than it had been in 1998. The ongoing experiment of trying to balance access, academic rigor, and equity continues: Princeton in 2001 became the first university to replace all student loans in financial aid with grants, and in September 2022 announced it would cover all costs for families earning $100,000 a year or less.