Every so often, the complexities of the world break through the orange bubble that is Princeton University. There are occasional reminders of the world outside, like the pro-Ukraine flag-waving event outside FitzRandolph Gate, reminding us that a major conflict in Europe is still ongoing four years later. Even as a veteran, it still feels like something happening in a remote place. It was only when I attended the European Cultural Studies (ECS) Faber Colloquium, a requirement for the European Studies minor I am pursuing, that I reflected on Europe’s significance and the debt Princeton as an institution owes to Europe, from its architecture to its precept system.
As one of the only students here who lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the celebration of the fall of the Soviet Union, I argue here that something critical has been lost with recent changes to how European history, politics, languages and culture are taught at Princeton. The former dual European Studies program has been replaced by a program that undermines rigorous study as it attempts toprovincialize Europe in line with Princeton's current interdisciplinary approach to “studies.”
The official description of the new minor is appealing. However, merging ECS and EPS into a single European Studies minor signals a concerning shift in Princeton's curricular reform. What seems like a broadening of access might actually marginalize the field. By combining these two distinct intellectual paths under one interdisciplinary umbrella, Princeton risks reducing serious engagement with Europe’s political and cultural traditions. By design, it means less depth, less specialization, and diminished confidence in Europe's importance as a subject worth dedicated study. To compare, let's review what each program offered before the change.
Its structure also reflected a clearly distinct intellectual identity. The ECS certificate allowed students to fulfill the program either through two core ECS courses or the Humanities sequence, plus two additional upper-level courses. The program’s own description emphasized how students from diverse disciplines could gather around the humanities and the arts while still integrating those courses with their majors, independent work, and even studying abroad.
The old Contemporary European Politics (EPS) certificate was different. It required one gateway seminar and four courses, including both history and social science distribution requirements with an emphasis on European politics and society. There was also a need for sufficient foreign-language proficiency to use research materials for senior thesis work. Most importantly, it required that the senior thesis be on a subject related to contemporary European politics and society, unless an alternative independent project was approved.
These two programs were not the same. That was the point. One leaned more heavily toward culture, intellectual history, and the humanities. The other demanded engagement with politics, society, and language, as well as independent research. Their coexistence gave Princeton students choices about how to engage in the study of Europe. Merging them into one minor does not preserve both. It inevitably diminishes them. That is what seems to be happening here.
The new requirements for the European Studies minor consist of five courses: one prerequisite and four electives, split between ECS and EPS. But there is no independent work requirement and no language requirement. Students participate in a senior colloquium, but the structure no longer preserves the sharper demands once built into EPS.
“Interdisciplinary” may have become one of the most celebrated words in higher education. However, interdisciplinarity is not equivalent to rigor. It also is not the same as intellectual breadth, and certainly not the same as depth. When a program removes language requirements and independent research obligations, it is difficult to argue that academic seriousness has improved. Simplification does not equal enrichment. Princeton describes the new minor as a “comprehensive” and “global” study of Europe. But what appears comprehensive on paper does not translate into genuine comprehensiveness in practice.
What is lost is not just a credential but also a way of thinking about education. The disappearance of distinct European cultural and political identities suggests that preserving separation no longer matters as much as it once did as a topic of academic inquiry. And that should be a concern: the academic politics surrounding Europe as a subject, where it is often treated less as a civilization to be studied seriously than as a problem in the larger context of colonialism and multiculturalism.
Princeton might see this as progress, but I believe something valuable is being lost; it reflects a concerning aspect of what a university still considers worth preserving. Europe should be studied with a critical eye. Its imperial projects, exclusions, and contradictions are part of its history and should be discussed, warts and all. But students should question why the decision was made to provincialize Europe, when we are the inheritors of that Western tradition. As a minority first generation low income student with a GED, I might not be the face you expect to see on the barricades, but perhaps someone should have been manning the gates and waving the flag to make sure we did not forget how much it matters.
Joseph Gonzalez '28 is an Army and Marine Corps combat veteran and transfer student from Brentwood, NY, majoring in History. He is a PFS Writing Fellow.
Megan McArdle argues that Carolyn Rouse — Princeton anthropology professor and AAA president — badly botched a Chronicle of Higher Education interview meant to rebut a Vanderbilt/WashU report accusing anthropology of suppressing dissent on politically charged topics. McArdle uses the episode to argue academia has grown accustomed to speaking only to itself, at a moment when public trust in higher ed is collapsing — and that unless it repairs its credibility, financial consequences will follow reputational ones.
Faith in higher education continues to plummet, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—the nation’s leading organization representing faculty interests and a longstanding voice on academic freedom and university governance—has decided to train its guns on the growing movement to establish civic education centers at public universities. The AAUP’s objections amount to a single, unlovely demand: we get to decide what students learn, and nobody else gets a vote.
Six days after the report went online, the AAA fired back with a full-throated defense. “Anthropologists welcome rigorous critique of the discipline,” wrote its president, Carolyn M. Rouse. “What we cannot accept is a sweeping verdict about anthropology’s intellectual culture, scholarly practices, and professional norms built on selective evidence and issued without consultation.
