Headline Nov. 13/ ''' PRINCETON UNIVERSITY '''

''' PRINCETON UNIVERSITY '''

Take a tour of the idyllic campus of Princeton University, and your guide is likely to stop in front of the 18th-century clapboard building-

Fronted by two graceful sycamore trees, that housed the school's early presidents.

The trees were planted in the spring of 1766, the legend has it, by the school's fifth president, Samuel Finley, to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act.

But a few months later, they were chosen to be the backdrop for a rather different event : the auction of Finley's Slaves.

That sale is not a part of Princeton official history. It was all but unknown until a few years ago, when researchers came across a newspaper advertisement listing the liquidation of Finley's human property, along with horses, cattle furniture and a ''choice collection of books''.

Now, it is one of many forgotten stories being brought to light as a part of an ambitious effort to acknowledge and explore the darker side of Princeton's past.

In recent years, more than a dozen American universities  -including Brown, Harvard, Georgetown and the University of Virginia  -have acknowledged their historical ties to slavery.

But the Princeton and Slavery Project, officially unveiled on Monday, stands out for the dept of its research.

The projects website includes hundreds of primary source documents and more than 80 articles exploring topics like early slavery-related university funding, student demographics and the sometimes shocking history of racial violence on a campus long known as the most culturally ''Southern'' in the Ivy League.

Princeton's heavily Southern antebellum student body -and its desire to keep the sons of slaveholders comfortable -may have set it apart. But its deep entanglements with slavery did not.

''Princeton's history is  American history writ small,''  said Martha Sandweiss, the history professor    who led the project. ''From the beginning, liberty and slavery were intertwined.''

The Princeton research is being released amid renewed debate about slavery, the Civil War and national memory. It also arrives nearly two years after a student group at Princeton called the Black Justice League occupied the- president's office and demanded-

Among other things, that Woodrow Wilson's name be removed from places of honor on campus because of his racist ideas and actions.

Wilson, a Princeton graduate and former president of the university, kept his place, and the controversy quieted down.

The new research does not come with any recommendations for action. But Professor Sandweiss said she hoped it would foster a broader, more fully informed conversation about history and racial justice.

''Woodrow Wilson doesn't just come from nowhere,'' she said. ''He comes from this particular place.''

Unlike slavery research at some other institutions, the Princeton project was a bottom-up affair, originating with an undergraduate class that Professor Sandweiss began teaching in 2013, with the help from the university's archivist, Dan Linke.

Early on, she told the administration what she was doing and said she didn't think it would be  ''embarrassing to Princeton.'' she recalled.

As the project grew, it was supported piecemeal by various partners, including the university's art museum, which has commissioned a large-scale outdoor installation by the artist Titus Kaphar commemorating the 1766 slave sale and the-

McCarter Theater, which has commissioned seven plays inspired by the research, to be performed later this month as part of two-day public symposium.     

Earlier this year, the project got more formal support from the administration, in the form of a grant from the Princeton Histories Fund established in the wake of the Wilson controversy to support-

''Aspects of Princeton's history that have been forgotten, overlooked, subordinated or suppressed.''

Princeton's current president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, who will speak at the symposium, issued a statement praising the project's ''creativity, diverse perspectives and rigorous academic standards,'' which he said he hoped would promote ''a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of our history.''

That history is certainly imposing. Princeton, founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, is the nation's fourth-oldest university, and the one most associated with the American Revolution.

Its sixth president, John Witherspoon, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1783, the Continental Congress briefly met in Nassau Hall, in the same room where campus      lore holds that a  connonball [fired by Alexander Hamilton, no less} decapitated a portrait of George 111 six year's earlier.

Today, that room is lined with oil portraits of the university's presidents, the first nine of whom owned slaves. [The researchers found no evidence that the university itself ever owned slaves].

On a recent morning, Professor Sandweiss paused in front of the likeness of Samuel Stanhope Smith [1751-1819].

Smith, a Presbyterian minister, helped inspire the colonization, which advocated resettling freed slaves in Africa. [Many leading colonization advocates, the researchers discovered, had Princeton's connections.]

The Honour and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Education and Great Universities continues. The World Students Society thanks author and researcher, Jennifer Schuessler.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

'''Renaissance Realms '''

Good Night and God Bless

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