Princeton Alumni Weekly

12/22/2025

PAW’s January issue is now online, featuring the high-voltage world of Kwanza Jones ’93 and José E. Feliciano ’94, plus alumni who choose to live in small towns and how Elizabeth Tsurkov focused on her doctoral research to survive captivity.

Read more at paw.princeton.edu

12/17/2025

The Class of 2026’s class jacket design competition was thrown into controversy last week after the creator of the winning design was accused of using generative artificial intelligence, prompting student backlash, an online petition, and the selection of a new winner.

Student petition demanded a jacket created by humans, and the class committee responded

12/11/2025

Elana Sigall ’88 recently produced the documentary “Unorthodox Education” in hopes it will lead to solutions for a problem she witnessed firsthand as education adviser to New York’s governor: private schools for ultra-Orthodox Jews that leave students without a decent education.

Read more about this Tiger of the Week🐅:
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/elana-sigall-88s-documentary-tackles-education-orthodox-jewish-schools

12/08/2025

About a year ago, Carey Jones ’08 learned that a clinical trial into a possible way to prevent severe vomiting during pregnancy couldn’t get funding — a casualty of the research world’s labyrinthine systems.

She herself had suffered intense morning sickness during her two pregnancies, and she knew how dangerous it is, and how understudied. Jones, who is not a doctor or a researcher but a food and travel writer, decided to jump in.

The article she wrote launching a crowdfunding campaign was titled, “Let’s Fund the Damn Research Ourselves.”

Read about this Tiger of the Week🐅:

Jones kicked off her crowdfunding campaign with an article titled, ‘Let’s Fund the Damn Research Ourselves’

12/02/2025

Decision paralysis? “We’ve all been there,” says Mary Steffel *09, a professor of marketing at Northeastern University. “It’s the mental tar that prevents us from moving forward.”

Steffel’s research shows why people get stuck (overwhelm, too much information), what they tend to do about it (delegate decision-making to others, among other things), and what works to help:

“The key is to help people feel empowered to make decisions, instead of feeling trapped by them.”

Read more:

ResearchMarketing Professor Mary Steffel *09 Is Studying Decision Paralysis Adobe By Yuchen Zhang ’10 Published Nov. 26, 20253 min read Copied to clipboard Mary Steffel *09, a professor of marketing at Northeastern University, often reflects on a pivotal moment from her time as a graduate student ...

12/01/2025

PAW’s December issue is now online, featuring Judge Michael Park ’98’s rise to the Second Circuit — and perhaps beyond — plus subtle shifts amid commitment to DEI initiatives at Princeton and a night at the new art museum.

Read more at paw.princeton.edu

11/26/2025

In the latest installment of PAW Goes to the Movies, senior writer Mark F. Bernstein ’83 went to see “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” with Princeton University sociologist Mitchell Duneier.

A certified Springsteen buff who has seen The Boss in concert more than 100 times, Duneier teaches the popular course, Sociology from E-Street: Bruce Springsteen’s America, and has written about him in the New York Times and elsewhere. His first take on the film?

“It was wonderful.”

Read more:

Duneier, who has seen The Boss more than 100 times in concert, critiques the new film

11/24/2025

During the more than 900 days she spent kidnapped by a Shiite militia group in Iraq, Princeton Ph.D. student Elizabeth Tsurkov focused on her research.

At night, to stop thinking about the torture she had endured, she’d tell herself, “just think about your Ph.D. Just think about your research. So that’s what I tried to do. I would recite whole chapters that I would write in my head.”

“I think I’m a typical Ph.D. candidate of Princeton in the sense that I’m very passionate about the research that I’m conducting,” Tsurkov tells PAW.

Read more:

Features Kidnapped and Freed, Elizabeth Tsurkov Continues Ph.D. Research Princeton Ph.D. student Elizabeth Tsurkov, photographed in Ramat Gan, Israel. Leo Correa / AP By Julie Bonette Published Nov. 24, 20259 min read Copied to clipboard A notebook.After more than 900 days in captivity, that’s wha...

11/21/2025

Winnie Holzman ’76 is back in the news as mania returns! Last year, as part one of the blockbuster film was released, Holzman told PAW she co-wrote the script “picturing an Ozian version of Princeton.”

Read more:

‘When I was writing it, I was picturing an Ozian version of Princeton,’ Holzman says

11/20/2025

The latest PAW Book Club podcast is up! Career journalist Todd Purdum ’82 answered members’ questions about his new biography, “Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.“

He explained that Arnaz’s story hadn’t truly been done justice when, in 2020, he picked up the idea for a biography from his friend, playwright Douglas McGrath ’80. The book details how Arnaz’s genius changed the television industry at a critical moment, and why his innovations are the reason we all still know — and love — “I Love Lucy.”

Listen:

‘The biggest takeaway from Desi’s story for me is that talent in our country comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and sometimes in the most unlikely packages’

11/19/2025

Allison Daminger ’12 of UW-Madison Department of Sociology applied scientific study to an age-old imbalance: Women take on the majority of unseen cognitive labor in a home and are held socially accountable for most domestic consequences. How, she asks, does that affect their mental health?

Her book ”What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life,” was published by Princeton University Press in September.

Read more about this Tiger of the Week 🐅:

In What’s on Her Mind, Daminger shows women take on the majority of cognitive labor at home

11/18/2025

A Princeton University Advancement database containing information about alumni, donors, some faculty, students, parents, and other members of the University community was compromised by external actors on Nov. 10, Princeton officials said in a Nov. 15 message to those affected. The breach lasted less than 24 hours.

Read more:

The database kept by the University’s Advancement department contains information about alumni, donors, and other Princetonians