#princetonfaculty

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Throwback Thursday: Masakazu Konishi was a professor of biology at Princeton University in the 1960s and 1970s. While at Princeton, he said, someone gave him three baby owls. Two survived to adulthood and he began raising owls. Konishi studied the auditory sense owls used to catch their prey, even in the dark. He theorized that sensing the difference in the time it took for sound waves to reach the right or left ear, as well as sensing the difference in the intensity heard in each ear, was what would help owls--and humans--determine the location of whatever caused the sound. He's shown here with one of his owls ca. 1971.

Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series (AC067), Box 3

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"...there are many fine upright citizens on the Princeton Faculty and I feel it unfair to them that a few parlor pinks in their midst should try to tar the whole Faculty with the brush of Communism."

--Republican Congressman D. Lane Powers, decrying criticism by some of Princeton University's faculty, calling them "paid patriots" as well as "parlor pinks," as quoted in the Daily Princetonian, November 4, 1942

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On October 15, 1915, the Daily Princetonian reported on a poll of Princeton faculty in advance of a vote on women's suffrage in New Jersey. Although philosophy and psychology faculty were unanimously in support of women having the right to vote, this was not necessarily a view shared across departments. One psychology professor explained, “the feminine type is in some respects more suited for political responsibility than the masculine type and in other respects less adapted; the two types supplement each other.” Faculty opponents to women’s suffrage expressed concern that it would be equivalent to supporting pacifism. A majority of faculty, however, said they would vote for the enfranchisement of women in New Jersey.

Women in New Jersey had actually had the right to vote from 1776 to 1807, when an "election reform" effort stripped this from them. The effort to restore their rights in 1915 failed. Women in New Jersey ultimately regained their voting rights 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

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Princeton hired Joshua Hall McIlvaine, Class of 1837, to teach what was then called Political Economy in 1860. In 1869, the Board of Trustees decided to give the responsibility for teaching Political Economy to an administrator, Lyman Atwater, and assigned McIlvaine to teach Belles Lettres (English literature) over McIlvaine's protest. In 1870, McIlvaine left Princeton for a position pastoring High Street Presbyterian Church in Newark, where he served until 1887, when he founded the new Evelyn College in Princeton, New Jersey, the state's first women's college. He was its president until he died in 1897. Following his death, Evelyn closed permanently.

Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series (AC067), Box 136.

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George Macloskie joined Princeton's faculty in 1874, teaching natural history until his retirement in 1906. He was trained as a theologian, not a scientist, but nonetheless kept up with scientific research. In his writings and teaching, he emphasized the harmony between science and religion. The Princeton Press wrote of the new professor in 1875, "His opening lecture has left a happy impression of his public endeavors, and we are happy to add that in ordinary social life he is pleasing. Students we believe will find in him a friend and a helper."

George Macloskie. Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series (AC067), Box 87.

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George Robert Loehr, the son of missionaries, was born in China. After earning his Ph.D. in Rome, Loehr returned to China to teach at Yengching University. From March 1943 to October 1945, he was held in a Japanese internment camp in Shantung Province in China. On August 17, 1945, internees had their first contact with the outside world when American troops parachuted in. The process of liberating the camp took about two months.

Loehr later joined the Princeton University faculty as Professor of Modern Languages. He spoke English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and two Chinese dialects.

Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series (AC067), Box 85

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"The best way, he said, for you to preserve the Union, was to obtain a good sound education. You will be needed after the war."

--New York Times, September 2, 1862, on a Princeton professor speaking to impassioned students on the day the Union Army suffered defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862

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"Princeton did a nearly failing job of giving me and my male, almost entirely white classmates any direct sense of the richness and problems of our diverse society. There were at least a few faculty who spoke of racism and sexism (not called that then), but the mores conspired with educational liabilities for minorities to give us what seems now a very strange view of the society, its problems and opportunities. This spilled over into the way history, literature and just about every subject was taught."

--Frederick Borsch, Princeton University Class of 1957, in a call for Princeton to diversify its faculty, as printed in the Daily Princetonian, June 5, 1986