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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: September 26, 1996
Contact: Justin Harmon (609) 258-5732

Marvin Bressler to Ponder Princeton University's Future in the Light of its Past

PRINCETON, NJ. -- Princeton sociologist Marvin Bressler will deliver a lecture entitled ``Princeton in the 20th Century: Evocations of the Past and Intimations of the Future'' on Sunday, October 13, at 3 p.m. in Room 50 of McCosh Hall as part of the Friends of the Princeton University Library's observance of the university's 250th anniversary. Bressler's lecture will precede the formal opening of the Firestone Library's main gallery exhibition for the fall entitled ``Out of Tensions, Progress: Princeton as University.''

Bressler, professor of sociology, emeritus, and Roger Williams Straus Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Princeton has been described as ``a legendary teacher who is always serious, but never solemn.'' His lecture will discuss continuity and change at Princeton since the waning years of the 19th century, when Woodrow Wilson called for ``the old drill, the old memory of time gone by, the old schooling in precedent and tradition, the old keeping of faith with the past.'' It will refer to the evolution and current status at Princeton of faculty scholarship, curricular issues and teaching, the composition of the student body, moral education and the University as community.

Professor Bressler, one of the most popular, respected, and recognizable professors at Princeton, retired in 1993 after 30 years, 20 as chair of the Sociology Department. Much of his scholarly work has been devoted to American higher education. He has published widely in this area and served on "blue-ribbon" commissions on the social role of universities at the state and national levels. He is currently chair of the national academic advisory panel on research and education of the General Accounting Office, the principal investigative and evaluative arm of the U.S. Congress.

At Princeton, Bressler held a variety of important university-wide posts, including chair of the Commission on the Future of the College, which conducted a comprehensive review of undergraduate education and student life. He lectured to numerous altimni groups, an activity for which he received, in 1995, the Alumni Council Service Award.

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