In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the Ivy League’s first Black dean dies, the FBI arrests a graduate student and holds him without charges, and more.
July 20, 1998—Carl Fields, a former Princeton University administrator and the first Black dean in the Ivy League, dies at 79.
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July 21, 1804—All of the sophomore class may advance to their junior year, though the faculty have concerns about a few of them, recording in their minutes: “Messrs. W. Williams & Yeates having appeared criminally deficient on arithmetic, it was thought proper to mention their names to the class with disapprobation.”
July 22, 1942—The FBI arrests Theodore H. von Laue ’39 *43, a graduate student in the history department, on no specific charges. They will take him to Ellis Island for questioning and he will be held for a few months. Von Laue left Germany, he will later say, because his father “did not want me growing up in a country run by gangsters.”
July 26, 1759—Samuel Davies begins working as president of the College of New Jersey, though he will not be formally inducted until September.
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For the previous installment in this series, click here.
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