July 5, 2006

Princeton Concedes It Spent Some Donor Funds for Different Purpose

The legal dispute over Princeton University’s use of funds donated by the Robertson Foundation took another twist last week, when university officials admitted that $782,376 of the money in question had been used to pay for fellowships for students in programs outside of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The Robertson Foundation was started in 1961 by Charles S. and Marie H. Robertson, now deceased, to support a graduate program at the Wilson School that prepares students for internationally focused jobs in the U.S. government. The foundation’s assets are now worth $653-million. The Robertson heirs, who account for three of the foundation’s seven trustees, have complained that the university is not honoring the intent of the donors and that few graduates go on to such jobs (The Chronicle, July 19, 2002).

The heirs’ lawsuit has expanded to include allegations of the widespread misuse of donor funds (The Chronicle, June 18, 2004), but the university has consistently denied those accusations. The latest statement by the university, however, indicates that, through a procedural miscue, some of the funds went to a graduate program administered by the Wilson School but with students in other departments among the participants.

University officials said that using the funds in that way was still permissible because “the program was intended to bolster the Woodrow Wilson School’s program by strengthening the research infrastructure in closely related academic departments, thereby attracting and supporting the school’s own faculty members, many of whom hold joint appointments in those departments.”

Previous: Philip Rieff, Sociologist and Critic of Academe, Dies at 83
Next: Art Historian Says Museum Paid $50-Million for a Fake Duccio