When in 2023 I left academia to take up my role at the library as the public humanities specialist, I knew I would have a lot to learn. My former role as a professor of Classics involved scholarship, teaching and service to the University as contributions to the general project of educating matriculated students in an institution of higher education; my current role, by contrast, puts before me a new challenge: namely, promoting the humanities as an essential aspect of contemporary life through public programming, collections development, public engagement and special projects. As I have learned, there are some major differences between studying philosophy, literature or history with students in a college classroom or among peer researchers and offering public programming or developing useful resources for the public.
Most of all, I’ve had to reframe my expectations about what one can take for granted as shared background. With students there were so many expectations built into the encounter with the instructor and the materials selected for study. Like the faculty who teach them, college students come to their classes expecting fixed times for class sessions, a span of a dozen or more weeks of time spent together, major assignments and regular homework. Few if any of these items may be expected in the context of public programming. The author events, public panels, book discussions, film screenings and other special events which we plan and offer here at the library require much greater flexibility than my college teaching did.
Finding those areas of shared expectations with the public, especially in so active and engaged a community as we have in Princeton, remains a constant source of provocation for me in my role on the library’s programming team. While I cannot rely upon the institutional context provided formerly by campus life and the semester system as a background, nevertheless deeper and more urgent areas of shared interest and common ground have opened up before me, as the study of literature, history and ethics moves into the space of a town’s communal life. I and other library staff often find ourselves weighing what community conversations need framing or amplification; which topics are timely enough to be engaging or untimely enough to make a surprising contribution to the community’s rich intellectual and cultural life; or how best to respond to the requests, concerns and priorities of partnering organizations and community members.
One way in which we are pursuing this engagement with the community is through public programming and resource development committed to the topic of justice and to certain programming themes related to this topic. Throughout 2025 the library’s public humanities initiative has been exploring justice from multiple perspectives and through the intersecting textures of our dense social fabric. Some programs have been involved with questions around social justice and its prospects in our time, such as the panel discussion on “History and Restorative Justice in Princeton,” the Feminist Book Discussion Group and the author events for Julian Zelizer‘s “In Defense of Partisanship,” Serene Khader‘s “Faux Feminism,” Brianna Nofil‘s “The Migrant’s Jail” or Musa al-Gharbi‘s “We Have Never Been Woke.” Others involve discussion of texts foundational to the philosophical, ethical and legal traditions defining our system of justice, such as the Catherine Project Book Group launching this month. Further special events offered through complex partnerships have investigated the major figures, movements and historic achievements which have redefined justice in recent history and call for renewals of their revolutionary purpose, such as Douglass Day 2025 or Brandon Terry’s 2025 MLKJ Lecture.
Further programs still will surely be developed and offered through the summer and fall of this year, specifically in order to develop reflection on this topic and the related themes. Such annual thematic programming is only one way in which the library realizes the promise of its public humanities initiative. To raise awareness of the public humanities and to document some of what I’ve learned in the last couple of years, I recently developed a new resource guide, which details organizations, societies, reports, projects, books, articles, websites and opportunities relating to this field. Members of the public, students, faculty and practitioners are encouraged to recommend contributions to the public humanities initiative’s annual thematic programming or to this new resource guide by filling out the library’s event proposal form or by writing to humanities@princetonlibrary.org.
Image credit: Joel & Jasmin Førestbird, Wesley Tingey and Thomas Ashlock on Unsplash