Alito Hearings Fact Check: Judge Alito and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton

Judiciary Committee, Minority Staff
Contact: Tracy Schmaler, 224-7703
See this document at: http://democrats.senate.gov/judiciarycommitteesupremecourt

Fact Check: Fact Check: Judge Alito and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton

NOW:

Today, when asked about his involvement in a Princeton campus group formed in opposition to the admission of greater numbers of women and minorities to the university, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, Judge Alito said, "Well, Senator, I have wracked my memory about this issue, and I really have no specific recollection of that organization." [1/10/06]

Judge Alito elaborated: "And the issue that had rankled me about Princeton for some time was the issue of ROTC. I was in ROTC when I was at Princeton, and the unit was expelled from the campus, and I thought that was very wrong. I had a lot of friends who were against the war in Vietnam, and I respected their opinions, but I didn't think that it was right to oppose the military for that reason." [1/10/06]

THEN:

Judge Alito touted his involvement with the Concerned Alumni of Princeton when applying for a political job with the Reagan Justice Department. Now that he is being considered for the Supreme Court, he is distancing himself from Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

In a statement promoting his conservative credentials attached to a November 18, 1985 application for a promotion within the Justice Department, Judge Alito said he was "a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group," including it as one of only two group memberships mentioned in the statement.
- Application to be Appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General, November 18, 1985 (WH-118-WH-121).

Princeton ended the ROTC program on campus around the end of 1969, or the beginning of 1970. The University brought it back, although with the status of an extracurricular activity without credit, two years later, in 1972. [See, Harvard Crimson, "Princeton Students Protest Return of ROTC," 1/13/1972; "A Survey of ROTC's Status in the Ivies," 9/28/1973] While there may have been disagreement with the ROTC change in 1972, when Judge Alito graduated and when CAP was formed, it certainly was settled by 1985, when Judge Alito noted his membership in the organization as part of his job application.

Judge Alito failed to mention his involvement in CAP:

In his 1990 Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire for his Circuit Court nomination, Judge Alito did not mention the group at all.
In his 2005 questionnaire responses to the Judiciary Committee, Judge Alito referred to the organization only as "a group of Princeton alumni" and wrote: "A document I recently reviewed reflects that I was a member of the group in the 1980s. Apart from that document, I have no recollection of being a member, of attending meetings, or otherwise participating in the activities of the group. The group has no current officers from whom more information may be obtained."
- Questionnaire Responses to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, at 7.

What was Concerned Alumni of Princeton?

The Concerned Alumni of Princeton University was founded the same year Samuel Alito graduated from Princeton, 1972, and was well-known for favoring restrictions on the admission of minorities and women to the University.

Former Senator Bill Bradley quit the alumni advisory board of CAP's magazine, Prospect, after the second issue was published, saying the magazine was "filled with innuendo and unsupported allegations about the University."
Senator Bill Frist was critical of CAP: In 1975, a group of alumni including Frist concluded that Concerned Alumni had "presented a distorted narrow and hostile view of the university that cannot help but have misinformed and even alarmed many alumni" and "undoubtedly generated adverse national publicity." [Washington Post, 11/26/05]
In the February 1985 issue of Prospect, editorial chairman David Condit '73 published an open letter to Princeton alumni in which he lamented that Princeton is no longer the university you knew it to be" in large part because, the Princeton Chaplain has said that there was nothing inherently wrong with homosexuality; admissions rates for African-Americans and Hispanics were increasing , while those of (white) alumni children were falling; and Princeton's president at the time urged the all male eating clubs to admit female students. A few months later, in November 1985, Alito cited his membership on his job application.

The Daily Princetonian reports that an article in CAP's publication, Prospect, from February 1973 asserted: "The makeup of the Princeton student body has changed drastically for the worse." It went on:

"Prospect" was founded in October 1972 by the then-newly-formed CAP, which was co-chaired by Asa Bushnell '21 and Shelby Cullom Davis '30. The latter, who was the University's largest donor at the time, was a strong traditionalist, firmly opposed to the many of the new directions Princeton was taking, including coeducation.

He wrote in "Prospect": "May I recall, and with some nostalgia, my father's 50th reunion, a body of men, relatively homogenous in interests and backgrounds, who had known and liked each other over the years during which they had contributed much in spirit and substance to the greatness of Princeton," according to an account in "The Chosen," a book by Jerome Karabel on the history of admissions at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

"I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future," Davis added, "with an undergraduate student population of approximately 40% women and minorities, such as the Administration has proposed." [Daily Princetonian, 11/18/05]