Sometimes it is fun doing the right thing.  A Princeton alum of the class of 1950 had come by to talk to me about philanthropy (one of my research interests) on one of his trips to attend Alumni Council meetings on campus.  He is a distinguished lawyer and, it turns out, one of the most civically minded citizens in Birmingham, Alabama.  He recently got in touch with me and asked me to speak to the Princeton Club of Alabama.  I agreed to make the trip both to please him and to assist the University, flying down on the 28th and back on the 29th of January.  I told him I was quite happy to meet several groups of people there, and he took me at my word.  Shortly after my arrival at midday, I met with a group of about 15 judges, lawyers, and local law professors to talk about recent developments on the Supreme Court of the United States.  They were a very lively and diverse group, and we talked mostly about the recent and highly controversial opinion in Citizens Union, the case about corporate funding of elections. Our focus was not so much on the result of the case, but on the appropriateness of the Court’s taking the case.

That evening I met with 50 or 60 Princeton alumni, and talked to them about “What’s Hot and What’s Not” at Princeton University.  I mostly reflected on the remarkable number of changes at the University since I first joined the faculty in 1978, mainly the unprecedented growth in almost everything from structures to curriculum.  I asked them to think about the ways in which these changes had altered the nature of liberal education over the years, and asked whether growth was always good for undergraduate education.  We had a spirited discussion after my talk, made more interesting since the group ranged in age from those who had graduated just after World War II to those who had just gotten their degrees.  I was struck by the thoughtful, questioning loyalty of the group, and I was very glad that I had made the trip to meet with them.

The next morning my host, who seems to have been the president of every large nonprofit organization in Birmingham over the years, invited the presidents and program officers of the principal philanthropic foundations and nonprofits (and several local academics who teach courses in the field of philanthropy) to join us for coffee. I talked to them about recent developments (mostly the impact of the Great Recession) in the field, but most of the morning was spent in give and take on a subject that was critically important to all of us.  I spend a lot of time with people in New York and Washington, D.C. who are major players in these fields, but it was refreshing to meet such an impressive group of people who are literally in the midst of philanthropic action. They reminded me of the extent to which civil society in this country responds to crisis, and gave me some confidence that local leaders are responding very intelligently to the crisis.  And then I got on a U.S. Airways flight to Philadelphia, and flew around or over the big snowstorm that was attacking the Southeastern United States that afternoon and evening. I learned a lot in Birmingham, and enjoyed the people and the place.