Princeton computer science professors Michael Freedman and Mona Singh have been named fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery in recognition of their significant contribution to computing and information technology. This year, the association named 58 new fellows from research centers, companies and universities around the world. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/12/18/freedman-singh-named-fellows-association-computing-machinery

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Paul A. Volcker, a formidable force in U.S. government who led the Federal Reserve to quell inflation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died Sunday, Dec. 8, in New York. He was 92.

Princeton seniors Andrew Brown and Avital Fried have been named 2019 Marshall Scholars. The Marshall Scholarship seeks to promote strong relations between the United Kingdom and the United States by offering intellectually distinguished young Americans the opportunity to develop their abilities as future leaders. The scholarship covers the cost of two years of graduate study in the UK at a university of the recipient’s choice.

The National Academy of Inventors has named Princeton engineering professors Howard Stone and James Sturm among 168 fellows for 2019.

Princeton University will present its top awards for alumni to Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Kip Thorne, co-winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In a few days, Princeton University professor emeritus and 1962 graduate alumnus James Peebles will be celebrated with the other 2019 Nobel laureates at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.

On Friday evening during First-year Families Weekend, I introduced an event about “The Spirit of Truth-Seeking,” featuring Professors Robert P. George and Cornel West. This topic is core to this University’s mission and to the mission of all great research universities. I was delighted to offer some thoughts about truth-seeking to the audience that night, and I am similarly glad to share my comments with readers of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Here is an excerpt from what I said. — C.L.E.

Tonight’s discussion addresses a topic, truthseeking, that resides at the heart of this University and, indeed, at the center of any research university worthy of the name. We have many kinds of schools in this country, with many kinds of goals. Schools may aim at skill-building, value formation, vocational training, or the transmission of expertise. None of these goals are absent from a research university’s mission, but neither are they the core of it. Research universities have a more radical, disruptive, thrilling, and demanding mission: they seek truth about questions that matter even when, perhaps especially when, investigating them may threaten conventional wisdom or societal pieties.