From Politico Pro Education: New Jersey Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Bob Menendez want U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to “reconsider” her decision to open an investigation into Princeton. “We were both alarmed and disappointed in the Department of Education’s response to Princeton University’s efforts to grapple with our nation’s painful history of systemic racism and discrimination,” the senators wrote in a letter to DeVos. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-jersey-playbook/2020/10/02/trump-tests-positive-after-bedminister-fundraiser-490501

From Inside Higher Ed: Associations representing the nation’s colleges and universities called on the Education Department Wednesday to drop its civil rights investigation of Princeton. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/10/01/college-associations-urge-devos-drop-princeton-probe

From Forbes: Opinion piece by Carol Quillen *91, president of Davidson College, on why the Department of Education’s investigation of Princeton’s efforts to address systemic racism is “at best inappropriate.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolquillen/2020/09/29/the-department-of-education-versus-princeton-whats-at-stake/#51944fd51023

Election Day is just more than a month away, and American voters are already casting their ballots by the thousands each day. Tonight, we reach the next milestone in the presidential campaign with the first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

We hope you’ll log on at 4:30 p.m. ET today for a live preview of the debate, featuring a range of Princeton faculty. The panelists include Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history; Denise L. Mauzerall, professor of civil and environmental engineering and public and international affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Ali A. Valenzuela, Ph.D., assistant professor of politics; and Heather Howard, director of the State Health Reform Assistance Network and lecturer in public affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Each will discuss what they expect and what they are looking for from this year’s candidates throughout the 2020 debate season.

The panel will be moderated by Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Brent Colburn and begin with a welcome by Vote100 Fellow and Whig-Clio President Morgan Smith ’21. The Vote100campaign is working with communities across campus to encourage civic engagement in all forms. Sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and led by students, Vote100 plans voter registration drives, campus-wide debate watch parties, assistance with absentee ballot voting, Election Day celebrations, and social media campaigns to encourage others to engage civically in elections and democratic processes locally, nationally, and internationally.

Watch the conversation live on Princeton University’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels.

These are just a few of the ways Princeton is working to engage and inform the broader University community as part of this election season. We hope you’ll join us in these efforts.

Stay safe and healthy.

Politics & Polls: Regardless of who wins the 2020 presidential election, American politics will be forever impacted by Trump’s presidency. In this episode, author David Frum discusses how America can rebuild — the subject of his new book, “Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy” — with Julian Zelizer. https://spia.princeton.edu/news/politics-polls-202-restoring-american-democracy-featuring-david-frum

Cookies: Tech Security & Privacy, a podcast: Andrew Appel, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science, discusses why some common voting machines are vulnerable to hacking, and why vote-by-mail will most likely be reliable. https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/22/episode-3-bulletproofing-ballot-box

From PBS NOVA: Princeton’s Robert M. Pringle and Corina E. Tarnita feature in a new documentary premiering Oct. 14 that explores whether bringing predators—and fear—back into an ecosystem can help restore its natural balance.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/natures-fear-factor/

From NBC News: A group of about 25 experts announced Friday that they have formed the Real Facebook Oversight Board to analyze and critique Facebook’s content moderation decisions. Among the board’s members are Princeton’s Ruha Benjamin and Maria Ressa ’86. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-real-oversight-board-n1240958

Alieza Durana and Anne Kat Alexander:The eviction crisis has begun. It will get so much worse. (The Washington Post)
Markus Brunnermeier:Harvard’s Chetty Finds Economic Carnage in Wealthiest ZIP Codes (Bloomberg) 
Elke Weber: Why our minds can’t make sense of COVID-19’s enormous death toll (National Geographic)  

Rachel Baker: Winter Weather Could Increase Spread of COVID-19 (Voice of America)
Federico Tiberti, Ph.D candidate:Argentina Virus Outbreak Rages While Region Sees Some Relief (Bloomberg) 
Nyle Fort:George Floyd’s Family Discusses Police Brutality, White Privilege And Hope At UF Event (WUFT)  
Allen Guelzo:Douglas statue comes down, but Lincoln had racist views, too (Associated Press)  
Julian Zelizer: 

• Why President Trump is targeting the 1619 Project (CNN)  
• Predicting the Republican’s 2020 October Surprise (Full Frontal on TBS) 
• Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power (The New York Times) 
• The Historical Relationship Between Presidents And SCOTUS (WBUR)  

Matt Karp: History professor: Democrats should work around SCOTUS like Abe Lincoln did (The Hill) 
Sean Wilentz:What Trump doesn’t understand about U.S. history (The Washington Post) 
Aaron Friedberg: TikTok tussle shows the uneven economic ‘decoupling’ that has accelerated between U.S. and China (The Washington Post) 

Josh Akey: How Neanderthals lost their Y chromosome (Science Magazine)

Princeton researchers Amir Erez, Jaime Lopez, Ned Wingreen and colleagues model how species diversity in a bacterial community is affected when the nutrients the microbes depend upon are only seasonally available. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/18/princeton-scientists-explain-how-diverse-species-coexist-microbial-communities

From early research that quantified the ecological costs of expanding palm oil agriculture into wild habitats, to more recent work on managing the environmental footprint of cities’ food systems, Princeton’s approach to studying food has provided planners, policymakers, farmers and scientists with valuable insights into how to steward the planet’s natural resources. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/21/future-food-changing-climate

“We wondered how the worms can know the identity of the bacteria they are eating,” said Coleen Murphy, a professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics (LSI) and the senior author of a paper detailing the team’s findings in the journal Nature. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/18/princeton-researchers-discover-how-worms-pass-down-knowledge-pathogen-their

Using a national database of insurance claims, Princeton researchers investigated the type of treatment adolescents — most of whom were around the average age of 12 and suffering from anxiety or depression — receive after a first episode of mental illness. Professor Janet Curie, who co-authored the new study, discusses the findings with Stat. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/21/mental-illness-treatment-varies-widely-among-american-adolescents-within-and-across

In the United States, middle-aged adults are now reporting more pain than the elderly. This paradoxical finding is confined to the two-thirds of the U.S. population without a four-year college degree, and happens because each generation of less-educated Americans is experiencing higher pain throughout their lives.https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/21/middle-aged-americans-report-more-pain-elderly

This week, many mourn the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an advocate and champion for women’s rights, who died at 87 from complications of pancreatic cancer. In this Q&A, two Princeton University experts, Charles Cameron and John Kastellec, discuss Ginsburg’s role on the Court, her legacy, and what lies ahead with the Court’s vacant seat. https://spia.princeton.edu/news/qa-passing-ruth-bader-ginsburg?fbclid=IwAR0qmE1JG9pOWiON-xOAwRd2VrFI8l03rv0h0utoFW_IjXUIbTdxwQSnCag

From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: This is the fifth installment in a series by researchers working with Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict’s COVID-19 disinformation project led by Professor Jacob Shapiro and Samikshya Siwakoti, a research specialist for the conflict studies project.  https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/corona-free-how-disinformation-could-be-clouding-the-true-pandemic-picture-in-africa/

Princeton researchers report that the impact of natural and vaccine-induced immunity will be key factors in shaping the long-term trajectory of the global coronavirus pandemic, known as COVID-19, according to a study published Sept. 21 in the journal Science. In particular, a vaccine capable of eliciting a strong immune response could substantially reduce the future burden of infection. The study was led by co-first authors Chadi Saad-Roy, a Ph.D. candidate in Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, and Caroline Wagner, who worked on the study as a postdoctoral research associate in PEI. Co-senior authors are PEI associated faculty members Bryan Grenfell, the Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs, and C. Jessica Metcalf, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/21/long-term-covid-19-containment-will-be-shaped-strength-and-duration-natural-vaccine

An anonymous survey, conducted in late July, asked researchers to report how often they and their colleagues adhered to University guidelines on mask wearing, social distancing, laboratory density and other practices that help prevent transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Of the 818 people who took the survey, nearly all reported wearing a mask most or all of the time, maintaining 6 feet of distance between lab members, and following lab occupancy maximums. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/22/princeton-researchers-report-high-level-compliance-campus-health-and-safety