Sociology Department at Princeton chooses not to admit a whole new class of students, to free up resources to extend the tenure of current students affected by COVID19 pandemic. Is this just to unnamed and unknown other students being thus disadvantaged? dailyprincetonian.com/article/2020/0…
The more I think about this decision (which is similar to others being taken at other universities, including my own), the more inconsistent I find it with other decisions universities make in other domains that seek to respect issues of inter-generational justice more.
For instance, many universities adopt green policies on campus in order to mitigate climate change out of a respect for future generations. And students clamor for divestment from fossil fuels for similar reasons. We take our obligations to un-named future humans seriously there.
And many universities implement affirmative action policies in order to redress historical wrongs, again driven (in part) by concerns about inter-generational justice. Past people are owed a debt repaid to current people, we say (again, in part).
But we would seem to be ignoring this principle of inter-gernational justice here, giving funding to current students at the expense of future students. This is not to say we shouldn't do it. But another countervailing value is being taken seriously here and not in other cases.
