Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding

Fields Center plays a crucial role in the life of the Princeton University community and its goals as an educational institution. The Fields Center provides training, social and cultural programs and educational opportunities that prepare students and others to succeed in a diverse and ever-changing world. As Princeton values diversity and believes it enhances educational opportunities, the Fields Center also contributes to the creation, cultivation and promotion of an inclusive university environment. At the Fields Center and in our campus-wide events, students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged and supported in their efforts to engage in self-reflection and dialogue about their social selves, their identities, their actions and those around them. The Fields Center seeks to emphasize its values as integral to those for which Princeton stands, from the first days of freshman orientation, throughout a student’s years of education and beyond. The Fields Center also provides faculty and staff with resources to promote informed, intelligent and civil approaches to issues of racial, cultural and socioeconomic diversity within and outside of the classroom. Our four pillars are:

Empowerment
Understanding
Social Justice
Leadership

Empowerment is a critical first step in realizing that an active effort must be made to understand and then benefit from things that are different. Without this step, differences routinely are feared, mocked and/or shunned and such negativity can be isolating. Community building requires risk taking for advancement. Understanding is an effort to reach beyond one's own limited experience and wear the shoes of another. It is an attempt to view the world from a different vantage point and then learn how to reconcile that perspective with one's own. Social Justice is an appreciation that, regardless of individual traits, certain societal values must be recognized and maintained or else that society will stagnate. It is a focus on not only the whole, but what all parts of the whole are obligated to do in order to progress. Leadership is the act of practicing empowerment, understanding and social justice while implementing a plan or vision.