Former Superintendent of the Princeton Regional School District, Dr. Philip McPherson, describes the disturbing backlash resulting from his support of the teaching of James Baldwin's play Blues for Mr. Charlie in Princeton High School English classes.
Ms. Persico describes a scene from the film in which Dr. McPherson discusses returning home from a particularly contentious meeting with a group of Teamsters to find "a racial epithet scrawled across his driveway.
"[1] The numerous interviewees featured in I Grew Up in Princeton include cartoonist Arnold Roth, famed artist Nelson Shanks, author Zachary Tumin (formerly of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government), former Superintendent of Princeton Regional Schools Phil McPherson, and former director of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Lee Neuwirth, who speaks in considerable detail about the 1970 anti war demonstration which occurred on IDA grounds.
According to writer Linda Arntzenius in an article for Princeton publication Town Topics, IDA was "thought to be in cahoots with the United States military war machine, plotting bombing routes in Cambodia.
While the film sheds considerable light on IDA, as well as other long-standing controversies regarding the Princeton community, a final historical resolution proves elusive.