Princeton President Shirley Tilghman announced this morning that her glorious university will relinquish one-half of one percent of its endowment ($100 million) to settle a six-year-old lawsuit with a clan of grocery store magnates. In 1961, the Robertson family gave $35 million to found the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs; as of June 2008, the Robertsons' endowment had expanded to $900 million (score one for the i-bankers!) and the students at the prestigious Woody Woo were using their fancy educations to get jobs in lucrative areas like finance (score two for the i-bankers!) instead of piddling work in the public sector (sad pandas for the Robertsons). So the Robertsons sued Princeton for blowing their wad on a bunch of greedy little prigs, and Princeton was all, "Not our fault if President Bush sucks and government jobs are thankless and painful," and both sides spent tens of millions repeating those two messages for 76 months.

Tilghman outlined the specifics of the settlement in an extraordinarily long email (which we provide in full after the jump) but all that really matters is this part:

It is tragic that this lawsuit required the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars in legal fees that could have and should have been spent on educational and charitable purposes.

Lady, "tragic" is when someone dies. Spending a few million dollars to safeguard your hoard of billions is by definition the passionless pursuit of institutional self-interest. Note that "charitable purposes" refers to a charity the Robertsons fund, which is where the contested money will now go; as in, if Princeton had its way, none of the money would be going to charity, but to the upwardly mobile neophytes of the Woodrow Wilson School. Basically, this entire story is about i-banking, which is also why June's $900 million is only worth $600 million now, and why future WWS students may actually end up in public sector jobs. Not because the Robertsons sued, not because Shirley is feeling charitable, but because all the awesome money-filled jobs have disappeared into thin air. Also, this.

Moral of the story: Losing money makes people more charitable.

After the jump: Shirley Tilghman's email bidding adieu to some money, but keeping a lot more, and some gently menacing words from the Robertsons.

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A sad day for journalism when Glamour scoops US News & World Report on the upper education beat, but it happened this month when the former jumped on the "Every crowd around the pretty lady presidents!" bandwagon first. Yesterday's release of US News' "America's Best Leaders"  echoes Glamour's 2007 "Women of the Year" featuring Prezettes Ruth Simmons (Brown) and Shirley Tilghman (Princeton). In USN Simmons and Tilghman sit among notable peoples like Nancy Pelosi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicholas Kristof and Yo-Yo Ma.

Conspicuously missing from the list are fellow "Women of the Year" Drew Gilpin Faust (president, Harvard) and Amy Gutmann (Fairy Jihad-Mother, Penn), whose mere existence as double-X-chromosomed heads of Ivies is usually reason enough to split Simmons' and Tilghman's glory four ways.

We're already salivating for the December issue of Glamour magazine, featuring all four female Ivy League presidents as 2007 Women of the Year.

Prince and DP reports confirm that The Prezettes -- Princeton's Shirley Tilghman, Brown's Ruth Simmons, Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust, and Penn's Halloween- and maybe-Jihad-loving Amy Gutmann -- will appear in glossy photos alongside the likes of Jennifer Garner, Elizabeth Edwards, and child actress Abigail Breslin. Gutmann has already begun denying the fact that she's totally pumped to get airbrushed:

Though Gutmann doesn't "have much time to read magazines like Glamour," she said she is pleased that the magazine will use the Fund to raise money for charities that support causes for women.

Whatevs, Amy, we know you're excited to get a professional blow-out and glossy photos, and for little girls the world around to cut out your picture and decorate their notebooks with it. For those who can't wait to see if the Gutbomb reprises her strapless red Homecoming dress, fear not! IvyGate will be there for you on November 13 when Women of the Year hits newsstands.

The Ivy League's resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom Cornel West returns to hipster-hop with the release of his second rap album, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, featuring the likes of Prince, Talib Kweli, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Rhymefest, and the late Gerald Levert.  Which is impressive and all, but seriously, where's Kanye?  This is totally up his alley.  They even have the same last name!

Professor West's first album, 2001's Sketches of my Culture, predicated the professor's public spat with Harvard ex-prez Larry Summers and the professor's subsequent break from the university in favor of Princeton.  Though his new boss, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, has yet to comment on Never Forget, West thinks she'll be hipper to the project than Summers was.  In a Boston Globe article West speculates,

"I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers," he says. "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction."

A vocal opponent of misogyny and hedonism in contemporary hip-hop, West portrays his music as a "danceable education" reaching towards the genre's socially progressive roots.  "We'll go from the bling-bling to Let Freedom Ring" Brother West raps in "Bushonomics," before giving a shout-out to militant beat poet Gil Scott-Heron.  The track features New York MC and black progressive Talib Kweli denouncing "voter registration with no scope of education," "whore-mongerers," and "war-mongerers" alike.  Listen to it, and Prince collaboration "Dear Mr. Man," below. Bushonomics Cornel West and Talib Kweli Dear Mr. Man Cornel West and Prince --MAUREEN O'CONNOR