The Princeton Alumni Weekly has named Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp its 13th most influential alumni of all time (thanks, eduwonk, for the find). I admire her as much as anyone – although clearly not as much as the Princeton alums who put together this list – but it’s curious to look at the venerable names staring up the ladder at Kopp.
Ralph Nader, whose bona fides as a consumer advocate should have secured his place even before the 2000 election, made The Atlantic’s recent list of 100 most influential Americans ever, but that’s not good enough for Princeton. He’s tied at #25 with Donald Rumsfeld, who can thank Nader and the Floridians who voted for him, for his second tour as Secretary of Defense. Richard Feynman? The atomic bomb, quantum computing and nanotechnology? Less influential than TFA. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com? Barely in Kopp’s rearview mirror at #20. But shed no tears for any of them. Save your sympathy for eBay boss Meg Whitman. She gave Princeton $30 million to build a new residential house, named Whitman College, and didn’t even make the list.
Finally, someone needs to click over to Wikipedia’s list of Princeton University people as soon as possible and do a little editing. It’s a Who’s Who featuring hundreds of heads of state, governors, U.S. Senators, Supreme Court Justices, and bold-face names from literature, business, science, math and academia. One name is conspicuous in its absence, however: Wendy Kopp.
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