Topic: Media Research Center
In a May 27 TimesWatch post, Clay Waters noted a New York Times article stated that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito graduated from Princeton "just a few months before" Sonia Sotomayor arrived there, and that Alito "belonged to one of the groups that protested" the "increasing ranks" of women at the university. Waters then parenthetically adds: "Hmm. Did Alito protest against more women at Princeton? He was a nominal member of a conservative student group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which protested affirmative action, but that's not quite the same thing, except perhaps among ultraliberals."
In fact, as Media Matters has detailed, there's plenty of evidence that Concerned Alumni of Princeton did oppose coeducation. And Alito thought enough of his association with the group that he included it in his 1985 application for the position of deputy assistant attorney general with the Reagan administration -- which would seem to belie Waters' claim that his membership was "nominal."
