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Shirley Tilghman
Shirley Tilghman is the nineteenth president of Princeton University, and is the first woman to hold the position. Tilghman served on the Princeton faculty for fifteen years before being named[…]
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Tilghman considers herself an optimist, but does feel globally optimistic. She doesn’t feel that the right people are stepping up to leadership, and can’t see solutions to major issues because of this.

Question: Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the way the world is headed?

Transcript: I am an optimist in general. In fact I have always believed that you can’t be a scientist unless you are an optimist, because experiments fail more often than they succeed. But I must say that at the moment, I am not terribly optimistic about where we are globally. I do not see many leaders stepping up and leading. And I think until we see those kinds of people rising up, I don’t see how we are going to solve some of these major issues that we face as a society.

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