Adapted from a story by Emily Aronson and Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications, for the University homepage
Daniel Yu, an African American studies major from New York, has been selected as the Princeton Class of 2026 valedictorian. Madeleine Murnick, a classics major from Washington, D.C., has been named the salutatorian. The Princeton faculty accepted the nominations of the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing at its April 20 meeting.
Yu is pursuing minors in English and in gender and sexuality studies. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and previously won the University’s Freshman First Honor Prize and Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence. After Princeton, Yu plans to earn master’s degrees in the United Kingdom as a Marshall Scholar.
He credited his African American Studies (AAS) classes with teaching him how to engage critically and deeply with theoretical inquiry while also staying grounded in real-world experiences.
“AAS has given me a truly interdisciplinary toolkit, training me in both the techniques of social science and of the humanities to meet the multidisciplinary challenges of the present moment,” Yu said, in the announcement on the University homepage. His senior thesis, advised by Marcus Lee (African American Studies), is titled “Purity Politics: Race, Racism and (Anti-) Blackness in an era of Anti-Trans Violence.”
Yu said he also has particularly enjoyed classes offered through the Humanities Council and the School of Public and International Affairs.
Murnick is pursuing minors in humanistic studies and music performance. Her senior thesis, “Latin in the Literary Imagination,” examines how people have learned Latin over the past 2,000 years, with an eye toward how best to teach Latin today. Her senior thesis adviser is Ilaria Marchesi (Classics).
Murnick is a mentor in the Humanities Council’s Program in Humanistic Studies, helping to guide and build community among students in the yearlong Humanities Sequence “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture.”
She praised Princeton’s commitment to bringing the ancient world to life through hands-on access to ancient manuscripts and in-person experiences. In Fall 2024, she traveled to Athens during fall break as part of the team-taught humanistic studies course “Historical Structures: Ancient Architecture’s Materials, Construction and Engineering.”
She is also part of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows, a group of juniors and seniors pursuing the minor in humanistic studies who meet formally once a month to discuss and debate matters of common interest in the company of faculty and distinguished guests.
