The situation became once more acute when Hibben told Purdy that not only was he unwilling to have Buchman on the Princeton campus as a guest of any section of the university, but he also wanted to extend the ban to the town as well, although he conceded that he had no right to do so.

In any case, the editors of the campus newspaper had no intention of leaving the matter there. They told Purdy that they proposed to run a series of editorials condemning personal evangelism on the campus. Purdy felt 'in duty bound to answer',13 and wrote a letter which The Daily Princetonian headed 'Practices of Buchmanism will stay while secretaries remain'.14 It was accompanied by a similar letter from Blake and another Assistant Secretary, C. Scoville Wishard.15

These letters, of course, reopened the row which had led to the investigation. Hibben sent for Purdy and asked for an assurance that he and his colleagues would have no further contact with Buchman, and said he would give them until the end of the academic year in June to re-establish confidence in themselves.

Purdy and his friends had no intention of accepting Hibben's demand and, the following morning, were discussing how to word their reply when Hibben telephoned again. He told Purdy that he had been unable to sleep because he had not been entirely candid. Under no circumstances would Purdy and his colleagues be reappointed for the following year. They thereupon submitted their resignations, effective from the beginning of March.

The Princeton affair thus put Buchman on the map with a vengeance. It did so in the way he least wanted, as the supposed leader of a distinctly dubious sect or cult. However much he protested that what the newspapers labelled 'Buchmanism' was simply vital Christianity at work, in the public mind it was now a thing apart.

The events in Princeton, furthermore, continued for decades to cast a shadow over Buchman's work among influential sections in America. Hibben liked to insist that he never made any public statement about Buchman.16 But he never required The Daily Princetonian or the New York newspapers involved to withdraw their assertion that he had. He was also very outspoken to other academics, like the President of Yale. His letters show how completely he had accepted the line of Abeel and Buchman's other critics, in direct contradiction to the findings of his own investigating committee. Meanwhile, a complete press silence on the committee's findings enabled Time, seven months later, to write that the Princeton authorities had 'forbidden Mr Buchman the practice of his system there' as 'unhealthy'.17 The verdict of that committee was forgotten, even in Princeton.

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