Princeton replaced forwarding with a free mailbox

Kept the address

Ended plain forwarding but gave alumni a free Google Workspace mailbox, so the @alumni.princeton.edu address survives. From February 2026 the Class of 2026 onward are not offered forwarding.

What happened

Princeton ended plain forwarding and moved alumni onto a free Google Workspace mailbox. The @alumni.princeton.edu address survives.

From February 2026, Princeton went further: the Class of 2026 onward are not offered forwarding at all.

Why this is in the “kept” column anyway

The pressure on forwarding is real everywhere, and Princeton's February 2026 change shows it. But the alumni who had the address still have it, and it still works. That is the distinction this comparison turns on: whether a graduate who was given an address still has a working one.

The route Princeton took — a hosted mailbox instead of a forwarder — removes the failing hop entirely. Mail originates authenticated rather than being relayed and losing its alignment on the way.

How this bears on the question

Princeton is one of three Ivy League universities that solved the authentication problem by moving alumni to real mailboxes rather than ending the address. Duke switches off @alumni.duke.edu on January 31, 2027, and has announced no replacement address service.

Sources and further reading

This page is part of an independent record of university alumni email terminations, maintained by a Duke alum. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Princeton or Duke University. Every row is sourced to the university’s own documentation where one exists, and this record has been corrected in public three times.

If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us — a correction is more useful than being right by default.