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Former Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson speaks in Trenton in 2007.

(Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger)

PRINCETON — Lisa Jackson, the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a popular target of Washington Republicans, had to defend herself today as she spoke on friendly ground: Her alma mater, Princeton University.

Jackson — a former head of the state Department of Environmental protection and whose name was briefly floated last year as a possible Democratic challenger to Gov. Chris Christie — addressed students at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in a talk titled “The Unfinished Business of the Environmental Movement.”

When she opened the floor for questions, a former president of the Princeton University College Republicans asked if she regretted her use of an alternative e-mail address at the EPA, an issue that led to an investigation of sorts.

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Jackson responded by railing against the politics of Washington, saying many people there take facts without context so they can bend them to suit their purposes.

“I get very angry at the way politics is done,” she said, latter adding that “the difference between fact and abstraction of motive is the most base form of politics today.”

Late last year, House Republicans prompted the EPA’s inspector general to look into whether Jackson’s use of the alternate e-mail account to conduct official business violated regulations.

But the practice of EPA administrators having two accounts is not a new one , Jackson said, noting that it had been done under President George W. Bush.

Jackson said she used a second account because her public e-mail address was widely known and flooded with hundreds of thousands of messages a year. Her alias — “Richard Windsor” — came from the name of her dog and her former home in East Windsor Township.

She said today that it was her staff who advised her to create such an obscure name.

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“I wish that I struck with my initial inclination and just left it admjackson, although I’m sure somebody would have said that was too obscure as well,” she told the audience of several hundred.

The student who asked the question, Jacob Reces, said he wanted to give her a chance to “tell her story,” and that he felt her response was reasonable.

“It seems like she really did her due diligence,” Reces, a public policy student, said after the talk. “I was impressed.”

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