Princeton strips Woodrow Wilson’s name from school
Princeton University on Saturday announced it would strip the name of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from its school of public and international affairs and one of its residential colleges, following letters and calls from students and alumni.
“We have taken this extraordinary step because we believe that Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school whose scholars, students, and alumni must be firmly committed to combatting the scourge of racism in all its forms,” the university’s board of trustees said in a statement following a vote on Friday.
An historic turning point, the decision follows years of controversy and protests by students at New Jersey’s Ivy League university, who decried Wilson’s place on campus, given his racist views and policies, including keeping Black students from enrolling at Princeton when he headed it.
Students renewed their calls in recent weeks for Wilson’s name to be removed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police. A letter was signed by more than half of current students in the public affairs school and about threequarters of its class of 2020, according to the Princetonian, the student newspaper. A petition by graduate students and alumni followed.
“We condemn this School’s complicity in this country’s violent history of white supremacy through its perpetuation of the legacy and iconography of Woodrow Wilson,” students wrote.
In recent years, colleges across the country have been called upon to recognize and account for their racist pasts and those calls have been renewed in recent weeks.
Monmouth University, also in New Jersey, earlier this month announced it would remove Wilson’s name from a prominent campus building.
“Princeton honored Wilson not because of, but without regard to or perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism. Princton president Chritopher Eisgruber said in a statement. “That, however, is ultimately the problem.”
Wilson led Princeton from 1902 to 1910 before going on to the U.S. presidency, where he supported the resegregation of federal civil service.