You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Princeton University on Saturday removed Woodrow Wilson's name from its School of Public and International Affairs and a residential college. Wilson was a Princeton alumnus and president of the university. Christopher L. Eisgruber, the current president, wrote to the campus, where protests in 2015 (and before that) called for removal of the name. In April 2016, a campus committee "recommended a number of reforms to make this university more inclusive and more honest about its history. The committee and the board, however, left Wilson’s name on the school and the college," Eisgruber wrote.
Today, he wrote, "the tragic killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks drew renewed attention to the long and damaging history of racism in America."
He added that the board acted because "Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today. Wilson’s segregationist policies make him an especially inappropriate namesake for a public policy school."
