President Eisgruber ’83’s Message Regarding the Recommendations of the Wilson Legacy Review Committee
The following message from President Eisgruber ’83 was sent to University alumni, faculty, and staff April 4, 2016:
Last fall, a trustee committee began examining how Princeton should recognize Woodrow Wilson’s legacy. The committee convened in the wake of a student protest at Nassau Hall that called attention to Wilson’s racism. It has now issued a report, which the Board of Trustees has approved. The report is thorough and perceptive, guided by humane values, and candid in its recognition of this University’s failings and of the importance of making a “renewed and expanded commitment to diversity and inclusion at Princeton.” I concur fully with the committee’s analysis and recommendations, and I hope that all Princetonians will read its report and the news release about it.
I anticipated that the Princeton community would deliberate thoughtfully about Wilson’s legacy and that the Board would decide wisely. The process surpassed my high expectations. I want to express my appreciation to Brent Henry ’69, who chaired the special trustee committee, and to all of its members for ensuring that all Princetonians had an opportunity to register their opinions, for listening with care, and for weighing judiciously all of the considerations relevant to the issues before them. I am also grateful to the more than 600 alumni, faculty, staff, and students who submitted online comments, and to all who participated in the open forum and the eleven in-person meetings that the trustee committee held during January and February. Finally, I would like to thank the nine distinguished historians who contributed scholarly letters assessing Wilson’s legacy at Princeton and as president of the United States.
Last fall’s student protests and the thoughtful discussions that followed have changed how this campus will remember Woodrow Wilson and, I suspect, how our country will remember him as well. Over the past few months, many Princetonians remarked to me that they had little knowledge of Wilson’s racism. I count myself among those who have learned from this process. I now have a deeper appreciation for Wilson’s failings and for what those failings have meant to this country and our campus. While I continue to admire Wilson’s many genuine accomplishments, I recognize the need to describe him in a way that is more balanced, and more faithful to history, than this University and I have previously done.
The trustee committee’s report emphasizes, and I agree wholeheartedly, that our most significant and enduring challenges pertain to enhancing the diversity and inclusivity of our community. Princeton’s educational and research mission requires that we attract, welcome, and embrace talented individuals from every background and sector of society. We must strive energetically and imaginatively to make this campus a place where all of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni can feel fully at home.
The trustee report makes several specific recommendations to help us achieve these goals. My colleagues and I will begin implementing them immediately, along with other initiatives already underway. Inclusivity is an important priority for Princeton and for me personally, and it will remain so throughout my time as this University’s president.
The issues facing Princeton reflect the particulars of its history and culture, but they have analogues on other campuses, and indeed in the country and the world more broadly. The quest to achieve genuine equality and inclusivity is one of our society’s greatest and most profound challenges. I am confident that Princeton can be a leader in meeting that challenge, and I look forward to working with all of you to do so.
Christopher Eisgruber ’83
President
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4 Responses
Ken Scudder ’63
8 Years AgoReading through the alumni letters on Woodrow Wilson’s rediscovered legacy of racism, I’m reminded of my junior year when I ate at Wilson College, which then, ironically, was the most diverse place in town. All the African students were there with a few professors, including my then political mentor H.H. Wilson, with whom we dined with such heavyweights as Leonard Boudin. It would be most appropriate now to rename Wilson College and the Wilson School for Paul Robeson, who could have been one of our most distinguished graduates but for Wilson’s institutionalized racist admissions: Princeton’s loss was Rutgers’ gain.
What’s missing from almost all of the commentary on Woodrow Wilson is that his racism and his postwar legacy are seen as opposed, rather than as a tragic continuum. Wilson pretextually pushed us into the European war, inciting extreme xenophobic and chauvinist actions at home — we got the Espionage Act and Palmer Raids (along with J. Edgar Hoover). His postwar goal of “making the world safe for democracy” brought catastrophes still haunting us today — endless war, secret government, invasions, coups, and extrajudicial assassinations — accurately exposed early on, from Charles Beard’s “perpetual war for perpetual peace” through Chalmers Johnson’s The Sorrows of Empire to Peter Dale Scott’s devastating, definitive The Road to 9/11. A sad legacy, indeed.
Almost all these ongoing horrors have been wreaked upon people of color who failed to do our bidding, again ironically, in the grand imperial European manner. Noam Chomsky, in an interview last year with Tavis Smiley, deftly skewered our utterly misbegotten “American exceptionalism” by dryly observing, “It’s kind of ironic” that every empire in history thought it was the greatest of all. Plus ça change …
Jess Hungate *72
8 Years AgoRe the trustees’ action on Woodrow Wilson 1879’s legacy: I am delighted with this decision. Let’s not confuse pursuing present goals, and dealing with present problems, with accurately remembering the past and those who played a role in it. Of course we should acknowledge all of the aspects of historical figures — but we should begin with a deeper acknowledgement that human cultures, attitudes, habits, and so forth have changed immensely over the centuries. We should resist the temptation to impose our attitudes and values on the past. This is a very ungenerous attitude toward those who have gone before, as well as reflecting a very unattractive arrogance on our part. If we judge in this way, we are likely to be judged negatively by our successors. Furthermore, allowing present agendas of whatever kind to be the engines of historical revisionism is exactly the kind of manipulation that we condemn in totalitarian regimes.
Mari Badger ’83
8 Years AgoI’m disappointed by the choice to not officially change the name of Wilson College. While I understand, unhappily, the decision to keep Wilson’s association with the School of Public and International Affairs, I see neither the value nor the rationale for also having a residential college shoulder the legacy of a segregationist.
I, for one, will no longer refer to Wilson College by that name. I plan to call it Trotter College, and I invite others to join me in this bit of disobedience. William Monroe Trotter was an African American newspaper publisher who challenged Wilson publicly on his racist views and policies.
The extraordinary thing about language is that it is malleable. You don’t need permission to change it — all you need is agreement from a critical mass. Draw a line through “Wilson” when you see it and replace it with “Trotter.” Change how you speak, and you will keep the conversation alive. Every time anyone asks, you have the chance to bring Wilson’s racism out of that obfuscating murk of “legacy” and into the light of racial justice. Change the language you use, and soon enough you will change the name, no matter what the trustees or administration decide. Just stop using “Wilson.”
Frederick A. Larson ’73
8 Years AgoAs a freshman in 1969 I met with Professor Arthur S. Link, the official keeper of Woodrow Wilson’s papers, and told him I had decided in junior high school to attend Princeton after reading Professor Link’s book, Wilson: The Road to the White House. Professor Link graciously admitted me to his upper-class American history course. Professor Link never hid from his students that President Wilson was a racist who resegregated the federal workforce.
I recently learned that President Wilson created the National Park Service in 1916. To everyone who has visited a national park, I ask: What is Wilson’s most lasting legacy — his racism as a Virginian born in 1856, or the National Park Service he created as a key Progressive of the early 20th century?