Suggesting a University-Wide Course on Confronting Legacy of Structural Racism

I’m deeply grateful to Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. *97 (On the Campus, September issue) for contributing Begin Again to the American conversation about the desperate need, and rising calls, to address the chasm between professed values and reality in this country. As a student of revolutionary history in the mid-1970s at Princeton, I nevertheless managed to graduate without an understanding of my own historical and ideological roots as a white American. 

As Glaude says in this interview, we can no longer “tinker around the edges” and try to appease protesters with incremental change. I suggest that Princeton, “in the nation’s service,” should institute a Universitywide (required) course that studies structural racism and taps into important national (or international) efforts to address and change the course of our national priorities and programs. Such a course would be a great start and commitment to the (re)education of our Princeton community, current students and alums. Princeton, within the vast American academic community of resources and voices, can begin to make a profound and enduring change in American life and its future.