Posted on 04/05/2016 2:59:02 PM PDT by markomalley
Princeton University was embroiled in the Black Lives Matter-inspired boycotts last year when student activists demanded the removal of Woodrow Wilson's name from its public policy school because of the former president's racist views. But after careful consideration of all the complaints, the Ivy League school has decided to keep Wilson's name but promises to emphasize his "severe deficiencies."
On Monday, university President Christopher Eisgruber said of his decision:
The students should recognize they have really changed the way people will talk about and remember Wilson. All the people whom we honor in history are going to be people with flaws and deficiencies. If we made that argument for not honoring people, we would honor nobody. The right attitude is to honor people, but be honest about their failings.
Woodrow Wilson, a member of the segregationist Democratic Party, was president of Princeton from 1902 up until 1910; three years before he became president of the United States. During his time at Princeton, Wilson actively prevented the enrollment of black students, a racist viewpoint he carried with him to the federal government as U.S. president.
And though his name will still be associated with the university, the committee that weighed all the evidence stated that it "implies no endorsement of views and actions that conflict with the values and aspirations of our times."
The 10-member committee, according to the Associated Press, reached out to hundreds of faculty, alumni, public citizens, and Wilson scholars to offer input on his life before making its final decision. It determined that Wilson's achievements far outweighed his racist viewpoints, deciding it would be best to highlight his "towering achievements" along with his "severe deficiencies."
Eisgruber added, "We have to be cognizant about the kinds of harms people even of great achievement caused. Princeton was an exclusive place for a very long time. We need to be honest about those exclusions... and make sure we create symbols on campus that make people feel that this is a place they can call home."
With this proclamation, Princeton has also promised to remove and/or update campus symbols and other representations to show the diversity of its campus. Encouraging minorities to enroll in doctorate programs has also been bumped up on the priorities list.
Making the first steps on its promises to highlight the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president's failures, Princeton is hosting a new exhibit on Wilson provocatively titled, "In the Nation's Service?" which aims to "fully air his legacy."
Point ot that saint FDR was Navy Secretaary of Wilson’s own picking.
Wilson was a racist and socialist. It was largely through his leadership that we got the 16th, 17th, and 18th Amendments passed.
They’d have to “emphasize the racism” of the whole school. In contrast to some competing institutions which had admitted and graduated Black students in the late 19th and early 20th century, Princeton didn’t take in a single African-American student until 1947 (one student was admitted in the 1930s but was sent home when he was discovered to be Black, and there were four African-Americans in the special wartime Navy V-12 program in the 1940s).
This is just a war on white people.
IVY LEAGUE
(great) grandpa stole it
third gen preppie spends it
these schools are way past being ELITE and are essentially COMMIE THINK TANKS
Stands to reason. He was a Democrat.
They could use the wonderkin 0bama or the heroine to be Hillary or the lover of USSR Sanders.
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