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Wilson Legacy Committee gathers diverse opinion from scholars

The University Board of Trustees’ Woodrow Wilson Legacy Committee solicited papers from nine scholars who are experts on the history of Woodrow Wilson, class of 1879, about his contributions and legacy in education and public service.

The nine scholars are historians James Axtell, Kendrick Clements, Nathan Connolly, John Milton Cooper Jr. ’61, Paula Giddings, David Kennedy, Thomas Knock GS ’82, Adriane Lentz-Smith and Eric Yellin GS ’07.

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The letters discussed Wilson's progressivism and other endeavors as president as well as his contributions to education at the University. According to Connolly, a Johns Hopkins history Professor, the letters represented a range of ideas.

“Some folks were apologists, and they wouldn’t allow him to be singled out, others were unflinching in their criticism,” Connolly said. “My own letter was slightly between the two.”

Vice President of Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun’sFeb. 1letterdetailed University efforts to have a campus-wide discussion regarding the future of Wilson’s legacy.

The Woodrow Wilson Legacy Committee of the Board of Trustees is examining that legacy using multiple means, including the scholars’ papers, town hall meetings, small group conversations in January and a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community,according to the letter.

Calhoun was unavailable to comment.

“I think [the Legacy Committee was] looking for people who were the most respected in the scholarly community and they were just interested in what those people could contribute,” Vice President and Secretary of the University Bob Durkee '69 said.

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Durkee said that the committee selected scholars who are experts in this field and that the nine scholars represent a diversity of viewpoints. In soliciting essays from scholars, the Legacy Committee was looking to enlighten the University community on existing scholarship.

“They think it will lead to a more informed understanding and conversation about Wilson and his Legacy and that was the purpose and that’s the role that these essays will play,” Durkee said.

Dean of the College Jill Dolan said she felt the letters are remarkable and offer a great critical framework for thinking through the issue.

Dolan said that she appreciated that the letters didn’t toe party lines, but came to different conclusions and showed varied perspectives.

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“I think [the scholarly letters] will play a large part mostly because we’re on a university campus where that kind of scholarship should and will influence our thinking,” Dolan said.

She noted that one letter said that the least the University can do is give the issues thoughtful evaluation, especially when the question won’t go away.

“Such dialogue will serve this campus and the nation and in places around the country – any place that memorializes another human being,” Dolan said, in agreement with the call for thoughtful evaluation from the University.

Connolly said he was initially surprised the University took the demand to change the name so seriously. He said he was unsure what the University was looking for when the Committee solicited a letter from him, but was happy to see the variety of viewpoints represented.

“I always felt uncomfortable when I saw a portrait of Wilson, or was in a space named after him, or when he was spoken of with reverence,” Paula Giddings, a Smith College professor who was a visiting professor at the University from 1992 to 1993, wrote in an email interview with the Daily Princetonian.

“For however you, as a person of color, maywantto assess your individual status within the institution, Princeton, by honoring an unapologetic white supremacist, is saying you that you are inferior, too,”she noted.

Giddings wrote that through her research for a biography of journalist and civil rights leaderIda B. Wells,she began to understand “the fact that [Wilson] nationalized a version of progressivism that linked reform- for the- good with racial control and segregation has continued to leave its mark on marginalized communities across the nation.

She noted that Wilson’s legacy includes police violence, environmental racism, and diminished life chances, among other inequalities forced upon Americans of color.

Connolly said that it was very important for him to discuss the re-segregation of federal offices. He said that Wilson knew what was going on although he wasn’t a formal architect, and that because much of these efforts were done without documentation, it suggests it was a top-down demand with insulation to insulate Wilson from criticism.

“For me, it’s very important to capture in the letter that Wilson was someone who provided political cover [for], explained, and justified segregation and did so knowing it was not the consensus vision of the day,” Connolly said.

Discussing the future of Wilson’s legacy on campus is one of the University’s efforts to meet the demands of the Black Justice League demands after the sit-in on Nov. 18.

To meet the other demands, the University has created temporary affinity rooms in the Carl A. Fields Center, discussed a potential diversity distribution requirement and established the Affinity Housing Working Group. Meetings to discuss making campus spaces better reflect campus diversity also led to the University's decision to hire a dean of diversity and inclusion.

“The way to really respond to student demand and the ways to really improve Wilson’s legacy is to begin to erect statuary to other lives such as to the Haitians who were occupied during his administration and the African American workers who were demoted under his watch,” Connolly said.

He added that there should be sizable installations of monuments to those workers and those people to honor the grassroots, referring to the seeds of the Civil Rights movement that sprouted during Wilson’s administration, although those movements sprouted rather as a rebuttal to Wilson.

“[The] best way to honor Wilson is to demote him in the tradition of American democracy and really show that while he played a large part in some innovations, he also played a quite negative role,” Connolly said.

Connolly added that he thinks this is a question that universities will have to deal with for a long time.

Giddings wrote that the University’s undertaking in reassessing Wilson’s legacy is critical, and applauded the University for this undertaking.

“I feel if institutions of higher education are really serious, really sincere, about raising the quality of education through diversity and inclusion, projects such as examining the legacy of Woodrow Wilson [are] necessary to both the quality of education and scholarship throughout the country, as well as the quality of life within Princeton itself,” Giddings wrote.