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We must not erase Woodrow Wilson

On Wednesday, the Black Justice League presented to the student body and the administration a list of three demands, designed to make Princeton more welcoming to black students. The first of these demands was to problematize the legacy of former University president Woodrow Wilson and remove his name from the Woodrow Wilson School and Wilson residential college, and to remove the mural of his face from Wilson dining hall. Problematizing his legacy is an important and worthwhile goal. However, removing his name and picture from Princeton’s campus, although well-intentioned, is short sighted and detrimental to real debate and discussion.

The argument for removing his name and the mural depicting his face is that Wilson held morally reprehensible positions and, in light of that fact, it is unfair to glorify him. While I agree that Wilson was a racist and a bigot, I think to judge him by today’s standards is ahistorical. We cannot remove people from historical narratives simply because we disagree with their positions.

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The fact of the matter is that Woodrow Wilson did not live in the twenty-first century. He was not exposed to the same type of education and society that we have been exposed to. Some people might respond to this by saying that there were other people in his time who did not share his racist beliefs. This is true, but those people were remarkable. In addition, some of those same people might have held other objectionable beliefs. For example, someone in Wilson’s time might have supported racial equality, but still professed homophobic or transphobic beliefs. Would we discount their anti-racist work for those reasons?

In an op-ed in the Daily Princetonian in October, the Black Justice League claimed, “We owe nothing to people who are deeply flawed.” I disagree strongly with this assessment. First of all, logically, everyone is deeply flawed. In twenty years, even our seemingly liberal positions will be horribly outdated. Will that erase the sincere attempts we are making now?

On a more practical note, there are so many problematic historical figures that I, personally, believe I owe a lot to. There are men like Thomas Jefferson, who were instrumental to establishing the political freedom that I enjoy today. There are writers like Rudyard Kipling, whose works have given me so much pleasure. There are suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who fought for women’s rights and derived support for that fight by playing on fear of African Americans. Since I am a black girl, it is likely that none of these historical figures would have deigned to speak to me. Is that an uncomfortable realization? Yes. Does that change these figures’ enormous historical impact? No, of course not.

We must not erase Woodrow Wilson, because to do so is to play into an almost dystopian mentality where the things we do not like are simply thrown down the memory hole. It is true that it is wrong to deify historical figures. Thus, acknowledging Wilson’s racism is important. We cannot allow him to be portrayed as the infallible patron saint of Princeton when his words are hurtful to so many current Princetonians. However, wiping out his name and face would do nothing to spur on dialogue or to change racist institutions. It would only allow us to try to forget that we have inherited a legacy that was created by people whose personal views we do not agree with.

Zeena Mubarak is a junior from Fairfax, Va. She can be reached at zmubarak@princeton.edu.

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