If you’ve followed these pages, you’ll know that, among the welter of college protests, student activists at Princeton have asked for expunging the name of a Princeton icon, Woodrow Wilson, from its infrastructure. Wilson was not only president of Princeton, but President of the United States, and apparently a progressive one. But he was regressive in an important respect: he was an unrepentant racist, and as President took deliberate actions to disenfranchise black government employees. Because of this, the protesting students at Princeton, many of them black or minority, have asked for changes in the name of the school’s elite Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, of its residential part, Wilson College, and for a public admission of Wilson’s racist legacy. (The New York Times reported on this issue on November 22.)
In a major editorial three days ago, “The case against Woodrow Wilson at Princeton,” the Times‘s editorial staff took sides with the protestors. Without discussing Wilson’s positive accomplishments as President of both Princeton and the U.S., the editorial concluded:
In a few short years, Mr. [historian Eric] Yellin writes, the Wilson administration had established federal discrimination as a national norm.
None of this mattered in 1948 when Princeton honored Wilson by giving his name to what is now called the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Black Americans were still viewed as nonpersons in the eyes of the state, and even the most strident bigots were held up to public adulation. This is certainly not the case today.
The overwhelming weight of the evidence argues for rescinding the honor that the university bestowed decades ago on an unrepentant racist.
The counterargument, one made by my colleage Geoffrey Stone at the University of Chicago Law School, is that Wilson was a man of his time, and most white men of his time were, by and large, also racist. In a piece at PuffHo, “Woodrow Wilson, Princeton University, and the battles we choose to fight,” Stone not only argues that we should judge Wilson by the mores of his time, but also enumerates Wilson’s progressive contributions:
During his presidency of Princeton, Wilson renewed and reinvigorated the institution. In only eight years, he increased the size of the faculty from 112 to 174, paying special attention to both teaching and scholarly excellence.
Wilson also made progressive innovations in the curriculum, raised admissions standards to move Princeton away from its historic image as an institution dedicated only to students from the upper crust, and took strides to invigorate the university’s intellectual life by replacing the traditional norm of the “gentleman’s C” with a course of serious and rigorous study. As Wilson told alumni, his goal was “to transform thoughtless boys . . . into thinking men.”
Wilson also attempted (unsuccessfully because of the resistance of alumni) to curtail the influence of social elites by abolishing the upper-class eating clubs, appointed the first Jew and the first Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the university’s board of trustees from the grip of tradition-bound and morally-conservative Presbyterians. Given that record of achievement, it’s easy to understand why Princeton has chosen to recognize Woodrow Wilson as one of its greatest and most influential presidents.
. . . As President, Wilson oversaw the passage of a range of progressive legislation previously unparalleled in American history. Among the bills he signed into law were the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Adamson Act, which for the first time imposed a maximum eight-hour day for railroad workers, and the Keating-Owen Act, which (before it was held unconstitutional by the-then-very-conservative Supreme Court) curtailed child labor. Samuel Gompers, the most visible labor leader of the time, described Wilson’s achievements as a “Magna Carta” for the rights of the workingman.
Among his other accomplishments, Wilson, over bitter opposition from anti-Semites, appointed the first Jewish member of the Supreme Court – Louis Brandeis, and offered his Fourteen Points and his strong support of the League of Nations in the hope of promoting international peace and averting future world wars.
Unlike the Times, though, Stone also looks at the other side, arguing that “Wilson’s support of racial segregation was deplorable.” Let me add here that Stone is a progressive himself, a liberal, and someone who’s been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court Justice, though that’s unlikely given the relatively young age of conservatives currently on the court. Whatever you may say about Stone—and I’m an admirer—he’s neither racist nor reactionary. And yet, he claims, “Wilson should be judged by Princeton, as he has been judged by historians, not only by the moral standards of today, but by his achievements and his values in the setting of his own time.” If we judged Wilson solely by today’s standards, then tributes to many other famous American figures would also need to be removed from the public arena:
After all, if Woodrow Wilson is to be obliterated from Princeton because his views about race were backward and offensive by contemporary standards, then what are we to do with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, all of whom actually owned slaves? What are we to do with Abraham Lincoln, who declared in 1858 that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” and that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people”?
What are we to do with Franklin Roosevelt, who ordered the internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese descent? With Dwight Eisenhower, who issued an Executive Order declaring homosexuals a serious security risk? With Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act? With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage?
And what are we to do with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once opined in a case involving compulsory sterilization that “three generations of imbeciles is enough”? With Leland Stanford, after whom Stanford University is named who, as governor of California, lobbied for the restriction of Chinese immigration, explaining to the state legislature in 1862 that “the presence of numbers of that degraded and distinct people would exercise a deleterious effect upon the superior race”?
And what are we do with all of the presidents, politicians, academic leaders, industrial leaders, jurists, and social reformers who at one time or another in American history denied women’s right to equality, opposed women’s suffrage, and insisted that a woman’s proper place was “in the home”? And on and on and on.
Not having any personal connection to Princeton (other than my affection and respect for its current president), I don’t really care one way or the other whether Princeton erases Woodrow Wilson from its history—except to the extent that such an action would inevitably invite an endless array of similar claims that would both fundamentally distort the realities of our history and distract attention from the real issues of deeply-rooted injustice in our contemporary society that we need to take seriously today. This, quite frankly, is not one of them.
As Stone implies, women could make an equally strong case for the removal of names of figures who would, by today’s lights, be seen as misogynistic or sexist.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I can see points on both sides. Were I a black student, I’m not sure I’d be happy being around the name “Woodrow Wilson” given his racism, which was not only deep, but on which he was able as President to act, ruining (as the Times editorial recounts) the lives of many black people. On the other hand, if we’re to judge historical figures in light of today’s mores, and (as Steve Pinker shows) those mores have grown ever more liberal, inclusive, and progressive, then you’re going to have to completely revamp our institutions. Do we take Lincoln off the five-dollar bill and slaveholder George Washington off the single? Do we blast the face of Thomas Jefferson off Mount Rushmore? How racist or sexist must someone be before we bow to the demands of the offended that we efface them from history, or at least from public adulation?
If Wilson was simply a racist who expressed his views in public, I’d side with Stone. But he actively injured black people through his racism, and that’s different. On the other hand, Jefferson, Washington, Jackson (on the $20 bill), and many “founding fathers” actually kept black people in bondage, which is even worse.
So I throw this one to the readers: should Princeton get rid of the honorifics bestowed on its former President? And how far should we judge historical figures and their legacy according to our ever-expanding circle of morality?
This is yet another example of ‘presentism,’ the belief that all past events should be judged by present standards. Now, among, ‘progressives,’ racism and colonialism are chief among sins, with nods toward misogyny. But it seems to me regressive, not to mention unsubtle, to make such judgements. (By the way, the Lincoln of 1858 was not the Lincoln of 1863, and we should also note that statements by politicians are politically motivated.
Here’s the Wiki entry on ‘presentism.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)
Exactly. If they are going to be like that, they should stop listening to Wagner, Orff and Beethoven. And stop reading writers like Buchan or Flaubert. Their lives would be the worse for it.
Why Beethoven?
He horribly abused his nephew while the boy was in his custody.
Being an overbearing father-figure probably isn’t what John had in mind, since it doesn’t figure in SJW’s conception of important political thought-crimes.
And reputedly made anti-semitic remarks.
(BUZZER)
Disqualified.
Beethoven made anti-semitic remarks? Can you give some examples? Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Wagner?
Beethoven complained of jews cheating him, and said “jews could not be trusted.” See George Marek’s biography, among others. Beethoven was not an anti-semite like Wagner or Chopin. Judged by his time and place, he was a tolerant man. My intent was not that Beethoven was antisemitic, but not to judge people by a particular instance, and to consider the totality of their lives.
I have no idea whether Beethoven did make anti-semitic remarks, but I’ve got a file on my computer of Beethoven’s 7th being conducted by Leonard Bernstein (who was, as his name suggests, Jewish).
What to do? Beethoven and Bernstein are dead so they can’t be forced to apologise or retract. I suppose I could delete the file and pretend it never existed. I have a suspicion, though, that if one deleted from Youtube every Beethoven opus that had a Jewish conductor or musician somewhere in the orchestra, there might not be a lot left.
cr
And Barenboim conducted Wagner in Israel. Art must be separated from the artist.
To echo Jonathan,
Why Orff?
OK – IIRc, he was a composer in the 1920s/ 1930s, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to some degree involved with the Nazis. But I’d have to know quite a lot more about his involvement, particularly post 1934-ish, before deleting my MP3s of Carmina Burana (ripped direct from a CD which is buried in a box somewhere, I should add).
Likewise, I’m not going to blame Wagner for what people did with his music decades after he started feeding worms.
Does presentism mean I can’t criticize the laws, murder, rape, infanticide, genocide, slavery, misogyny, intolerance, deception, lies etc. in the Old Testament?
sub
No, I think it is OK to criticize them and also Wilson. It just means (to my opinion) that you cannot claim, based on the descriptions of genocide in the Old Testament, that Jews were/are a nation of exceptional cruelty. Not to mention that most if not all of these genocide episodes are historically inaccurate, and many are technically impossible.
Only Orthodox Jews who think all that stuff is (a) accurate and (b) commendable.
Also William Lane Craig.
cr
Umm, that sentence construction shouldn’t be taken to suggest that all Orthodox Jews believe that.
Regarding colonialism and subjection of other peoples, consider the U.S. and the so-called Philippine “insurrection” following the Spanish-American War and the uninvited/undesired U.S. annexation.
Do I correctly gather that in 2015 one is indulging in “presentism” in critiquing U.S. actions then, even though that critique is basically indistinguishable from that of Mark Twain who was “present” at the time? Or does his critique somehow lack legitimacy in that he was indulging in some sort of “futurism” in presenting a critique “before its time”?
Woodrow Wilson is a very distant cousin of mine. My great grandmother was very proud of that relationship. I had relatives who fought on both sides of the Civil War and held
differing views on race. I have racist and non-racist relatives alive today.
I don’t think that it benefits society to try to modify history to suit current standards or preferences. We must study and understand history to avoid past mistakes and atrocities and to work hard now to not make the same mistakes. We need to know about the best and worst of our progenitors and to understand the complexities of their lives and times as much as we can. Our energies would be better devoted to ensuring equality and justice now, to the extent that is possible.
I don’t think anyone is trying to modify history. That Wilson was a racist is historic fact. Trying to modify history would be to present Wilson as non-racist. The question is not modifying history but which part of history we should focus on. Isn’t it counterproductive, based on your argument, that the way to know about our racist past is to bestow honors in the name of past racists?
This isn’t bestowing honors, but simply not rescinding honors bestowed in the distant past.
All of us are imperfect. Perhaps we must consider the overall positive/negative legacy ratio as it relates to the institutional accorded honor when trying to make retroactive decisions. Princeton must decide on Wilson’s contributions as its academic leader, just as New Jersey must decide to keep Wilson in its “Hall of Fame” (previous Governor) and the military must decide to keep his name on a submarine (US presidential honor). Based on the specifics presented and linked-to above, I am leaning towards considering his racists sentiments and actions insufficiently heinous, in the context of the time, to justify muting his many noteworthy accomplishments.
Thomas Jefferson: Slave holder
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist of sorts
I’m sure with a little research the list would be extensive.
If America weren’t currently so plagued by racism, I’d say you should leave historical things alone. Racism is pretty rampant, it’s not history, so I sympathize with the black students.
How will doing this affect the rampant racism of today?
Renaming marks a shift in power. Smaller difference in power –> less racism. That would be the aim. I don’t know whether people have tested this. Would need to operationalize racism and test whether the measure of it declines after a renaming event.
At the same time, black racists such as Malcolm X are honored.
The reverend-minister Malik el-Shabazz renounced racism after he left the Nation of Islam. Woodrow Wilson never did.
What shall we do with the instituions, monuments and MONEY, that celebrate the (obviously racist) slave owners (some former US presidents)?
Wilson held rascist views, no doubt, and he acted on them while president of Princeton and the country. But if we remove the names of all historical figures except those without fault, few of our buildings would have names.
Princeton could tone down the Wilson idolatry, however. At the Woodrow Wilson School, the walls are covered with murals depicting him.
It probably wouldn’t be a bad thing (removing names of people). Then we could rename stuff with the names of animals and plants that are extinct or critically endangered.
Mental image :
“I hereby name this ship ‘Racist Pig’ ; may the Noodly Appendage touch her and all who sail in her.”
Here’s something I rarely see mentioned. Ideas of right and wrong will continue to evolve–we are not the last word. One hundred years from now, some of the ideas that we take for granted will seem ludicrous or evil to our descendants. One example mentioned by Stone: once a generation has grown up taking gay marriage for granted, people will not understand how any sane or decent person could ever have opposed it. Barack Obama will be seen by future generations as one of the villains in the fight–he will be lumped together with people like Fred Phelps as a “homophobe,” just as Lincoln is deemed a racist. (Lincoln eventually came around to the idea of allowing at least some Blacks to vote–this, in fact, was the final straw that provoked Booth to shoot him. However, some people will never forgive Lincoln his earlier position, and future generations won’t forgive Obama his.)
I’m sure that other ideas, ones that we haven’t even thought of, will be taken as self-evident in the future (who, a century ago, would have imagined that transgender rights would ever be an issue?)and we will be condemned for not having foreseen them.
How many people when entering these buildings even give an emotional nod, either positive or negative, towards Wilson, the man? I suspect most don’t and are neutral in that regard. Wilson simply is a name attached to a building they use.
To avoid future politicising of buildings, I suggest eschewing individual names. For example, if a campus building hosts a particular academic discipline, name it based on something relevant about that field, for example, a plant if it is a place for studying botany.
Honouring role models can be done in more flexible ways, for example, holding celebratory events associated with their lives. The Princeton students should focus on having an event for somebody that has an admirable history fighting racism and stage it in the Wilson College or School. At that event, Wilson’s racism can be highlighted. Putting a placard/mural/photograph about this person in the building would lend continuity to this issue.
I agree!
I do not know about the locations on the campus named after Wilson, but it is common for a building to be named after a major donor to the university. As I understand it, these things are sort of a tit-for-tat deal — I give you a lot of money, and you name something after me.
How is banning Wilson like banning Legos?
It’s like a Voldemort-ing of equity issues. Making a “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” out of cultural symbols.
I fall on the leave it as it is side of the fence. I think there is value in making people — especially students — confront the complexity of the issue, rather than sweep it under the carpet. I will say, in contrast, that I don’t think any public buildings or facilities should be named after Confederate officials, especially generals, not because they were racists, but because many of them betrayed oaths, and took up arms against the United States. If a private school wants to do it, that’s their look out.
We are all products of our (past) environment.
Sooner the protesters and everyone else understands this the easier life will be.
University is where Americans find out about the clay feet of its heroes. I only recently learned about Wilson’s racism, having only gotten the League of Nations Wilson in high school. My sister, however, knew because she took American History in college. Obviously, no new buildings will be named for Wilson and I see no reason to remove his name from the old ones. To do so would align us with the islamist destruction of ancient monuments, artwork and literature because they were created before Mohammed was born to enlighten the world. What I do see is good reasons to update our history textbooks to show the whole person, not just the approved highlights, and remove hero-worship (as well as every other kind) from our public institutions.
Wilson was slow to the cause of national women’s suffrage, too, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the distaff side of campus power politics isn’t rushing to shore up his flagging flank either.
Wouldn’t phase me one way or t’other what Princeton decides to do here, though I question the wisdom of applying such a stringent test for bestowing building-and-program naming honors. Who among potential honorees can pass the “Caesar’s wife” test? (Hint: not even Caesar’s wife.)
I wouldn’t deign, from my privileged perch, to tell Princeton’s black students how they should feel about this. Might there not, nonetheless, be other, more crucial battles worth fighting? And let’s please not overlook that some folks find it a spur to achievement to keep close a reminder of a past injustices (the way the Godfather kept the last name some doofus immigration functionary hung on him at Eliis Island — Corleone — rather than revert to his birth name of Andolini).
This debate is similar to one a few weeks ago when I argued that Calhoun College at Yale should be renamed because he was a slaveholder and one of the nation’s leading defenders thereof in the first half of the 19th century. When discussing this issue one thing should be made clear that many pundits do not seem to realize. Buildings, institutions, etc. are named after people to honor them, not to provide history lessons to those people who should gaze at the name. Thus, when a name is changed it is not because it is being done to “erase” history, rather it was determined that the person should no longer be honored. Of course, these individuals should still be studied – in history classes. After World War II, should the multitude of things and places in Germany named after Nazis not have been renamed? I think most people would say no.
There is no question that if all things and places were renamed because the individual was a racist or slave owner or did something to offend present sensibilities (such as FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans during WWII) , probably thousands of name changes throughout the country would need to take place. Most of the early presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson – were slave owners and racists (by today standards). What should we do with them as well as Wilson? I think the responsible authorities need to determine whether their positive accomplishments significantly outweigh the negative ones. By necessity, this will be a subjective determination. Whatever is determined will face significant opposition. In a very close call, I would keep Wilson’s name because of his many, important progressive accomplishments during his presidency, which I think very few people are aware of today. But, I would not raise a protest if his name should go.
Was your compromise position that for every college named “Calhoun” there had to be another one named “Webster,” and yet another named “Clay”?
As far as I’m concerned, once a person is past 70 or so and can look back on their whole life without saying “WTF was I thinking on that one”, then you get an opinion on this sort of thing. Until then you should stick a cork in it.
Right on!
One individual I can think of on our side of the pond participated enthusiastically in imperial expeditions against local tribesmen in NW India, Sudan and South Africa. He sent troops against striking miners, supported the use of force in the General Strike, and vehemently opposed the independence of British colonies.
That was Winston Churchill. He was very much a man of his time. Most British people think he did OK as our WW2 Prime Minister. Most of us find we can distinguish between his achievements and his failures, and are happy to celebrate the former – including having his name on colleges and other institutions – without airbrushing the latter.
Most British people think [Winston Churchill] did OK as our WW2 Prime Minister.
Wow, that’s an understatement.
I thought that you were talking about Eddy the Philanderer until you got to the bit about the General Strike and realise you were talking about the arch-ratter himself.
Well, it was by no means unknown for him to be booed in the streets when he was propagandising during the Blitz. The chose their camera angles very carefully and left a lot of film on the cutting room floor. Before putting it in the furnace. Burns well, does nitrate film (understatement of the year!).
Taking Wilson’s name off the School of Public and International Affairs is not the same as trying to erase his name from the pages of history. Why not rename the school in honor of someone who clearly didn’t do the kind of harm Wilson did? Would Wilson’s positive contributions to both Princeton and the nation be forgotten if that were done? I don’t think so.
Here’s a suggestion. Read Gordon J. Davis’ op-ed in the November 24th edition of the New York Times, a piece entitled “What Woodrow Wilson Cost My Grandfather,” in which Davis documents the harm done by Wilson’s racist policies to Davis’ own grandfather John Abraham Davis. Why not rename the institution in question, the John Abraham Davis School of Public and International Affairs, and then make sure that all official literature associated with the school explained how the new name came about?
Yeah, it’s not like anybody at Princeton is proposing a Stalinesque purge where WW would be disappeared from the history books.
I’d shed no tears, on the other hand, if Wilson’s sucky Republican successors to the Oval Office — Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover — were consigned to the memory hole.
But then, “Republican” has long been considered a dirty word in my family. In fact, my sweet, silver-haired grandmother wouldn’t use the word “Republicans” in front of us grandkids. She’d gesture with her head and say “those motherfuckers” instead.
Who says that the subtle, nuanced insult is dead?
“Why not rename the school in honor of someone who clearly didn’t do the kind of harm Wilson did?”
I think it would be difficult to find someone who did something of distinction and at the same time didn’t do that kind of harm. Maybe some artist, musician or scientist.
Yeah, even Mother Teresa was no Mother Teresa. (And Schweitzer, it turns out, was no Albert Schweitzer.)
I thought of Mother Teresa as an example of names that might be reconsidered later, but I decided she was too extreme to be a useful example. Wilson did huge amounts of good to offset his faults. Mother Teresa – nah. I expect a Hitler apologist could come up with as many good points about Adolf, as Teresa had. 😉
cr
I didn’t find those Wikipedia article sections too damning of Schweitzer, esp. in light of his writings at the beginning of them.
I read somewhere that he was not always all that nice to his wife. Same with his peace effort-collaborator (per that Wikipedia article) Einstein’s (second?) wife (from Walter Isaacson’s book?), giving her specific marching orders on how he wanted his “linens” handled. Not something I find endearing. However, perhaps I’m unreasonably indulging in “presentism.”
Bleah. But as mentioned upthread, sexism has been one of the last inequalities to receive widespread attention. (Though there have clearly been feminist heroes throughout history.) I’d suspect it was in general so ubiquitous that we’d hardly find a feasible male candidate were we disqualify on that basis.
“giving her specific marching orders on how he wanted his “linens” handled.”
Hmm, is that sexist or just stating a personal preference? I’ve told my wife how to wash my jacket (or more often to not!) in case it destroys the waterproofing. (She ignores me as usual).
To address Diane’s point, I expect past-time males who thought they could beat their wives were sexist, no argument. But what about men who thought it was their job to go out and work (often hard) to provide for their wives and her job to stay home and cook? What about the wives who thought so too? Were they all being sexist? Was ‘sexist’ in that context and that society even a bad thing?
cr
Yeah, I don’t think Dr. Schweitzer comes off so bad either.
I tossed him in because, before there was the beatified nun, his name was the meme (avant la letter) for self-sacrificial missionary work — and because revisionists have since managed to take some shine off his reputation.
I don’t think this has anything to do with judging historical figures by modern standards, because the same question arises when honoring contemporary figures.
The real question is this: does honoring someone for a particular thing means that we honor everything about that person?
The answer is obviously, “no”.
It only becomes problematic, in my view, when the only thing that person is known for is reprehensible. To me, the name “Jefferson Davis” is such a person.
He was a good president and a racist too – get over it. So long as we’re not promoting his more dubious values I don’t see the problem. That’s history – let it lie dead and keep on plodding into the future.
I’d vote for honoring Wilson for what he did that was worthwhile. I’d also vote for being open about his racism and having statements in some of the school literature that he’s being honored in spite of that.
A difficult decision, as arguments from both sides have merit. In recognition of that, but also in recognition of the new and better times, I move that we keep his name at the university for an item or two, but to also remove his name from others, replacing them with civil rights leaders. Instead of Wilson College, for example, it could be Martin Luther King’s College.
That out to either make everyone happy, or unhappy.
Sounds like a good compromise to me. Keep his name on the International Affairs institute, since that was the area he was most influential in. But the residential college should go – your MLK name sounds about right.
Happy or unhappy that is the answer.
Cooper pair is what physicists call a coherent state that allows for some kinds of superconductivity. It could be called something else. He might have been a bigot (I do not think he was) but does that mean we should change the name. I don’t know.
We could establish a basis where all use of human names is not allowed for anything, not even organizations, just objects like:
Stone College or
Pine Stadium or
Mesa Library etc.
Why do all public buildings and facilities have to be named after some personage? What’s wrong with e.g. Princeton School of Public and International Affairs?
Still, given this mania for naming things, once a name has been bestowed, good or bad, leave it alone. Changing it is daft and just invites confusion.
(It’s also kinda cheap. ‘This building (that was the Washington Library) is now the Lincoln Library’. (And in a few years time will be the Roosevelt Library, or whoever else becomes trendy). Cheapskates! Doesn’t Lincoln deserve a new building?)
cr
Someday it will probably be the AT&T School of Public Affairs, and we’ll be nostalgic for the days when we still named things for admired people.
Heh.
Maybe it’ll change its name annually according to who is the current sponsor. The Red Bull School of Public Affairs / The Budweiser School of Public Affairs / The Marlboro School of Public Affairs / The Durex School of Public Affairs….
I can just see it coming.
cr
😀
” . . . the AT&T School of Public Affairs . . . .”
Am reminded of the Tostistos (sp.?) “Fiesta Bowl.” “Fiesta Bowl” apparently couldn’t stand on its own merits.
They should not erase Wilson from history or demean his many positive accomplishments. But they should rename the school itself, so at least their black students aren’t studying inside a building named for someone who hated them and tried to keep them out.
And along the way, could we please rename all those Robert E Lees and Jefferson Davises?
On second thought, it is the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the President who proposed and designed the League of Nations and thereby paved the way for the United Nations.
So given that, his is an appropriate name for the school. It’s tricky.
What will doing this do to change how racist things are now, in the present?
I think naming should be a once-and-forever thing. I’ve never heard of this College, but if it’s called Wilson College it should stay Wilson College, and I don’t think my attitude would be any different if it were called Hitler College.
Once we allow one pressure group to institute a name change we open the floodgates to others, and end up with a de facto policy of rewarding the most vociferous ratbags. And the mere costs of constant stationery re-printing alone (not to mention historical amnesia) would outweigh any good that this constant name-trading could possibly do.
The only name changes I would be inclined to accept, were it my decision, would be reverting back to an even earlier name – like changing Leningrad back to St. Petersburg. This is not because I don’t think much of Lenin; if St. Peter even existed, he may well have been no better. That’s not the point.
I suspect it wouldn’t be difficult to find buildings named for anti-semitists.
Nor to find anti-semitic philosophers.
I still vividly recall the moment I learned Heidegger was a Nazi. This was 20 years ago when taking an undergraduate philosophy course on being. The professor for the course had failed to mention that central biographical detail. When I realized the history, I stopped reading Heidegger. And I’ve wondered how philosophy as a discipline tolerates giving air time to someone whose personal and political views are so heinous. I would likely avoid association with any institution named after him!!
So I sympathize with those who all of a sudden realize historical context, like holy crap Wilson was a racist. It seems as though Americans are going through waves of realization and disillusionment regarding racism.
” It seems as though Americans are going through waves of realization and disillusionment regarding racism.”
Not to mention a fair amount of denial.
(Disgusting Philistine that I am, I did not know that about Heidegger. I’m glad that now I do.)
I’m no Heidegger apologist, but his relationship with Nazism might be a bit more nuanced than that. He certainly joined the National Socialist party — but it appears to have been more a matter of careerism than ideology. If he was full-fledged fascist, Hannah Arendt never seemed to notice the banality of evil in him, even when it was staring her right in … her lady parts. Anyway, however ugly his politics and ideology may have been, there’s no gainsaying the guy’s contributions to the 20th Century’s intellectual firmament.
Of course, there’s plenty of shame to go around for intellectual heavyweights from that period. Ezra Pound’s cozy relationship with Benito Mussolini was pretty repugnant. But at least poor Pound had the excuse of being stone-cold crazy.
And, depending upon whose version of their meeting in Copenhagen you believe — his or Niels Bohr’s — Heisenberg was either trying his utmost to build Hitler the Bomb, or secretly subverting the German nuclear program from within.
As I said, lot of shame, lot of shame. (And don’t even get me started on the two popes with the misnomer “Pius.”)
Actually (re: Heidegger), we now know that the ideology was likely a role. The so-called “black notebooks” have uncovered yet more anti-Semitic remarks. (In addition to his letter to a newspaper in the 20s protesting the “jewification of the german spirit”.) Moreover, Fritsche’s analysis (still unequaled in my view) shows that B&T would have been read at the time (as people who are still alive remind us happened – Bunge tells of the student Nazis in Argentina reading Heidegger as part of their stuff) as reactionary conservative in the extreme and thus has no “resources” to combat Nazism on its own terms at *least*. In my view it goes further, but there you go.
He’s intellectually important, in the sense that weird appropriations of his philosophy shaped large currents of thought, but as far as I can tell most of them are bastardizations – even H. himself said so wrt Sartre’s. (For what it is worth, I agree- but it is a long story.)
Yeah, there are strains of Heidegger echoing throughout Derrida, Foucault, Barthes — pretty much the entire post-structuralist cannon. As to whether it’s a bastardization of H or straight reading thereof, you’re right there, too — that’s a long and twisting tale.
Aaack! An even more compelling reason to avoid him!
I should provide more context. I was keenly interested in philosophy, linguistics, and psychology at the time I was reading Heidegger. When I said I “learned he was a Nazi,” here is what happened, as I didn’t learn this from a book nor the Internet.
I was hosting a graduation party in my apartment, for which the linguistics faculty at my university had been invited. I found myself in a conversation on existentialism with one of my mentors, who happened to have then been the head of the English department. I thought the conversation was going along speedily fine when disjointedly he blurted: “Heidegger was a Nazi!” All that effort I had been making to get in the head of Heidegger came rapidly to frozen halt. Just how involved Heidegger had been in Nazism didn’t matter to me. The fact that a human whose judgment I admired was that troubled by his actions changed how much influence I could permit Heidegger to have over my mental attic. It also changed my view of existentialism. And it has bent my views sharply toward humanism and revealed an interest in morality, which I later explored in divinity school, where I ultimately rejected both theology and Christian existentialism as moral systems.
Here’s something I found on Heidegger that I read a few minutes ago in the New Yorker from last year (supposing my attempt to use the html code works):
New Yorker: Is Heidegger Contaminated by Nazism?
But so what? Does that invalidate everything Heidegger might have said? Surely in a philosophical framework you should evaluate his theories on their merits. I would have thought that was one of the tenets of philosophy.
(That said, I’ll never to read Heidegger, not because he was a Nazi but because he was a philosopher and therefore, on the balance of probabilities, he’s unlikely to have said anything interesting or even comprehensible. That’s my prejudice.)
cr
“Does that invalidate everything that Heidegger might have said?” In the same way that not paying attention to Trump and not feeding ISIS would be better for society, not giving Heidegger the limelight is deserved.
Regarding your prejudice about philosophy, I can understand thinking some philosophical prose is indigestible, but the history of the use of reason is not something to miss out on.
“…That’s my prejudice.”
Mine too. And Ben’s.
On the other hand, he was – by all accounts that I’ve heard – a “boozy begger, who could drink you under the table”. Which does, slightly, raise the likelihood that I’d read him. Very slightly. You might need an atom force microscope, or the next generation LIGO to measure the increase, but it is there.
Good point. But are we sure that was accurate, and not just alliterative poetic licence for the sake of the song?
(Ohmigod it’s from Python! I never realised.)
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~shil0124/jokes/bruce.html
cr
Wheresoever three or more are gathered together …
Customer: “I wish to make a complaint!”
Shopkeeper: “Sorry sir, we’re closed!”
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: I drink, therefore, I am.
I doubt you’d have to turn over many rocks before an anti-Semite would come slithering out — at Princeton or any other school, especially the Ivies of Wilson’s time. There were plenty of ’em among the isolationists who opposed Wilson’s policies. They were all keen to cap the Jewish “quota” system.
E.g. F. D. Roosevelt.
Perhaps the way to go is to add a more detailed plaque, for example, to the building explaining that Wilson was indeed a racist, who nevertheless did well for Princeton. We might still honor his accomplishments while recognizing his flaws.
Makes sense to me.
Agreed
A lot depends on how this portrait (if that’s right – i skimmed the readings) is perceived. Who ever said portraits are some sort of altar piece? Or that it is a symbol of how things should always be? Discuss, debate, learn, change yourself, do better. Etc.
In my experience there is very little “local documentation” of university names and places. For example, the Turing and von Neumann benches at CMU are known to most or all students and faculty, but to people like my mother, I had to explain who von Neumann was (and she knew about Turing only because of my contributions to scholarship on him). Might be nice to use the opportunity to start this sort of project – a place like Princeton (or CMU) has no shortage of money to slowly do this sort of thing. Public schools can wait. 😉
I blame these on progressive hyper political-correctness and the coddling of snowflakes. I am slowly weaning myself of liberalism for a more moderate, centrist approach. And I can see clearly now what I do not when I was in the pinko-treehugger phase, is that the left is just as destructive as the bigoted right.
Write and let us know if you find anything in the middle-of-the-road besides yellow stripes and road-kill armadillos.
😀
Well, there’s always Hillary and Barack…
OK, make that “nothing but pants-suits and lame-ducks … “
I’m still a pinko treehugger. I think the environment and social security and equality are worth fighting for and big business needs to be kept firmly in check. I guess I’m Old Left.
But that doesn’t extend to granting any indulgence to self-important grievance-peddlers with their ‘safe spaces’ and their prescriptive censorious attitude to speech.
cr
Oddly enough, as a small “l” liberal, center-sort-of-rightish latent logger, I agree with both your paragraphs, but especially the second.
Sub
so should we go destroy the Colosseum because the ancient Romans had slaves and fought gladiators and wild animals?
The Italians have done the right thing. On the information plates you see at the entrance to the Colosseum, it is mentioned that the funds needed to built it came from the sack of Jerusalem. I complained to my fellow visitor that knowing such truth kills my inner child.
I’m astonished that someone who posts here still has an inner child.
Or does it get resurrected? More like an inner phoenix chick?
Yes! She fatally clashes with life time and again, yet I need her to ameliorate my adult cynicism.
It would be really hard to come up with the name of a well known man who lived before the second half of the 20th century who didn’t have misogynist views. The attitude of a great man like Dr Martin Luther King to women wasn’t exactly ideal.
If a new building was being built at Princeton, it would be wrong to name it after Wilson, but I don’t think removing his name from existing buildings is really necessary.
One of the buildings named after him seems to be a residential building? If so, that could be a good candidate for renaming though.
The university could also commit to including Wilson’s bad stuff as well as his good stuff in murals, literature etc. That’s simply academically honest, which any university should be anyway.
I really like your idea about including the bad stuff with the good in murals and literature.
As to the renaming, the question would be in determining when doing so is beneficial. I’ve heard Michael Marmot speak on how local empowerment is a pivotal factor influencing suicide rates. So, I wonder whether renaming Mount McKinley Denali will improve health outcomes for Native Americans by contributing to a sense of empowerment. But I don’t know whether there is any data to support this. If renaming helps, then it would seem that we should deploy remaining strategically to help empower those who both historically and present suffer from racism. Data needed.
Good point about data. It might be, for example, that African Americans who attend Princeton might actually get an “I’ll show the bastards” attitude and perform even better than they would normally.
From time to time I know that’s the effect certain situations where women are denigrated have had on me. It’s a good feeling doing better than men in situations where they assume you’re not capable of it.
I totally understand what you’re saying, but I think it’s an exercise in “presentism” to classify that view as “misogynist.”
Hell, when my parents married in the Fifties, my dad was a labor-movement leftist, my mom a proto-feminist who stayed at home out of love for her kids, but stewed in her own juices as a housewife, and couldn’t wait to get back in the workforce as soon as she packed her youngest off to university — and even the two of them in their own ways had some essentialist views on gender we would classify as retro today. Mad Men pretty much nailed the sexual politics of that era.
That’s pretty much my point, although once I submitted my comment, I realized I’d missed out actually making the point.
What I mean is that if we had to rename every building that had been named after someone whose attitudes we today recognize as misogynist, or even just sexist, we’d be in big trouble. It’d be just about every man in history.
There’s still an enormous amount of sexism that a lot of people don’t even realize they’re doing.
I didn’t watch Mad Men because I knew it would annoy me too much. 🙂
I got socked in at a friend’s house by a hurricane and binge-watched the first two seasons on pay-per-view. Then watched the third season as it came on the tube. But long about the fourth season my interest lagged, when it turned a bit soapy. From what I watched, however, the show’s shot-caller, Matthew Weiner, did a good job of presenting some strong women characters within the inherent constraints of the times. Give it a look sometime.
Thanks, I will. 🙂
The debate we’re having as a result of these protests is the main thing. Like the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Hopefully we change going forward — we treat each other more respectfully, equitably, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
RELIGION, however, is a horse of a different color.
Troll! 🙂
In South Africa we have the #rhodesmustfall movement which has resulted in the removal of the famous statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town. The movement also wishes, amongst many other things, to change the name of Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
It is part of a more general move to “decolonisation”. If I remember my history, Rhodes was very active in the period between the end of the Boer War and Union in attempting to ensure the ongoing supply of cheap ( black ) labour for the mines via laws. In that way, one can understand the movement.
But no concessions are made to the good he did. Rhodes University was founded by a Rhodes grant, for example. And we even have former Rhodes Scholars disowning him.
Being of “colonial” descent ( white ) I am very much not in favour of all this and feel that “my” history is being consigned to the rubbish bin.
It is difficult, though.
Is this an omen that it’s time to cash out our black-market gold-bullion Krugerrands, too? 🙂
Next thing you know, they’ll want to change the name of Rhodesia, huh?
Do I detect a ZANU-PF supporter? 😉
I try to steer clear of sub-Saharan politics — but my rooting interest in SA always lay with Madiba, Tutu, Biko and the ANC. To be fair, de Klerk deserves a ton (either metric or avoirdupois) of respect, too, for bringing the thing to a peaceful resolution.
Or of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense :-).
I checked with Zimbabwe; they said the Rhodes scions can keep that one. 🙂
For those not interested in searching–that’s the name of a protozoan parasite that causes one form of sleeping sickness.
Meanwhile, I’d merely been trying to think of some joke about Rhodesian Ridgebacks…
If some people are choosing to focus on one aspect of Wilson’s character and argue that keeping his name on a building glorifies racism, it should be fair to also say that advocating to remove the name promotes child labor, workers exploitation, and anti-Semitism.
This excoriation of Woodrow Wilson is just the sort of thing that a kid at university does.
Neither the rightness of “cause” or intelligence come into it.
In a generation or so the same people will be tutting tutting at the silly behaviour of their own kids.
I wonder if anyone ever tut-tutted Wilson to his face about his racism, and he would have responded with a defense/justification to the effect that these are the times and reality in which we live.
People lack sufficient perspective about their own times to engage in that kind of analysis. Every generation sees itself as the culmination of the long march of time, as beyond the prejudices and superstitions the plagued earlier generations, as living (as Francis Fukuyama claimed we are now) at “the end of history.”
Kind of like the creationist view of evolution, with man at the pinnacle.
Since you mention Jackson on the $20, let’s not forget who’s on the $100,000 bill (which only circulated between Federal Reserve banks).
Students have always gone in for jejune moral posturing — I know I did. It’s part of the idealism of youth, but also part of its harsh judgementalism and unthinkingly solipsistic assumption that it not only knows better, but *is* better, than all previous generations. But there’s no reason the rest of us should feel shamed into agreeing with them. Part of being grown up means one is able to deplore the bad things a historical figure did while realizing that this doesn’t mean the good things they did are therefore worthless. In Wilson’s case, the public good he achieved probably vastly outweighs the bad. In naming an institution, there’s also the question of appropriateness to its particular purpose. As an institution devoted to the study of international relations, it’s particularly appropriate for the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton to be named after the main architect of the League of Nations. Are any of the people calling for a change of name today capable of an equivalent to Wilson’s act of visionary internationalism?
Very well-said, Jonathan!
Some of us never outgrow jejune moral posturing — I know I didn’t. 🙂
We can’t escape the sins of our ancestors. Their actions are fossilized in history. What we can do is use them and their misdeeds as a tool to educate each other about why they were wrong. We can keep Woodrow Wilson and the others, but we can also teach ourselves about their failures. I think that approach is best because it doesn’t try to hide our past. Never forget.
” . . . use them and their misdeeds as a tool to educate each other about why they were wrong….”
So long as the Texas State Board of Education, among other entities, are not in charge of that.
I’m puzzled :
How does that work? As an employer, I can see him doing things to get people the sack (“new dress code lips must be less than 1/3 inch wide ; offenders will be fired”). As a person involved in the electoral system, I can see him organising jerrymandering to dilute the effects of predominantly black-occupied districts. But I can’t see what he could do to target specifically black government employees.
Is enfranchisement (being a member of the electorate, regardless of whether or not you actually vote) tied to employment in American? “No job, no vote?”
Can’t speak to your question directly, but the way they did disenfranchisement in the Jim Crow south was via poll taxes and literacy tests (especially the “long-form” tests given exclusively to black citizens, which may as well have been — and sometimes were — written in a foreign language). Any would-be black voters not screened out by these processes were subject to straight-away thuggish intimidation at the polls.
“Disenfranchise” means to remove the right to vote, not just to remove the effectiveness (jerrymandering, ballot-box-stuffing) of the vote or to prevent voting by illegal or dubious tactics (Thatcher’s attempt with the UK poll tax took several million voters off the UK electoral rolls during the 1990s, for an example. May she burn in a hell that doesn’t exist.)
So, what I’m getting is that although people were pre vented from voting, they still have the right to vote. Not that the President (I’ve forgotten which one it was – Woodrow?) actually successfully narrowed the legally defined franchise, just that he had KKKers beat shit out of any “uppity Nigerians” (to coin an euphemism), or used some other marginally less blatant tactic.
I think it’s quite clear that Ken is talking about “effective disenfranchisement.” The word is used quite frequently to denote that, here.
Yeah, I was reminded of one of the more unpleasant days of my life having Glaswegians screaming in my face about various political stuff. It’s a sore topic – accounted for a good several percent of my hearing going south.
You were trying to disenfranchise them, eh? 😉
Somehow I’m not surprised to know that you stand behind your opinions! 😀
Just glad you’re on “our side.”
Well, stop them from succeeding in a power grab. Standard issue internecine warfare amongst what should be a “band of brothers”. Enough to remind one of just how loathsome involvement in politics is at the best of times. For a start, it involves associating with politicians. Yeuchh.
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s not much of a right if the state can block you from using it. Poll taxes and literacy tests absolutely disenfranchised everyone prevented from exercising their right to vote regardless of what those states’ legal books claimed on paper.
” . . . just that he had KKKers beat shit out of any “uppity Nigerians” (to coin an euphemism). . . .”
I’ve wondered for some time whether someone somewhere has taken or will soon take offense at the country names “Nigeria” and “Niger.”
Offense has certainly been taken. Mostly by people who’ve never been to Nigeria, or it’s environs.
Birdseed manufacturers changed the name of Niger Thistle seed to Nyjer.
I understand a lot of US federal public servants (unlike in the UK or here in Canada) are “at the whim of the president” employees technically; so maybe WW did not renew, etc.?
As a rule it is preferable not to name anything after anyone until they have been dead for 100 years and history has had a chance to assess their legacy.
US history isn’t yet long enough for the luxury of that sort of lead-time.
I do not feel qualified to express a strong opinion on the Princeton case, but how about this as a practical general solution:
1- Some buildings (and other things) are renamed. The Smith college becomes the Jones college, because Smith was a racist and Jones was not;
2- Some get a hyphenated name (Smith-Jones college);
3- Some keep the aame name (Smith college).
In cases (2) and (3) an information panel is added describing what Smith (Jones) did (good and bad).
In the Netherlands there are still some statues of colonial figures, and lots of streets named after persons who would definitely not be deemed suitable for such an honour today.