Earlier this month, Princeton University’s Board of Trustees chose to retain Woodrow Wilson’s name from places of honor at the school. The trustees looked at all aspects of Wilson’s history before making a decision:
“When you look at the pluses and minuses,” said committee chairman Brent Henry, “we didn’t feel that the minuses were enough to eliminate his name.”
In today’s article for the Pope Center, Russ Nieli explains that the trustees made the right decision. He admits that aspects of Wilson’s legacy are problematic, but notes that Wilson’s good deeds often go overlooked:
…As president of both Princeton and the U.S. was the fact that in many ways he did more than most leaders of his time to expand beyond white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men to include a broader representation of humanity. Princeton president Wilson appointed the first Jew to the faculty (Horace Kallen) and the first Catholic (William McCabe); and against sizable opposition, when U.S. president, he appointed the first Jew to the Supreme Court (Louis Brandeis).
He would later become a hero to many of the suppressed and subordinated ethnic minorities of Europe and the Mideast—Poles, Slavs, Arabs, Kurds—when at the Versailles Peace Conference after WWI he championed the cause of self-determination for all peoples. At the same time he backed the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expanding voting rights to women.
Nieli praises Princeton’s decision as one that embraces Wilson’s successes while acknowledging his flaws.
Read Nieli’s entire commentary here.