TAKE A BREATH
The students at Princeton are right to say President Wilson was a racist, but that does not mean his ghost should be banished from campus. History is more complicated than that.
Trygve Throntveit received his PhD in history from Harvard University. He is the author of WILLIAM JAMES AND THE QUEST FOR AN ETHICAL REPUBLIC (Palgrave, 2014) and is completing a book on Woodrow Wilson’s politics and diplomacy and their public reception, titled POWER WITHOUT VICTORY: WOODROW WILSON AND THE AMERICAN INTERNATIONALIST EXPERIMENT (Chicago). Having taught at Harvard and Dartmouth he now raises money for scholarships and community partnerships at the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development.
The students at Princeton are right to say President Wilson was a racist, but that does not mean his ghost should be banished from campus. History is more complicated than that.