Princeton Ousts Woodrow Wilson
Progressives eat one of their own.
Yet another student protest, yet another racist thrown under the bus. Except this one actually was racist — he just also happened to be a Democrat president and a father of the “progressive” movement. “The Black Justice League at Princeton had demanded that the president acknowledge the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson and remove his name from buildings on campus, mandate ‘cultural competency’ courses for all faculty and staff, and provide cultural space for black students on campus,” The Washington Post reports. “President Christopher Eisgruber immediately agreed to the idea of a cultural space Wednesday night, but declined to sign the demands and promised to continue talking with students about the other ideas.”
Wilson believed in a malleable Constitution and a virtually all-powerful executive. In fact, he was in many ways the originator of the elite administrative state in which know-it-all bureaucrats make thousands of decisions that solve problems in wreak havoc on our lives. He was also quite a racist. But as David Harsanyi writes, “Like most progressives of his era, Wilson wasn’t merely a common racist, he embraced the pseudo-scientific eugenics that would haunt millions. After his election, he didn’t only say terrible things — ‘There are no government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro’s place in the corn field’ — he institutionalized racism in the federal government, segregating the civil service in 1913. He personally fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors appointed to federal jobs, while his postmaster general and Treasury secretary segregated their departments. He’s the only president that I know of who’s ever celebrated the Ku Klux Klan in the White House.”
But you know something? We’ll bet these same student protesters are big fans of Planned Parenthood, which was founded by a eugenicist by the name of Margaret Sanger. Heck, Planned Parenthood still gives out media awards with her name on them. She and Wilson were peas in a pod on the issue, but you won’t hear that at Princeton.
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