Dive Brief:
- Students at Princeton have joined their peers across the country in making demands to improve racial discord on campus, attacking former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s racist legacy and the way the campus honors him.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that Princeton’s Black Justice League occupied the president’s office this week, demanding, among other things, that all buildings and programs named for Wilson be changed, including the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a residential college named after him.
- Princeton also retired the name “master” from its position title for the faculty who lead residential colleges, bowing to students who have argued the word is closely tied to slavery and inappropriate as a title.
Dive Insight:
Woodrow Wilson was unapologetically racist, using his executive power to scale back progress that black Americans had made before he became president. As a former president of Princeton, Wilson is honored in many ways on the campus, including with a picture in the dining hall that students want taken down. They also want students to be required to take classes on the history of marginalized peoples and the creation of a cultural space on campus for black students.
According to NBC News, the university is, as of Friday, weighing the removal of tributes to Wilson from the campus. Other student protests this week sprung up at the University of Cincinnati, Lewis & Clark College, and the University of Central Florida. At Harvard, vandals placed black tape over six portraits of black law professors outside the campus’ Wasserstein Hall. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.