The Jewish Home | JULY 2, 2020
Princeton Removes Woodrow Wilson’s Name
Following weeks of pressure, Princeton University announced that it will remove former President Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building on its campus. In a vote on Friday, the Princeton University Board of Trustees approved renaming its policy school the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs due to what it said was Wilson’s racist beliefs. Wilson College, another school affiliated with the university, will now be known as “First College” to reflect “its status as the first of the residential colleges that now play an essential role in the residential life of all Princeton undergraduates.” “We have taken this extraordinary step because we believe that Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school whose scholars, students, and alumni must be firmly committed to combating the scourge of racism in all its forms,” said Princeton in a statement. The change follows weeks of pressure from Princeton staff, alumni, and current students to remove all mentions of Wilson from the campus due to his now-controversial beliefs. The 28th president, Wilson served from 1913 until 1921 and led the U.S. through the First World War. Wilson was a prominent supporter of segregation and implemented the discriminatory policy throughout the federal government. He also believed in a form of racial science known as eugenics and screened the pro-KKK film “Birth of a Nation” at the White House. Princeton’s student body first called attention to the many honorifics dedicated to Wilson on campus
in 2015, leading the school to establish a commission to study the issue. Yet it was the recent racial protests that followed the death of George Floyd, and the hundreds of statues that came down throughout the United States, that prompted the Board to take action. “Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time,” said Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber. “He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today.”
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Attorney General William Barr has announced a plan to ratchet up the federal government’s fight against left-wing anti-government extremists. As radicals associated with the Antifa movement topple statues of American leaders throughout the United States, the Department of Justice has formed a new task force to combat “violent extremists.” The task force, which was unveiled last Friday, will be headed by U.S. Attorneys Craig Carpenito and Erin Nealy Cox from the District of New Jersey and Northern District of Texas. The task force will work closely with the FBI to uncover information about the people behind the spate of rioting throughout the country. Aside from intelligence gathering, it will also coordinate with local law enforcement across the United States in order to dedicate more federal resources towards restoring law and order. In a memo announcing the move, Barr described the rampant destruction of statues as nothing less than a full-on assault on the United
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