Conservative students blast Princeton’s removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from school

A group of conservative students is warning of a “hijacking” of Princeton University’s academic mission, days after the Ivy League institution dropped Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school.

The Princeton Open Campus Coalition — some two-dozen students — has sent a letter to university President Christopher Eisgruber denouncing demands the administration bow to a “one-sided ideology” on achieving racial justice.

“[T]he vast majority of claims and demands made by these students amounts to a concerted siege of free thought at Princeton,” reads the letter, written by student Akhil Rajasekar. “Consequently, we strongly oppose politicization of the curriculum by requiring courses that reflect a certain ideological commitment.”

The New Jersey school has long weathered criticism over its legacy of privilege, centering on former university and President Woodrow Wilson, as well as the school’s history of tacit support for slavery and the gentrification of a historically Black neighborhood near campus.

On Saturday, Mr. Eisgruber announced the school would drop Wilson’s name, saying the university had long ignored the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s legacy as a segregationist, for example allowing Cabinet members to create white-only work spaces and cafeterias.

“When a university names a school of public policy for a political leader, it inevitably suggests that the honoree is a model for students who study at the school,” Mr. Eisgruber wrote. “This searing moment in American history has made clear that Wilson’s racism disqualifies him from that role.”

Removing Wilson’s name was one of six “demands” in a letter written on behalf of a self-described “majority” of the 2020 graduating class in the School of Public and International Affairs. Published last week in the Daily Princetonian, the letter calls for systemic change across curriculum offerings, faculty hiring and once-a-semester anti-racism training.

Courses present “overwhelmingly white and male authors, prioritizing Western liberal thought and market-based economics at the expense of non-Western and more critical approaches to race, capitalism, and colonialism which have shaped our world today,” states the letter, which was signed by more than 250 current and former students.

Students in the Princeton Open Campus Coalition say in their letter that they don’t have an opinion on divestment and welcome hiring a diverse faculty, including not only racial diversity but also intellectual (conservative) diversity.

“If it is indeed racial diversity that they truly seek, would they celebrate the speaking invitation of Clarence Thomas, Tim Scott, Ben Carson, or Condoleezza Rice with as much enthusiasm as they would the invitations of Marc Lamont Hill, Michelle Obama, Maxine Waters, or Stacey Abrams?” the letter states.

The students say that proposed curriculum changes could stifle debate on a variety of subjects, including affirmative action, illegal immigration and “father-absence in poor communities of every description.”

“To brand one side of these important debates as ’racist,’ ’offensive,’ or ’harmful’ and seek the training of those who hold alternative or ’unacceptable’ views is to rig the game well before it has begun and weaponize the administrative apparatus of the University against those who would doubt, question, or challenge the reigning orthodoxy of the day and age,” their letter concludes.

Mr. Rajasekar told The Washington Times that he had not heard from administrators about the letter.

A representative of Princeton Policy School Demands, which had called for the removal of Wilson’s name from the school’s name, was unable to provide an interview by deadline.

A spokesman provided a press release, which was issued after the school’s renaming, calling on Princeton to match “this symbolic move with long-overdue structural change.”