From Hero to Zero

“I’ve read a lot of history in my life, and I think that aside from St. Paul, Jesus and the great religious prophets, Woodrow Wilson was the most admirable character I’ve ever encountered in history.“

So spoke Arthur Link, dedicated biographer of Wilson, according to Link’s NYT obituary. Professor Link’s work reflected a shift in the establishment American evaluation of Wilson from the initial harsh criticism of his “war to end war” in Europe to hagiography by 1975. For hadn’t Wilson been the quintessential American interventionsist – leading the campaign against Germany, the source of all evil, and “medieval” Catholic Austria, the “prison of nations,” as well? And wasn’t he the pure ideologue, the prophet of a new world order with America at its center, a John the Baptist to FDR’s Jesus Christ? The crowning glory was the naming of the Woodrow Wilson school at Princeton – although in retrospect it seems strange to name a school dealing with “public and international affairs” after someone who had, much to the applause of his new admirers, so utterly rejected traditional experience in these areas.

But alas! Princeton has now disowned its favorite son. For the great Wilson turns out to have been a racist!

Wilson’s segregationist policies make him an especially inappropriate namesake for a public policy school. 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. This searing moment in American history has made clear that Wilson’s racism disqualifies him from that role. In a nation that continues to struggle with racism, this University and its school of public and international affairs must stand clearly and firmly for equality and justice. The School will now be known as “The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.” Christopher L. Eisgruber, President of Princeton University (June 27, 2020)

So the patron saint of American interventionism is now an “unperson”; his statue figuratively tossed on the junk heap. But I find it so fitting that the great secular crusader now is anathematized by the warriors of a new cultural war. For is there not great continuity between his ideology and theirs?