Princeton University has pledged to consider renaming buildings dedicated to former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the latest U.S. campus effort to quell student complaints of racism by tweaking names, titles and mascots.
The deal top administrators signed late on Thursday with student demonstrators ended a 32-hour sit-in outside Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber's office.
Protest organizers at the renowned Ivy League university in New Jersey called on Princeton to remove Wilson's name and image from its public spaces, as well as from the university's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Wilson, the 28th U.S. president from 1913 to 1921, was a leader of the Progressive Movement but also supported racial segregation, which was legal and part of public policy at the time in the United States, particularly in southern states.
Segregation was banned under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Eisgruber said in a statement that Princeton appreciated the "willingness of the students to work with us to find a way forward".
Student organizers from the Black Justice League also want Princeton to institute a cultural competency and diversity training program and to designate space on campus for "cultural affinity" groups.
Calls for the removal of Wilson's name from Princeton, where he served as president from 1902 to 1910, arose during a wave of demonstrations at U.S. colleges over the treatment of minority students. Some were aimed at showing solidarity with students protesting the failure of administrators at the University of Missouri and Yale University to respond seriously to complaints of racial incidents on their campuses.
Changing U.S. attitudes and values involving race, gender and other issues are a flashpoint not just on campuses but in cities and towns across the country. Historical figures honored for their accomplishments with statues, statehouse portraits and dedicated streets and buildings are now being viewed through a more critical lens.
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., last weekend said it would rename two buildings that bore the names of school presidents who oversaw the sale of slaves to settle campus debt in the 1800s.
At Amherst College in Massachusetts, students and faculty are pushing for the small, elite liberal arts college to drop as its unofficial mascot Lord Jeff Amherst, who commanded British forces in North America during the French and Indian War and who also is believed to have once given blankets containing the smallpox virus to Native Americans. College trustees will discuss the issue at their meeting in January, Amherst spokeswoman Caroline Hanna said on Friday.
