These are extraordinary times.
This morning I am greeted with the news that Princeton University has decided to remove the name of Woodrow Wilson from the public policy institute that has heretofore borne his name. Princeton student activists have been calling upon the university for years now to remove Wilson from this place of honor because of his indisputable commitment to racism. Yes, he is a past president of the university, and that fact won’t disappear. But his name will disappear from some buildings, letterhead, and business cards, and that move will be happening quite quickly.
I say it again: extraordinary times.
Whatever our views or commitments, we historians must recognize that we find ourselves moved by and moving upon one of the “hinges of history” — everything is turning, turning, turning. To everything there is a season, but — measured in a year, or a decade, or even a century — this moment feels different. The meandering stream of time has brought us to the narrows, and we are all shooting the rapids together.
Hang on, and help each other as you can.
Has every generation felt that they lived in extraordinary times? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But then again I’m not an expert in the history of every generation — I’m pretty well read on the history of “Generation X,” and this feels pretty new to me. But your mileage may vary.
In any case, in this extraordinary time when the entire basis upon which national or institutional heroes are deemed worthy of public memory and honor is being reconstructed at a rapid pace, the best commentary I can offer is the commentary I offered a few years ago, when we all saw some early signs that the public sacralization of Confederate symbols might be coming to an end. Of all the blog posts I’ve written contemplating what might yet be, this one has held up the best to the test of time.
But we’re running the rapids on a raft of flotsam held together by our small efforts and the water’s power; it all might come to pieces any second. Historians, do your best to keep your notebooks filled, and keep them dry; someone far downstream of us may use them yet.
In the meantime, here’s a post from August 19, 2017: “To a Future Unknown.”
I think it’s holding together for now.
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Just learned this news (from the radio) before reading this post. For Princeton to take Wilson’s name off the Woodrow Wilson School is indeed a big deal (incidentally, it’s not an institute, a word which could suggest a think tank or something like Stanford’s Hoover Institution; rather, it’s a school, in which both a lot of undergrads and graduate students enroll, so more central to Princeton than, say, the Kennedy School is to Harvard, or that’s my impression at any rate). Btw some months ago I heard a lecture by Jonathan Holloway about Wilson and race, delivered at the Wilson Center in Wash. DC. The Wilson Center won’t be changing its name, bc for one thing I think the name may be part of its congressional charter (or whatever the right word is), but for Princeton to do this is a significant symbolic move and, as the post says, emblematic of the moment.