President Donald Trump Calls Out Princeton University For Removing Former President Woodrow Wilson's Name From School Building
PRINCETON, N.J. (CBS/AP) -- President Donald Trump blasted a New Jersey Ivy League university on social media after hearing it decided to remove a former president's name from the school because of his segregationist views. Princeton University announced the decision to remove President Woodrow Wilson from its public policy school over the weekend.
Trump took to Twitter on Monday morning.
"Can anyone believe that Princeton just dropped the name of Woodrow Wilson from their highly respected policy center," Trump tweeted. "Now, the Do Nothing Democrats want to take off the name John Wayne from an airport. Incredible stupidity!"
Princeton's decision to remove Wilson's name reversed a decision the Ivy League school made four years ago to retain it.
University President Christopher Eisgruber said in a letter to the school community Saturday that the board of trustees had concluded that "Wilson's racist views and policies make him an inappropriate namesake" for Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs and the residential college.
Eisgruber said the trustees decided in April 2016 on some changes to make the university "more inclusive and more honest about its history" but decided to retain Wilson's name, but revisited the issue in light of the recent killings of George Floyd and others.
Wilson, governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and then the 28th U.S. president from 1913 to 1921, supported segregation and imposed it on several federal agencies not racially divided up to that point. He also barred Black students from Princeton while serving as university president and spoke approvingly of the Ku Klux Klan.
© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
