@tiger1307 - I don’t know about all of that, but you are right on re. the racist problems at Caltech, IME.
@cobrat @pizzagirl - I agree it’s ridiculous to trot out Judah Benjamin again and again. Most Jewish Americans are descendants of European refugees completely removed from the Confederacy or any enslavement. (Others are middle-eastern or even South-American refugees, again no connection to mistreatment of Blacks.) There was/is a proportionately extremely high level of participation by Jews in Civil Rights ally protests and voting to support AA rights.
pizzagirl/fretfulmother
nobody is responsible for anything other than their own personal actions.
since not only was the first slave OWNER in america a black person and many slave owners in america were black and black people fought for the Confederate army (that is true and weird how that seems left out of most history books) that would mean black people in america are responsible for slavery in america…I guess using the same creepy logic. or perhaps let’s blame all muslims for 9/11 and Paris attacks. when people say ignorant things like that it is silly to try and refute them. the argument it is beyond response.
If we were to remove dear old Woodrow, it should be for his help in creating the Federal Reserve.
@fretfulmother Could you elaborate on the “racist problems” at Caltech? Is the racial composition of the student body, alone, evidence to you of a racial problem? Are you aware of any complaints that minority students have had with the Caltech administration?
If you think colleges don’t accept students that aren’t capable of performing academically, read The Gatekeepers, which details how Wesleyan handled admissions in the early 2000s.
Granted, this book is now old, but the book details how a key admissions officer advocated for and got acceptances for several marginal students. The last chapter explains how most of these washed out due to Wesleyan’s academic rigor. These students may have thrived at a less demanding school.
@whatisyourquest - I attended Caltech for graduate school. I personally witnessed several racist incidents, including very poor treatment of Black graduate students and the [very few] professors/postdocs. My suspicion is that the racial composition of the student body indeed fosters closed-mindedness. For that matter, sexist and anti-semitic incidents were also things I witnessed, likely for similar (lack of diversity) reasons. I knew only one Black undergraduate there (through my athletic club team) and I did not discuss his experience with him, so my experience is graduate/postdoc/faculty-focused. What is your connection to Caltech, that you question my experiences?
Since you believe that, are you also going to say that college and professional sports teams should reflect the racial composition of the general population? Why stop there? Let’s make basketball teams reflect the height of the population at large as well.
@fretfulmother I have no direct connection to Caltech, and didn’t know that you were a grad student there. By elaborating, you have put your comment into context.
I’m troubled about your experiences there. This is the first time that I’ve heard anyone report a racial problem at Caltech. Anonymous student reviews that I’ve read have never intimated anything of the sort. All have emphasized the collaborative spirit (“we’re all in this together”) and a strong sense of community, especially within the house system.
Honestly, too, the legacy of Wilson is one of the more liberal of the U.S. political leaders… Like with the 14 Points, League of Nations, not to mention the the fact that basically he founded liberal moral theory in action.
At least blasting a lot of these is somewhat logical, but Wilson… He should be the hero of these protesters, right?
At least they haven’t banned yoga here like in Ottawa, right?
This is moronic. Are these students really attending Princeton? ANY PERSON from that time period would be deemed immoral and racist by today’s standards. This guy helped shape Princeton, leave him alone.
“This campus owes us everything,” said one student. “We owe white people nothing. All of this is mine. My people built this place.”
…I thought this was a joke. What are your opinions on this err…thought-provoking comment?
Cobrat - I wanted to respond to your post #327, which I think is incorrect in many respects. While Princeton was slow to admit black students and clearly had a more conservative tinge to the student body than many of its peer institutions, that began to change in the 1970s (not the late 1990s as you posit). In 1976, Princeton had a larger percentage of blacks among its undergraduates (7.4%) than either Harvard (6.9%) or Yale (4.7%). Princeton also had a larger percentage of Hispanics (2.9%) than either Harvard (2.3%) or Yale (2.4%). at that time See the book The Half Opened Door for these statistics.
And if you read The Chosen, you should note the following:
Yet given its starkly racist past, Princeton felt a special responsibility to guarantee that its student body would be racially diverse. Indeed, the most critical single measure of progress at Princeton — and the best hope for changing its image — was the number of black students it enrolled. In this regard, Princeton fared relatively well; in 1984, for example, 9 percent of all freshmen were black, compared to 8 percent at Harvard and 6 percent at Yale.
I agree that it is absurd to adopt current moral standards to historical figures.
Frankly, we are getting much too tolerant and politically correct. If I were the president of Princeton, I would demand that all protesters leave the building immediately. If they don’t, I would call in the police and have them removed! I might even consider warning them that any further action like this would result in expulsion!
I am amazed that these protesters believe that something is owed them! All that is owed them is a quality education. IF they don’t feel that is enough, they can make room for others.
This has just gone too far!
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
I can’t link to this article too often (sorry if someone already has in 26+ pages of this thread).
Remember when Abraham Lincoln removed John Frémont from command for declaring emancipation in Missouri? Maybe we should demolish the Lincoln Memorial and build a new cultural center in its place?
Dwight Eisenhower once said that, knowing Earl Warren’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, he most likely would not have nominated him to the Supreme Court. Should we rename high schools bearing Eisenhower’s name?
Nobody in their right mind would suggest either step, because these men did more good than harm. They weren’t perfect, making them like exactly 100% of the human race.
Winston Churchill clashed repeatedly with suffragettes - one incident, which saw police attack a group of women demanding the vote, caused him considerable embarrassment when reported. I don’t know of any Cambridge students calling for Churchill College to be renamed. It seems the horrible, unfeeling, non-holistic UK application process is better than our own at weeding out those lacking the ability to understand more than one viewpoint.
I will thank these protesters for one thing at the very least: few examples will better illustrate the tangential relevance of critical thinking and academic ability in Ivy admissions when someone at my school is rejected from Princeton and feels despondent. For providing a perfect counterpoint to the claim “Ivy admissions are meritocratic,” they have my gratitude.
I am sick and tired of this politically correct bull crap. How are they going to survive in the real world when people do not conform to their views and ideologies? Probably cry like babies and run back to mommy
This is actually a good question, and it’s interesting how little it’s been discussed in 27 pages of comments that seemingly would address this question.
I went and did some reading about Wilson, and gee, he really was a pretty big racist, even for his time. He also did some pretty bad things, such as re-segregating the federal government. (Here’s an interesting article, written before the current brouhaha: http://www.bu.edu/professorvoices/2013/03/04/the-long-forgotten-racial-attitudes-and-policies-of-woodrow-wilson/). I think it’s a pretty difficult thing to decide where to draw the line and remove a person’s statue because we now think he’s bad. (There was a lot of discussion here about whether Joe Paterno deserved to be erased, for example.) I’d like to think that a better way would be to understand the mixed legacy of people like this, without going down the slippery slope that would require the removal of all names.
A couple of other points. I’m bemused by all the conservative posters here who think they have better ideas on how to run Princeton than the people who actually run it. You’d think there would be a conservative-leaning institution that had the academic standing of the Ivies, with so many people available to run it.
I’m also bemused by the idea that the protesting students aren’t bright. While some of them may be misguided, they are all bright, even if affirmative action may have helped them get in. Why, some of them may even grow up to be pediatric neurosurgeons.
@whatisyourquest - I cannot speak to the undergraduate House experience at Caltech. My guess is that a Black student might feel isolated being one of very few, but I just don’t know if the House bonding would have overcome that feeling. Graduate students (at all colleges) can feel isolated in any case, and the aggression (micro and other) in terms of race, religion, and gender at Caltech - were significant on top of that.
After seeing the name here, I googled John Johnson and it appears that he saw some of what I did, though our years did not overlap (I was there before he came). What I’m reading is that there was friction when JJ named what he saw as racism in the Astronomy department (?) but that he’s happier now at Harvard.
I am as well. And also laughing about all the people saying they are crossing Princeton, Yale, Amherst, Georgetown, Duke, Stanford, Dartmouth, etc etc etc off their kid’s college lists because of these protests or the admin response to them. To that I’ve asked for schools that are staying on the “OK” list but no one seems eager to provide one 
@OHMomof2 See my post #347, in direct response to your question. I guess that you missed it, or ignored it. Several posters responded about STEM schools and why they may react differently to the SJW movement than LACs and Ivies. freffulmother also responded about personal experiences in Caltech’s grad school. It looks like you need to do some catch up.