I’m an IR scholar who has written extensively on Woodrow Wilson. I was surprised by @Princeton's decision because his legacy is usually seen as much greater than his relatively minor views on race.

But it’s the right decision because we can’t quarantine Wilson’s racism

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Wilson is among the most influential presidents in US foreign policy. He's credited for embedding issues like democracy promotion, human progress, self-determination, and international cooperation in US foreign policy. Issues seemingly unrelated to domestic racism.

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Even his biggest critic, Henry Kissinger, said “It is above all to the drumbeat of Wilsonian idealism that American foreign policy has marched since his watershed presidency and continues to march to this day.”

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Wilson is credited for embedding principles of democracy promotion, self-determination, and international cooperation in U.S. foreign policy. That’s why he is celebrated. His views on segregation are usually depicted as marginal and thus irrelevant to his legacy.

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That’s wrong. Wilson’s prejudice wasn’t just a domestic affair.

His views on the hierarchy of races led him to support annexing the Philippines and Puerto Rico, saying, “They are children and we are men in these deep matters of government and justice.”

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His views on the hierarchy of religions was manifest through support for Christian missionaries and Christian states’ tutelage of lesser races. Wilson’s racism and sectarianism was simply one aspect of a broader white American paternalism.

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Wilson's sectarianism doesn’t get much attention. It should.

During the Mexican Revolution Wilson complained repeatedly about the reactionary tendency of Roman Catholics in America.

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He rejected Thomas Ewing’s nomination to a judgeship on the grounds that “Mr. Ewing is a Roman Catholic, but not of the genuine and democratic sort that we are accustomed to associate in our mind with that church.”

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Wilson “spoke quite caustically against the Catholics in their endeavor to control the Government through appointments” and through recommending other Catholics for office. His closest advisor, Colonel House, believed Wilson was prejudiced against the Catholic Church.

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His prejudice affected his promotion of self-determination.

Irish (Catholic) Americans were frustrated by his unwillingness to press home rule on Great Britain in the same way that he pressed the other European powers to relinquish their colonies.

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“The Irish question” irked him, however, rather than inspiring him as a way to advance liberal values.

Take this example of how Wilson’s prejudice shaped both his foreign and domestic views:

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“I find, moreover, that there is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say...

-- I cannot say too often -- any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

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Wilsonians aren’t off the hook in terms of democracy promotion, either. In his seminal essay on democracy, he emphasizes the importance of homogeneity of race and community of thought, and self-awareness that the nation is an organic body.

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I could go on, but you get the point. Wilson’s racism didn't just shape his views on segregation and the civil service. It shaped his policies on self-determination, democracy promotion, international cooperation, and human progress.

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Need receipts? Take a gander at my paper on Wilson, here: https://jeremymenchik.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/menchik_finding_wilsons_religion_june27.pdf

Want to read recent, great scholarship on Wilson?

Read this: 

 @burnidge https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo19525143.html

@AdomGetachew https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179155/worldmaking-after-empire

@magee_malcolm https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602580701/what-the-world-should-be/

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