Johns Hopkins University’s Name Review Board (NRB) recommended on October 24 that the name of former U.S. president and Hopkins alumnus Woodrow Wilson be used on undergraduate research programs and residence hall entrances.
The NRB was established in 2021 following the report of the Johns Hopkins University Commission to Establish Principles for Naming and is responsible for considering renaming or renaming proposals for university functions. Any Hopkins student, faculty, staff, alumni, patient, or community member is eligible to submit a proposal to the NRB, which is comprised of more than 50 representatives from across the university and its alumni network.
The board recommended that the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship, which provides funding for students to conduct independent research, be renamed the Undergraduate Research Fellowship, effective immediately. The NRB also recommended retaining the name of the Wilson House entrance in AMR I and adding contextual information. Both recommendations were approved by the university’s Board of Trustees.
These decisions were made after a year of deliberation by the NRB, during which archival material related to Wilson was reviewed. Wilson graduated from Hopkins in 1885 with a doctorate in history and political science and is the only Hopkins graduate to be elected president of the United States.
The NRB considered Wilson’s accomplishments as president, including enforcing labor laws, giving women the right to vote, and appointing the first Jewish judge to the U.S. Supreme Court. The board also cited Mr. Wilson’s actions against black people, including when he resegregated federal employees in Washington, D.C., as president of the United States and when, as president of Princeton University, he encouraged black applicants and wrote racist works. He also reflected on Wilson’s racist policies against American Americans.
Hopkins is not the first university to remove Wilson’s name from its university profile. In 2020, Princeton University’s Board of Trustees voted to remove his name from the School of Public and International Affairs, citing his racist policies and views.
The recipient of the fellowship, second-year student Tiamiyu Omotara, shared her thoughts on the name change in an interview with the Newsletter.
“I think changing the name of the Fellowship is long overdue, especially with (Mr. Wilson’s) history of racist beliefs,” she said. “On the one hand, this name change may seem like a kind of performance; it should lead to further investigation of the university’s complex history with racism.”
Similarly, Eli Rescher, a sophomore fellow majoring in crisis diaspora studies and biophysics, also noted how the fellowship’s name change was something many students in the program had asked for.
“[The fellowship]was earned through hard work by many students. To be named after someone with such a problematic legacy actually speaks to the values of the people who hold this fellowship. It is not in accordance with the rules,” they said.
The fellowship program was created in 1999 by former Dean of Arts and Sciences Herbert Kessler, board member J. Barclay Knapp, and political science professor Stephen David, who was then associate dean for academic affairs. David was the founding Director of the Fellowship Program and served in that role for over 15 years.
In an interview with the Newsletter, David explained why this change was made and that given his racist past, he doesn’t want students, especially students of color, to participate in programs celebrating Wilson. He said he understands the reason.
“I have mixed feelings, but I understand why it happened. Mr. Wilson was a difficult choice, because on the one hand, I think about principles such as the spread of democracy, self-determination, and the importance of international institutions. , because Mr. Wilson is a giant,” he said. “But he was also a racist, and there was no getting away from that.”
David said that he, Knapp, and Kessler chose Wilson for the program’s namesake because of his ties to Hopkins, his excellence in international relations, his support for research, and that at the time they named Wilson his person. I shared that I didn’t know about speciesism.
“I don’t think any of us realized there was racism as part of his background as well. It was a failure, I say it myself,” he said. “Maybe we should have been more aware and sensitive to that when the name was announced.”
At the time the fellowship was established, David said he did not recall any opposition to the name on campus. Woodrow Wilson in November 2016, when Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History Nathan Connolly filed a motion with administrators to change the name of the fellowship to highlight Wilson’s racist legacy. – Discussion arose on campus about changing the name of the fellowship. The motion received unanimous support from the Homewood Faculty Association, but Connolly did not receive a response from the administration.
In 2020, the Student Government Association voted unanimously to support changing the name of the Fellowship. Most recently, this spring, there was a movement to rename the fellowship after Wilson undergraduate Ethan Posner, who passed away in March.
In an interview with the Newsletter, Mr. Connolly supported the decision to remove Mr. Wilson’s name from the fellowship, but shared his disappointment that there was an eight-year difference between the initial complaint and its removal. He also reflected on his involvement in developing the naming committee’s policy and his perspective on the process, calling for more proactiveness from the university.
“Instead of placing the burden of submitting reconsideration applications on members of the university community, universities are taking a more proactive approach by making this a rolling process and should do everything themselves.” “Some people believed that we should,” he said, “whatever the promptings and promptings from the grassroots, we need to take time to reevaluate.” “I think it’s a big deal to ask people to put effort and energy into discussions that have been the prerogative of universities.”
Sarah O’Hagan, vice chair of the board of trustees and chair of the NRB, wrote about the motivation behind the board’s recommendation in a message to individuals who requested the review. O’Hagan said that preserving Wilson’s name at the entrance to AMR I with added context creates an opportunity for Wilson’s connection to Hopkins to be recognized, while also fostering discussion about his complex legacy. I explained that it would be done.
She said the decision to remove Wilson’s name from the fellowship but not from the entrance is intended to place responsibility for Wilson’s tangled legacy on Hopkins, rather than on individual parties. Shared.
“By simultaneously removing names from the fellowship, the responsibility for contextualizing the university’s history and the full complexity of Wilson’s legacy rests with the university, not with individual students or alumni,” she wrote. .
Both students and faculty have criticized the NRB’s decision to remove Wilson’s name from one university feature but not another.
Professor Connolly said his view was that the decision to retain Wilson’s name on the entrance to AMR I was likely to appease certain stakeholders in the university and was incompatible with a parallel renaming of the fellowship. explained.
“I think they split their minds on that: remove one name, keep the other name, and then use a contextualized approach. “I think it helps to take a more proactive approach,” he said. “But that’s logically inconsistent. I think if he’s unqualified in one area, he’s probably unqualified in all areas.”
He said Wilson’s policies and actions led to an increase in Ku Klux Klan membership, including the mass demotion of thousands of blacks, the deaths of Haitians under U.S. occupation, and the legitimization of white violence. The impact was explained.
“All of this should be considered too far removed from the university’s core values to be celebrated in any way, with or without a contextualizing plaque,” he said.
Shirlene John contributed reporting to this article.
