Et tu, Princeton?

As a proud Princeton alum, I’ve been experiencing a fair bit of schadenfreude over the safe‐​space shenanigans at Yale and Dartmouth. No way could such tomfoolery happen at Ol’ Nassau, I thought. (Trigger warning: The Ol’ Nassau nickname refers to the House of Orange‐​Nassau, which engaged in “speech acts” that weren’t politically correct, among other foibles.)


But alas, it was not to be. Students with nothing better to do than occupy the president’s office in protest of… malaise or something (Jimmy Carter, call your office)… ended up eking out a pledge from the administration that the Board of Trustees would “initiate conversations concerning the present legacy of Woodrow Wilson on this campus,” as well as a commitment “to working toward greater ethnic diversity of memorialized artwork on campus.”


Well, I can’t help with the art, but as a classical liberal whose undergraduate degree is from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (aka “Woody Woo”), I have some sympathy for those to whom the very thought of our 28th president — who was also president of the university — is a micro‐​aggression. So here’s my suggestion: If the criteria for acceptable memorialization are not being a racist while making a positive contribution to international affairs, then rename the policy school after Ronald Reagan. I’d love to say that I attended “Ronny Roo.”