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Scholars weigh in on Woodrow Wilson, Princeton and racism

John Cooper, Jr., emeritus professor of American Institutions, University of Wisconsin: “The best way to judge Wilson on matters of race is not to keep score between good and bad deeds but to recognize him and judge him for what he really was. Many have made snap judgments based on his birth in Virginia on the eve of the Civil War and his upbringing in Georgia and South Carolina during the war and Reconstruction to write him off as a typical white man of those places and times. Such a characterization is wrong.”