Im going to read you a paragraph, just in case any of you wandered in without actually checking your program or the door, and you can guess what that paragraph what this panel is about. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than the peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples and shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when america is privileged to spend her blood and her mite for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. As you may have surmised, in case you didnt already know, this is a panel on Woodrow Wilsons legacies. A panel put together by the society for historians of the gilded age and progressive era. We hope to spark a lively conversation. Should you wish to continue this conversation or any other, please do join us for the reception that is occurring this evening from 5 00 to 7 00 on the fourth floor balcony k. So im going to turn to introductions. Im adrian lynn smith. I am a historian at duke university. Im going to introduce the panel in the sort of order of presentation which is the order of the program. We have first mary rinda, professor and chair of the History Department at Mount Holyoke where she was also the founding chair of the gender studies department. A scholar of north american imperial formations, histories of racism and a cull and cultural history, among other things, shes the offer of taking haiti, military occupation in the culture of u. S. Imperialism, 1915 to 1940. She is currently working on a book entitled entangled in the things of this world, mary mayan, the promise of sovereignty and the course of empire. Next we have samuel schafer, associate dean of the faculty in history and athletics at st. Aubons school where he teaches history and coaches football. He holds a b. A. From the university of North Carolina which turns out is good at both history and athletics. And a ph. D in history from yale where people tend to be smug, but for other reasons. Not you, of course, sam, and excepting others at this table. Where he wrote a dissertation entitled new south nation, Woodrow Wilsons generation and the return of the south 18801920. Next up, eric yelling, associate professor of history and american studies at the university of richmond where hes won awards for teaching and for faculty mentoring. Professor yellen is the author of racism in the nations service, government workers and the color line in Woodrow Wilsons america. Hes currently developing a new project that considers political the political and social perceptions of the Social Security administration after world war ii. Id like to point out that we have very good teaching represented on this panel, which when we consider how to get our work out to a public, is of course one of the first lines of doing so. We also have two other presenters who are well versed in speaking to both scholars and publics. Julian zeletzer, professor of history and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Coeditor of Princeton University presss politics and society in 20th Century America series and authors newspapers articles and columns related to politics in the United States, including two recent books, the fierce urgency of now, lyndon johnson, congress and the battle for the great society, and a volume called media nation, the political history of news in modern america. And finally, and featured actually in that edited volume, is david greenberg, professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University new brunswick. He is a frequent commentator on the National News media on contemporary politic and pub and political affai public specializing in american political and cultural history. His recent book, republic of spin, an insider history of the american presidency, examines the rise of the white house spin machine from the progressive era to the present, and the debates that americans have waged over its implications for democracy. So, please join me in expressing our enthusiasm and excitement for them. [ applause ] thank you so much, and welcome. I come to you from the 1830s and 40s and return happily to this moment of the early 20th century to which i will return. I made my way back to that earlier moment because i have been thinking and wanting to be able to understand better something about the complexity of sovereignty and the connections between notions of sovereignty that bear on the ways we think of the self in the society and political system, and sovereignty of nations. Ive been interested in moments when someone stands up and says, it is possible to do more than weve done. It is possible to extend sovereignty farther, very much in the way that Woodrow Wilson did. But how, in the course of making that attempt, these moves toward sovereignty end up with great frequency recapitulating the relations of power and the exclusions that have been in place. And i am pleased to be here having us think about Woodrow Wilson and his legacies in this moment when it is so important for us to be understanding and thinking maybe freshly about liberalism, what it is, what it has been, what its uses in power are, what its limits are, and how we go forward with that in this particular moment. I am going to begin us with some words from Woodrow Wilson in his campaign of 1912. I came to this, in part, thinking lets look at how we bring together some of the questions about the international context, questions about immigration, and thinking about Woodrow Wilson, what he had to say about immigration in particular. And how that comes together with his story of the history of the United States. So one of the statements that really stood out to me in looking back over the record of his policy and comments in this, looking back on the history of the United States in 1912 in wilmington, delaware. Wilson stated, it has been the privilege and the pride of america to settle her own affairs without drawing a single tear or a single drop of blood from mankind. Now, he said that in 1912. He of course did not yet know what he was headed into and the ways in which he would put to use the United States marines in haiti and elsewhere. But to my mind this statement of a kind of purity of america, a kind of innocent origin of the nation that has been maintained, is central to one of the problems that we need to take up in relation to wilson. The idea of a purity that needs to be maintained and of a nation that is uniquely devoted to carrying forward the program of liberty without violence. In the same year, a little bit earlier, he, in thinking about how the United States had come together from the peoples of europe, and somewhat embroiled in difficulty because of statements he had made about immigration earlier, he was called on to clarify the record. Looking back again at the history of the United States, he stated that the United States had set itself the task of setting up an asylum for the world. We have carried in our minds, he said, those men who first set foot upon america, those little bands who came to make a foothold in the wilderness, because the great teeming nations they had left behind had forgotten what human liberty was. So we set up an asylum. For whom . For the world. We are the trustees of the confidence of mankind in liberty. If we do not redeem that trust, we are then most to be pitied for and this is what really stood out here the more glorious your dreams, the more contemptible your failure. I dont think the point, at least for me, is to render contempt here, but for us to look at the relationship between the grand dreams that Woodrow Wilson set forth and the ways in which his understanding of sovereignty, his understanding of the kind of self that would make possible an american nation, an american project, brought with it certain very clear limitations and allowed, and even fostered, kinds of violence that he himself imagined himself to be free of, and imagined the nation to be free of. The more glorious your dreams, the more contemptible your failure. Also in that same campaign, and again addressing immigration, said the word american does not express a race. It expresses a body of men pressing forward to the achievements of the human race. Its an intellectual venture to be an american. Youve got to have a mind that can adjust itself to many kinds of processes to be an american. And here, of course, he was raling against the phenomenon of the hyphenated american. Dont call yourself a hungarianamerican, a polishamerican, an italianamerican. Call yourself an american. If you are too invested in the particularity of your identity and your place, you will miss the project that we are in, which is to recognize that the interests of any must be the interests of every man. And i understand that in saying that, he was partly railing raling against the radical si ism that sought to foment interests and class interests that would be the undoing of the nation. But i think it is a very interesting idea for us to consider that notion that interests are if they are the interests of any, the interests of all, an ideal that he set out in the process of rejecting that notion of hyphenated americanism. So it has been pointed out that wilson went some distance toward insisting on a kind of pluralism that made up america, that america wasnt a racial essence of an anglo saxon heritage, though, of course, he hailed that heritage, that lineage as essential to the nation. But was something that could come together assimilate with one another, our diverse riches into the project of achieving what it is for human kind to address. Of course, in the process, he rejected the notion that certain peoples could be assimilated into that project, and was pushed in the course of this campaign to come out and make a statement very, very clearly opposing asian immigration, opposing citizenship of japanese and chinese people, calling to the idea that these were peoples who were incapable of being assimilated to the nation. And whats more, whose presence stood in the face of and called on the government to undertake its role to protect americans and workers from unfair competition. And in doing so, to hold to the ideal of the nation. He said that am i at time . Oh, my ill say one or two more things. And this is a quote. Oriental coollyism will give us another race problem to solve and surely, we have had our lesson. So, i thought i would be saying a bit more but what i want to emphasize here, in some of the work on wilson i think there is an interesting discussion about his shortcomings. Was he too invested in honor . Was he too stubborn, and so forth. I think actually these become important questions when we ask about the ways that his individual character was actually linked with a much broader cultural disposition and question that his stubbornness, for example, on the issue of race, on segregation, on the place of African Americans, that his stubbornness on a variety of questions got in the way of his achieving the full vision he had, has been laid out. But might that point us to some of the ways that the vision itself held a kind of arrogance about the project of america that needs to be interrogated in relation to international policy, in relation to immigration, and so much more. I will leave it there. Thats a start to the conversation. Thank you. [ applause ] thats fascinating to think about wilson and americanism, what it means to be american at this point in time, i think. Our panel was asked to think about and it emerged out of the controversies over the past year or two over wilson and his legacy in places like prince princeton. We were asked to consider the good and the bad, to draw connections between them and to discuss some of the recent scholarship on wilson. Im going to try to do a number of those things and to start broad, then end up narrow, then hopefully ask some questions at the end. Starting with the notion of the word legacy, legacy technically is a gift or bequeath, something in your will which implies intentionality. I think wilson was very intentional about a lot of what he did. I think it is also worth thinking about some of his unintentional legacies, things we see now that he might not have seen then. Our question here is what is this gift or will wilson has bequeathed us intentionally, or, more broadly, unintentionally. In short, not to go over too much what most of us probably all know and heard when we were 16, then again in college and so on. Wilson is, without a doubt, one of the most significant domestic and significant president s the United States has ever had. Domestically his new freedom, legislation that he championed and tariff and antitrust legislation and child labor act and the clean antitrust act and Federal Reserve, all of these things are significant domestic achievements. His progressive ideology, hooking up on what Theodore Roosevelt had done and bringing that to a national stage. His activism as a president , being the first president to go and speak before Congress Since john adams, and going to Congress Many times more than any other president , i think since even, in working with congress in that sense and in many ways, sort of laying the ground work for other activist president s like roosevelt and lyndon johnson. Internationally of course, his leadership of the United States before and during its entry into world war i. Then of course his legacy with his wilsonianism and his vision of post war world. And as scholars have pointed out more recently, along with his good, there was also bad. Right . And adrian and eric in particular have pointed out some of the darker side that went hand in hand with these great achievements of wilsons, the segregation of the departments that happened under his watch, the exporting of racial imperialism that mary talks about. And so that has come to light. Its been around for a while, but more and more in the public eye recently. I would like to take a few minutes to talk i think about a related legacy of wilson that can speak to both the good and the bad. Thats a legacy in the lens of thinking about Woodrow Wilson as a southerner, which i think gives us another lens on to him, on to his administration, and also on to his legacies. So in a sense, thinking about how understanding his roots might better help us understand what his legacies are and how those two arent separated in many ways, how the good and the bad shouldnt be separated. So of course, wilson as a southerner has, among historians, long been a topic of conversation, is he southern, is he american, arthur link wrote about the southerner as american, the american as the southerner. There is always this question. So yes, Woodrow Wilson left the south in his 20s. Yes, he tried to get rid of his accent. Yes, he wrote he was glad the confederacy lost. Yes, during his campaign, he worried that many southerns may see him as too radical and seeing his cabinet too southern. His constitutional thinking was much broader of the theory. At the same time, he spent his formative years, first two decades of his life in the civil war of the reconstruction south. He told southerners that the south was one place in the world where i dont need to be explained anything. He married a southerner, and he surrounded himself with southerners, and half of his cabinet members were born in the south. His cabinet members who were closest to him, they stayed in his administration almost the whole time, they were southerners. Wr Woodrow Wilson carried with him a world view that shaped the civil word reconstruction south. It was changed and shifted. I would like to give three specific examples of how being a white southerners shape his legacy. First of all is his election. Simply put. Most books talk about the election of 19 twe12, the textb talk about it as an election about progressives. Threequarters of the nation voted for progressive candidates, between roosevelt and wilson and jeugene taft. But, americans at the time also acknowledged that the election of 1912 was a moment of national reunion. There were headlines, the new york tribune said the induction of wilson cement national ties. There were articles how the south were back with us. In the article it talks about this was a great thing of democracy, how a region of 50 years before had been in arms against the country, was now back in, these are the great things about democracy. It can absorb a civil war. Wilson also acknowledged this, telling one audience, he said, i would feign believe that my selection as president by the people of the United States means the final oimpt obliteration that may have divided the great sections of this country. He called himself an instrument of reunion. It is a symbolic legacy and it had meaning to him and people of the time. At the same time, for many white southerners, his election didnt represent just a reunion, it was a restoration of the south. They saw the south before the civil war had had great power in the federal government, in some sense, disproportionate power and they said the south is back in that, and the expression that time was the south in the saddle. There are dozens of articles that talk about the south being in the saddle. What this means, so wilson appoints five of his ten cabinet members are born in the south. Also, both houses of congress were held by the Democratic Party, which had a disproportionate part of southern leadership. This leads us to the second point i want to talk about, the domestic effects of a Southern Administration on the new freedom. Obviously, most obviously as my colleagues have pointed out, within the executive departments, we see the segregation, right . By southerners like daniels and the navy and mcadoo and his assistant treasurer williams, and burlson in the post office. That in a sense, as the chicago defender noted, wilsons presidency freed racism in washington, d. C. And they called wilson the father of segregation. At the same time, its worth thinking about the new freedom in its practical sense. In how it was carried out. It was carried out by a southernborn president , working with a southernled congress. All right. The congress of 1913, 9 of the 12 Senate Committees were chaired by southerners. So wilson went to congress all those times, he was talking to men who had grown up in the south like him, many of them at the same time as him. And the tariff thats passed is the Underwood Simmons tariff, underwood from alabama, simmons from North Carolina. The antitrust act was pushed by the senator from alabama. Wilsons gobetweens to congress was albert burlson, the longtime house member. Okay . And so thinking about his southerner, how that affects the propagation of the new freedom. And a final point is in international terms, how wilsons southernness shaped his approach to world war i and its aftermath. He admitted when he became present he wasnt prepared for foreign policy. But he did have experience with war and its aftermath. He had grown up in the civil war and the reconstruction. He didnt talk about it, but he wrote about it. He wrote two bestselling textbooks and articles about reconstruction. He learned two lessons. He learned what happens when the victors foist harsh terms on the vanquished and writes about republican rule as disastrous and used words like humiliation and destruction and a reign of ignorance. He also talks about what happens to African Americans when theyre freed from slavery and put in charge and that doesnt work as well. So when the right racial and political order is upended, he said, sda said, disasters happen. So its worth thinking about his approach to world war i and its aftermath through that lens. There were other factors, but when wilson asked for peace without victory, and he says victory would mean peace forced upon the losers, it would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at intolerable sacrifice that would leave a sting and resentment and bitter memory. I think those are the exact words he used in his description of how southerners felt during reconstruction. And when he proposes league of nations with a mandate system, which says there will be selfdetermination, but that certain of the former colonies will be under the tutelage of european countries, he used the same words to talk about how blacks in the south during reconstruction needed the tutelage of white southerners. Thinking about his roots may better help us understand those legacies. In a sense, thinking about the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, in a sense as the legacy of the reconstruction. And legacy of reconstruction as understood by a white southerner in the importance of historical memory to him can help shape how we think about our own historical memory. Just a final point, i think its instructive for us to think about the legacies of wilson not as good or bad, and not as good and bad separately, but as of a piece. In a sense, thats what makes it more interesting. If he were just good, that wouldnt be true. I think about this as a teacher when im trying to explain American History and get my students to understand what history is and what humanity is. That if we have a leader that is flawed, that actually, when we talk about his flaws and his achievements, it brings both into greater focus and helps them to understand the motivations and the roots of historical actors and the humanity involved in what we teach. So i find teaching about Woodrow Wilson incredibly fulfilling and incredibly powerful. So, thank you. [ applause ] thanks, that was perfect for what i want to do. I dont want to rather than i rather than give the eightminute version of my book, i thought i would back up a little bit bit and play the role of provocateur and give you my sense of where we are with wilson. Im going to start in february of 2004. So in that eight months, African Americans in Southern Maryland remembered Woodrow Wilson. The Woodrow Wilson bridge over the potomac river, which connects the prince georges county, to alexandria virginia, an antebellum old town replete with robert e. Lee landmarks. The director of public works and transportati transportation and daughter of a federal government worker requested that the medallion bearing wilsons image, if youve driven over the bridge, you see them on both sides. They look like a giant coin. She asked that the medallion with wilsons image be left off the maryland side. The medallions remained on both sides of the bridge, as you know, but the surprise with which white people responded to frances request, this was in the post, underlined for me the very different memories Woodrow Wilson can evoke. Now, for historians, wilson is most famous for his work in versailles and the end of world war i. Hes also famous for losing it all in the end. Dorothy ross has written, quote, all have described the qualities of wilsons personality, chiefly responsible for his failings in paris. As overconfidence, ego timp, unrealistic faith in his own judgment and powers and adherence to his principles combined with ambition and desire for power. Not the most positive characterization. And yet despite these acknowledgements of wilsons flaws, this written by mostly white scholars, reveals a strange insists on lauding his intentions and motivations, and i think a refusal to fully reckon with his impact and with the extremely narrow range of experiences, knowledge, and personal rinteractions that he brought to his work in the white house. This leads to a series of dualities and excuses. Wilson loved black people, its just that he was a southerner. Wilson respected women, its just that he was so victorian. Wilson was probably an adulterer, but he was such a passionate lover. And he felt bad about it. [ laughter ] wilson was an internationalist, its just that he didnt think that included haiti or much of the world outside of europe. Wilson was stubborn, but he was so articulate. And he got so sick. Now, i do not pretend to hold the only rational view of wilson either. Rather i confess to the opposite. I confess that my time studying the experiences of individual black Civil Servants who worked in wilsons administration, has made it difficult for me to fully honor wilsons progressive achievements. And so that raises a question for me and perhaps for the round table, which is, what do we mean when we talk about Woodrow Wilson . Do we mean the man and the man alone . Do we mean his ideas and his intentions . Do we mean the impact of his actions and his policies . What do we mean by his legacies . Legacies for whom . These questions always arise in the histories of president s and other leaders. Yet i see a certain unwillingness and we can debate this, i see a certain unwillingness to merge the insights jeelded by asking these questions in wilsonian history. I sense a defensiveness. Wils wilsons two leading biographers have written articles called the case for Woodrow Wilson. His flaws should given us pause. Perhaps it was wilsons position in the academy or as a founder of our discipline, i dont mean to get too psycho analytic. Perhaps its his knack for memorable phrases. Put another way, wilsons biographers have argue the that the only Fair Assessment of wilson is that the good of the man outweighed the bad. You see this in the discussion princeton had renaming the Woodrow Wilson school, defending wilson to make this claim, the good outweighed the bad. The claims contained some disappointment in wilsons racist failings, but there are always just that. I want to echo a claim that sam made, that always just that, failings, not of a peace with who the man was, what he accomplished or the progressive politics he helped to popularize. To me, it feels a little odd to call up the descendants of black Civil Servants, or of haitians or jailed socialists and Conscientious Objectors and tell them, well, but the good outweighed the bad. The closest i know any scholar has come to merging wilsons racism and politics was an article that challenged us to think about purity in liberalism, race in liberalism, hierarchy in liberalism. I think were just beginning to interrogate liberalism in the term he suggests. In any case, i dont think the roll of the historian is to keep the accounting sheet. Add the columns. I think we need a human view of Woodrow Wilson, one shorn of our desire to affiliate ourselves as li libserals or scholars. Might we be willing to weigh the importance of the Federal Reserve against the segregated lives of black americans . Or the worthiness of democracy in europe over imperialism in the caribbean. Woodrow wilsons attack on americas black middle class matters, and no amount of notch counting for wilsons achievements should overwhelm this truth. Wilson not only unleashed his administration, loaded it with White Supremacists on the american state bureaucracy. But he provided a critical language for institutional racism. Bureaucratic efficiency, majoritarian democracy, the idea that the needs of the any must be overwhelmed by the needs of the many. Frictionlessness, worthiness. This is a jim crow vocabulary that connects the late 19th century White Supremacy to our president. Wilsons biography cannot and should not balance this fact out of our histories. Thanks. [ applause ] good morning, so i feel i have been thinking about this as someone who teaches in the Woodrow Wilsons school since the moment my students stood up, some of them, orderly, in orderly princeton fashion, in the back and walked out on a day that triggered the protests and the debates, which are in part where this conversation is coming from. So Woodrow Wilson has reappeared on the national stage, and some of the debate has been this is he good or is he bad debate. Some has been about how we think of his legacy, and ill just throw out for the purposes of the round table, what ive been thinking a little bit about. What are some of the policy changes that take place during this period that continue to resonate, that continue to shape the way we think about american politics to this day . The first is the question of liberal internationalism. And i think this is a place where many people start the discussion of the legacies of this administration. Obviously toward the end of this presidency, Woodrow Wilson laid out a conception of how the United States should interact with the world that revolved around the cent ralet of International Institutions and alliances. And i think as some of the panelists have said, the limitations of his vision, both politically here in the United States and the limitations of how it played out, were well documented. But the basic principle is something that we have been coming back to again and again since that period. So the importance, the centrality and the operational capacity of working through International Institutions would be, for me, legacy number one. Two would be in an era today when we hear talk of deconstructing the administrative state, a term which probably most people didnt think would come out of white house circles, kind of steven conservatiskeronik langu in different ways. This is the period in American History where a move and confidence in the administrative capacity of federal institution system one of the notable parts of the wilson administration. And when this debate broke out about the role of race, which i will get to, for me, this was always something that i had focused on when discussing Woodrow Wilson, the amount of institutionbuilding that takes place during his presidency is quite remarkable. From the creation of the progressive income tax and the notion that we could minister a system like this, both in war and peace on a permanent basis to the beginning of coordinating and centralizing our Banking System through the Federal Reserve, through new regulations on the economy, like the creation of the ftc, i think the period of institutionbuilding that takes place during this period is quite central and sets up some of what we will see with other presidencies. Third, and this is something, i think, that might be harder to place in this day and age, but Woodrow Wilson believed in partisan governance. So when there have been calls in washington since the 1940s, that we need a system where parties are stronger, where theres more coordination between the party of the president and the party in congress, Woodrow Wilson and the book congressional government is always the model that is referred to. And when wilson worked with the southerners in congress and when wilson appeared with congress, he wasnt only trying to introduce a more active presidency, but he believed we needed a system more like the parliamentary systems of europe. He believed that American Government was too fragmented. He believed that the parochial interests of congress often overwhelmed the National Interest that parties could put on the table. And during the 1950s and 60s when reformers tried to move beyond the divided party system that we had of southern democrats and northern democrats and mid western republicans and liberal northeastern republicans, it was a wilsonian idea that ultimately partisanship was good. And that we needed to create rules and institutions where parties could have a stronger hand in decisionmaking. And i think this was a key idea of Woodrow Wilson, and whats amazing when you study his presidency, is how much he tried to act that way. He didnt mind the perils and ugliness of partisanship and ultimately believed it was a mechanism to get more policies through our disjointed political system. And today we wrestle with that. I think today we see the negative sides of that, and were talking about ways in which that might go too far. But i think that is one of the important legacies of both him and his presidency. A fourth one, which im sure well talk more about is the risks of the wartime presidency. This is something many people in this room have written about. Michael cason sitting in the back has written lots about this. But its hard to disentangle his presidency from the more coercive aspects of the state that take form during world war i, from the stifling of dissent to the violation of Civil Liberties, to the sometimes unnecessary expansion of government that we see, into surveillance and information. I think the way in which the wartime presidency moves in this direction needs to start with what happened when this president went to war. And finally, let me come back to the question where it started, which is race and the presidency. I think this is more, this debate about wilson, its more than about wilsonian liberalism. This taps into a bigger debate that historians and scientists have been having about liberalism in the pre1960s period. I think there has now been a significant and Critical Mass of scholarship that have shown that liberalism, before the 1960s, from the early 20th century, to the 1960s, was built on this racially divided political system. That the deal with the southern democrats to avoid forms of liberalism that really interfered and unsettled the racial order of the south, was a fundamental and defining characteristic of liberal politics until the Civil Rights Movement started to bring this to a close. And i think the mistake of focusing too much on Woodrow Wilson, and focusing too much on his presidency was, it almost takes it out of focus. Of where liberalism was during these decades. And there were obvious reasons for this. They werent only about him being a southerner. But they were also about the character of congress, where the southern democrats retained a firm hand and firm control over the legislative process through the Committee System thats in place until the 1960s. And i guess my response was always when the wilson debate started, not to focus too much on him, but what scholars like or nelson and lieberman have been writing about which helps makes sense of some of the dualities of the administration. Or these two parts of the progressive era, that really cant be seen as separate anymore. So the debate that we had about wilson was really a debate and a tougher look at the character of american liberalism before the 1960s. So all of these are just a few parts of the legacies of Woodrow Wilson, but more important, the legacies of american politics, in the early 1900s and 1910s they argue and believe are not only important for historians such as ourselves trying to understand this moment, but have been recurring themes in the Political Development of the United States since that time right through our day today. Thank you. [ applause ] okay, thank you all. My panelists, my colleagues, have done such a thorough job in covering so many aspects of wilsons legacies, i hope i dont sound repetitive, redundant, in covering what i have to say today. I want to echo, to be the first point of redundancy, points that sam and others made about the sort of futility of thinking about this as good outweighing bad, or bad outweighing good, of somehow quantifying, you know, and tallying up these different legacies, contributions, and arriving at some formula. Im often asked to do these surveys of ranking all the president s and Woodrow Wilson usually ends up somewhere in the top ten in the casey kasem school of president ial history. You know, i think hes, for all the very important challenges and new questions that are being asked, you know, thats probably about where he belongs. But these things are such silly measures, its much more interesting, i think, as maybe eric said, to think of the human wilson, take him in all, and to see all of these pieces of him as part of a single individual. To come to the question of legacies, i see many of the same ones as most prominent that have been mentioned. I think, i dont think that anyone stressed quite the importance of the strong and activist presidency that wilson, along with Peter Roosevelt before him, fashioned, that really is so much a part of our Political Landscape today that we kind of cant think otherwise. You know, i often tell my students, you know, to try to name some of the greatest achievements of the president s before Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and not only can they not name the achievements, they cant name the president s. And thats not a coincidence. The presidency was understood as a very Different Office in the system. Its article 2 of the constitution, not article 1, which was congress. The Washington Press corps such as it is, when it covered politics in washington, you know, preroosevelt, premckinley, didnt go to the white house, there was no press room, no press secretary, no press releases for them to get. They went to congress to the galleries and don richie has written wonderfully about the 19th century Washington Press corps and its real focus on congress. So that shift in what the press covered was in part a reflection of the shift in the importance of the presidency that t. R. And wilson sort of together have to be seen as inaugurating and have fundamentally changed, you know, permanently thereafter. Its impossible, i think, to imagine going back to a system where the president isnt central to the political order in washington. And along with the strong and activist presidency comes the public presidency. To use another term from the political scientists, a presidency thats actively engaged in sounding out public opinion, in trying to divine public opinion, and wilson, as a political theorist, had a theory of this, and his view was not that the president imposes his vision, not that he simply follows public opinion, but that theres a kind of dialogue, and that its a theory particularly well suited to someone like wilson, who had great gifts of intlekz and articulateness and able to analyze what he was hearing. But he described it as sort of taking out the soundings, these inchoate soundings that would come out of public, fashioning it into what he took to be this common interest, again, i share the view that wilson saw the importance of a common good, a common interest, as so many progressives did, over factional, you know, pieces of coalition. And then conveying that back in his own language, and getting support from the public through his rhetoric. And so wilson, as the great speechmaker, the one who moved people to tears with his rhetoric, this actually performed a very important function in his view of political leadership. The second piece that is not unrelated to this, that i think is wilsons great legacy, second or third piece, depending how youre counting, is the legacy of what we typically call progressive achievement. I think in times like ours and even, say, during the Obama Presidency where we have seen how hard it is for president s to really accomplish a lot, that there are so many constraints even on the strong activist presidency that t. R. And wilson left us with that one has to appreciate all the more of those rare periods where a hell of a lot it was accomplished and there have been there were. Wilson, along with tr, fdr and lbj. And in the last sweep, those are the periods and therefore the president s who sort of go down as, you know, having fundament mallty shaped our economic life, social life in dramatic ways of reform. Third, there is no question, i think that the liberal internationalism that wilson helped to develop, you know, remains an important legacy. During the bush years, there were those who i think wrongly sort of tried to see the bush knee you conservative knee you policy as an expressionism of wilsonism, which i thought was crude. You see it much more with a donald Trump Presidency who, you know, has come in basically declaring an end to the post 45 world order. There is a wonderful op ed piece right around the transition period where he laid out the system of rules and institutions and policies that have that presided for the last 70 years that really was in some ways belated Wilson Legacy, a Wilson Legacy conveyed through f. D. R. , but the world order we lived with quite successfully for so long. It should not be forgotten he won the noble peace prize for this vision. He was recognized at the time for that. There is a few other points i could respond to in what some of my colleagues have said, which ill try to do just very briefly. I think it is important to think about wilson as a northerner, as well as a southerner. Do we think about barack obama as a product of hawaii or a product of chicago . Well both. But more i think chicago. Wilsons experiences in new jersey politics, fighting the political machines, he really did change significantly and in particular i think his views on race, while he always retained the racism of the south, he was not i mean, he was actually quite different from, you know, the ben tillmans. He was not a fiery racial dem my gog on this. He can be seen as a figure who helped lead the transformation of the Democratic Party away from its sort of southern core, which it very much was in his time. And which of course also accounts for the fact that he appointed so many southerners and southern reactionaries like burlson to the cabinet. For him not to have done so would be like for a democratic president today not to appoint a cabinet filled with women and people of color. I mean, it would be unthinkable. Thats where the party was. So wilson in some ways was a product of his party in that time. Finally, the last comment ill make about this question of liberalism is wilson was part of a project where liberalism was changing. Im in the middle of reading a wonderful new book by brad snyder called house of truth. Hes a legal historian. Its about litman and felix frank furtherer and a lot of intellectuals who were seeking to define the liberal principles about Civil Liberties and free speech that come out of the world war i period but were still sort of germ nating during this period of the 19 teens. So it is important to think of these legacies and wilsons legacies of those of what was in transition and what was being borne and what was being developed rather than simply as a kind of static menu of policies that we can examine and either, you know, pass approval or rejection upon. So ill end my remarks there and look forward to the conversation. Thanks. [ applause ] there are many things that we could continue to say to one another or places where i am tempted to chime in, but i think the responsible thing for me to do as moderator of this panel would be to open up to the conversation to yall and see where youd like to chime in. This is the firsthand i saw there. I was just wondering if the panel might comment on the conversation on the issues of racism, specifically northern congressmen. Wilson comes to the presidency at a time of a great migration. Oftentimes we focus on the racism that we hear from the floor of the congress from southern congressmen and senators. Im just wondering about the complicity of northern congressmen in this period. Could you identify yours, by the way . My name is russell. Im from honolulu, hawaii. Im sorry. Youre looking at me. You wrote the book. So two things. Briefly. One is that so martin was a congressman from illinois whose district was becoming blacker and blacker by the day in this period, right . So hes on the District Committee hearing bills to segregate washington, d. C. Transportation and its madden and a number of his northern colleagues who block that. Washington, d. C. Is never legally segregated in transportation. Its segregated through housing but mostly through covenants and red lining machinery that gets built in this era. There are congressmen who essentially block the full agenda that tillman and others think is going to finally arrive with wilson. The other thing i would say is that on the other hand the Republican Party at this point is completely complicit in diseven fran chment. Republicans can become a National Party by bringing in white southerners rather than having africanamericans in t south be their representatives. So the party as a whole i think is complicit in removing africanamericans from the body of politic. And when harding and coolidge show up, they dont challenge the standard anymore. But the migration is putting pressure and will lead to the first black congressman from chicago. This is happening, but enough to overwhelm the seniority that democrats have to chair panels and to chair committees that will go on through into the roosevelt administration. Thats the key, the weight of power in congress was, you know, moving and continuing to be in the hands of the southern democrats. So i think there is complicity well beyond the southerners. And this will become clear throughout the 20th century, when there is northern backlash as much as southerners. But at this moment the southerners have the cards. But i think that was pretty fundamental to the process, to the way seniority was starting to really shape the leadership ladder of the chambers. This was actually the secondhand i saw, and then well go to i wonder if a legacy of Woodrow Wilson isnt you know, that he created an ideological core nucleus within the Democratic Party for modern liberalism because the person he had the big man he had to deal with was William Jennings ryan. Without the transition, the Democratic Party would have been more of a pop list party, and i dont think of Woodrow Wilson as a populist. I think thats an important transition that would influence people like Franklin Roosevelt and many of the people who had been in the connected somehow with wilson who were then part of the new deal. I didnt phrase it as a question, but could you react, please . I think that thats pretty accurate. And, in fact, wilson is one of the people, along with some of these others like litman and fra frankfurter. Some people say it is because the republicans kind of came to own progress i have. So they need to differentiate. But it was a new vision of liberalism. And especially i think ironically the backlash during the war gave further strength to a more robust civil libertarian that we see coming out of the war. So and i think wilson fits that bill and we do see it by the 20s and the scopes brian is on the reactionary sort of things. So there is a real change. I want to chime in that it is a liberalism that is still steeped in the National Politics of White Supremacy, right . One of the things that i think comes out of marys comments and and in some ways eriks comments on this panel and from yesterday that the liberal subject is a rationalized subject in ways that are not acknowledged which then makes to claiming against particularism ironic, right . Can i just chime in . I do think the liberalism of the f. D. R. Era, that is different than what you see under Woodrow Wilson. I mean, i think there are some fundamental changes that will take place with the cio, with the wagner act that we know that its still different in character than where the Democratic Party was in the 1910s. And its important, i think, to keep that keep that a bit in mind. And that will define a lot of the character of liberal politics at least through the 1970s. I want to just add to that, that i think i think part of the legacy is that he mastered in his there you go. Thank you. I think part of the legacy is that he mastered in his remarkable ability to craft language a kind of coded racism where he insisted on the universal, but in ways that consistently coded a set of relationships around race. And in a way, what has evolved over time has been a struggle over that universal language. On the one hand, it enables people to call on it and insist on something more than what was intended. On the other hand, it continues to function as a rejection and a refusal to acknowledge the relations of White Supremacy that wilson was also working to institutionalize. I just want to add very quickly on this one. And that was not unique, of course, to progressivism. This was something progressivism learned from the early republicanism of the early republican, of the whigs, the sort of classlessness rhetoric of the whigs and the common interest. So this idea of a common interest, a common good that sort of superceded the particulars was one that the progressives, t. R. And wilson included, shared. But it was not at all, you know, peculiar or unique to them. I just want to say, a telling story is the career of a funder of the naacp, sort of has a what we could recognize as an early racial liberalism at the turn of the 20th century. And over the course will drop race and focus almost entirely on labor and passivism. I think there is something that happens in the teens that just allows liberalism to drop that issue. Its reconstruction finally goes into the past in some ways. Although; not how we think of the threat of government. But race can just become we can embrace a color blind labor based liberalism that doesnt have to trumpet its White Supremacy as it maintains it. I have seen these two consistently. I am going to call on them and then i am going to move over here. Yeah. In germany. And there is selfpromotion published in the first german language of Woodrow Wilson in 50 years. And this is also i might change the subject a little bit. But im surprised that no one has talked about the International Legacy of Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow wilson was the first global president. He was a superstar when he came to europe and he left tremendous disappointment. And this i think his role in shaping the way that the United States and American Foreign policy in the 20th century and beyond has been perceived internationally cannot be overrated. Theres still sort of in a subterranean way in germany memory what i consider the myth of wilsons treason and that he is basically responsible for the Second World War and all the rest of it. And other nations think of italy may have similar stories. I understand that would be probably the subject for a different panel, probably sponsored by schaffer rather. But nevertheless, i wanted any of the panelist might want to speak to that. Ill begin by saying that i see these as very much of peaks. In other words, the ways in which wilson negotiated questions of race in the domestic context have everything to do with the program that he pursued in europe. The fact that he could speak to audiences in the United States and talk about the asylum that the United States offered to whom to the world, meaning all along the european nations and european immigrants, never meaning there to refer to asian immigrants, for example, is of a piece with his extraordinary statements and goals and rhetoric about selfdetermination for small nations, which then, of course, were was not he didnt intend the way that that was then taken by various people around the world who called him to say called on him to say, yes, and what about us and no. So the great disappointment that followed is very relevant. But this is of a piece with making a broad putting out a broad vision that is ostensively universal and much more specific in the way it carries forward domination. So the mandate system would Carry Forward a kind of program that rejected the language of colonialism. But carried it forward in very important ways. The disappointment also points, i think, to some of the limitations of president ial power, which are very evident with him because on the one hand he is clearly he and t. R. Were these models for the activist president on the International Stage you see that very vividly. But at the same time with the league of nations, its kind of early reminder of the continued power that congress will wield as well as other political pressures and Political Institutions throughout the century. So it wasnt simply his failures or his own limits. But as he himself was always cognizant since his studies as a political scientist were that the boundaries that this activist presidency was going to have to confront for the rest of the century. Maybe i could just follow up for a moment with that to say that the vision of sovereign states like the vision of a sovereign populus is fuounded o a notion that the state is defined as recognizable, as having integrity when it meets certain conditions. And so that frame work has always allowed for the notion of failed states and for an idea that the International System rests on somebody recognizing some states as legitimate and others as not. And i think thats a parallel between the domestic and international context. Because wilson thought that certain people were capable of making defined states and certain people werent, yeah. Right. From washington, d. C. I was intrigued by very little mention of women and suffering. But i was particularly interested on your emphasis on wilsons partisan ship because alice paul was criticized for being so naive to think that she could press suffrage only through republicans and the irony is its republicans in 1918 that take other both houses and defeat him domestically and internationally. So again more comment than a question. But id be interested if any of your research touched on women. Well, i will say about that that i do think that wilsons perspective was that wilson was very invested in a certain idea of what it meant to be a citizen that was fundamentally male and fundamentally a program for men that his vision of a nation crafted out of the broth brotherhood of different peoples, all white men. But the gender piece of that was fundamental and that that created one of a number of kind of blocks on his vision. I mean, it should be added that, like a good politician, he changes. You know, we call it a flipflop today, but his coming to support it sort of quite vigorously toward the end showed his recognition of changing times as well. He was he relinquished his earlier opposition and came to support it enthusiastically at the end. What leads to the flipflop, right, is that wilson becomes convinced this will not change the character of women, right, so that they can still become sort of women as he understands women to be, mostly his wife and daughter, daughters, you know, as good sort of respectable women who will still fulfill their duties while doing this other thing that politically he has to give them, right . [ inaudible ]. Very quickly went from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson and went from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson twice. And i spent the last nine years of my life working on the fat man. And i was well, as a matter of fact Justice Brewer said that president taft was so nice and gentlemanly that on a streetcar he gave his seat to three women. Thats true, by the way. Thats really not my thats really not my point. I want to make three quick facts or a statement of facts to you. The first is this was after wilson had nominated him, after he ran for presidency. The second fact is that under taft more antitrust suits were furnished. And the third fact is that in terms of conservation, which roosevelt stood for and antitrust and trust busting, taft set aside more land than roosevelt ever did. Now, why do us, why do we as historians have blinders that the end to skip from someone like roosevelt to someone like wilson, ignoring the thing in the middle . I would just point that out to you. I would say, look, there is many reasons for this. Some are a political memory in which president s we will categorize as innovators. Part of it is this whole project, whether you are talking about poll these polls we get for who are the best president s so simply a focus on credit and innovation on particular presidencies. You know, one of the great things about what some political scientists like nelson polls also wrote about, which taught me a lot, was just how different policy changes dont take place with any single presidency. They usually take place over decades with Different Actors pushing for issues from members of congress who are entrepreneurs on a certain question to activists and social groups who are creating pressure, waiting for the right moments. And then different president s usually are any issue. It is like all the scholarship on hoover that rediscovered some of the stuff that would become part of the new deal, you see how this gradually builds. So my point is part of this even the nature of the panel, which its a great panel. Im glad im on it. But when we have these legacies and good or bad or what happened when, i think we often get into a debate that wont be answered satisfactorily. Thats not how policy making works in washington. It is over years. It is incremental and it is usually through various president ial administrations. And let me add a couple things to that because i think there are also legitimate reasons that taft isnt sort of in the pantheon in the same way. For one thing, he was a one term president. And that, you know, is generally a mark of, you know, if not failure. Also nongreatness sort of in the way we look at these things. There were ways in which you could make the case he was more progressive than t. Rmt. You could argue the reverse on others. And when they ran against each other in 1912, there was little doubt that t. R. Was seen as the one who was embodying a more radical progressivism. So i think tafts reputation as the conservative relative to t. R. And also relative to wilson in 1912 stems to how they were framed and positioned in that race based you know, largely on tafts record of governance. And finally taft explicitly rejected the theory of activist president ial governance that roosevelt articulates in his auto buy yog gra fi and has a very different conception of what a president should do. Hes more modest and reluctant to endorse a kind of full throated theory of the presidency. And i think i think that has sort of also shaped the way hes been understood. And, you know, his his name, i learned, my favorite piece about his girlth is that his name is an an know gram for a word with all, im fat. Do with that what you with. These things dont happen with singular president s. But im all in favor of bringing taft back because it is 1906 and taft gives a speech in the south as a republican arriving in the south and saying we can leave particular social issues to the local. And i think thats a critical term for the Republican Party in terms of thinking about Republican Partys investment in social policy that will affect africanamericans. And its taft that will lead that. Roo roosevelt will follow when he runs later and then harding and coolidge will pick that up. Its not until the 1960s until this really will shift but there is a retreat from social policy and an endorsement of the local that taft was really important. I hear in the last two questions an echo of the way that eric framed his talk, which is what do we talk about when we talk about Woodrow Wilson. And id say that one of the reasons that some things come up or that i sense some things come up or that we ultimately go back to particular sort of streams of discussions and not others is that for all of the vitality and intellectual vibrancy of things like womens history or africanAmerican History or ethnic studies, there is a way in which intersectional analyses when were talking about president s or legislatures or policies or what have you are still not fully viewed within our discipline as truly being political history. Right . So we can talk about those in some venues, but if were going to have a panel on president s or president ial history, those things are going to get sub low mated in a more visceral things. That is my conjecture. Dr. Romano . My question may relate to that. I was very interested where the panel started and where it seemed to come from which is current controversies over things being named after Woodrow Wilson. And i thought it was interested that no one took a position. I do historical memory and i want to pose a question to Woodrow Wilson scholars here. What i have heard here about Woodrow Wilson is we shouldnt reduce him to a caricature. We need to put him in historical context. Liberalism is a racial project. Hes representative of a larger political culture. All true. Historians like to make things complex. Commemoration likes to make things simple. It is celebration. It is honoring this person. So im wondering what do you say to the students who walk out of the center . What do you say to when i was, you know, maybe 2006 students did a protest at our local middle school, which was Woodrow Wilson middle school and they asked the faculty to say come and support us in walking out of our middle school because we are named after a rayist, right . Many middle schools are named after racists, but who do we want to celebrate in our culture. So what would you say and im sure you have all been asked on some shows, should we continue naming these after wilson and why do you think hes become such a lightening point symbol given the complexity of what youve laid out here, what is he being reduced to and why Woodrow Wilson is becoming that lightening rod . Well, ill start, i guess. I mean, i have the ended to take a position on most i wouldnt stay all of these renamings as sort of the wrong way to sort of address our history. Because to your phrase its, reduces these figures, whether its wilson or jackson or others to, you know, take the worst thing they did and find this deplorable and then to say, then, therefore, you know, we cant commemorate or respect or admire in any ways. I was listening to npr and john hockenbery, one of the more would be opinion non npr. This is what were coming to . Like thats all that you have to say about Franklin Roosevelt . You know, there are certainly times when a reassessment or renaming is called for. I think, you know, the yales handling of the calhoun issue the Second Time Around was artfully done. But you go to europe and there is monuments of that pole yan. There are all these monarchs that did all these bloody terrible things and they are still up and standing and nobody thinks we are there for blessing all of their worst deeds by continuing to have that history as part of our sort of public life. So i think its there is something a little bit wanton and, you know, almost jacket thin in the lets take the names off, lets level. The better ways to go are to expand. So i think this is what princeton is doing. You have more of a plaques, more information giving a sense of who Woodrow Wilson was, why the school was named for him, good, bad, complex, that that more edge kaytive method is much better than the index of whos got to go. I actually i found it personally difficult as this unfolded. And i didnt have a clear answer. I spoke as a professor, not as princeton. My instinct was that the renaming wouldnt have the kind of effect that even the students were hoping for. My instinct was and it is still to some level, it is difficult once we start down that process with figures whose major purpose wasnt simply racial segregation or antisemitism or sexism, figures out who were taking off, who does it mean to leave someone else who did things that we dont like today while taking this name on, isokay . You go into the Richard Russell building, the rern who filibustered against the civil rights bill. So there is many paths we can take. On the other hand, i did learn from the students from the protest who spoke about what is the necessity now that we know this, now that we know this aspect that eric has written about of keeping the name because it does mean something to walk into the school and now that we know that see the name. So i mean i still lean toward i would prefer when Something Like this comes out to inject funds into a kind of serious scholarly investigation into the problems of race that continue with us today or to use it in that direction. But i guess i just as a personal story, i walked out feeling more uncertain by the time the debate ended. I think a lot of students had again winly good points, coming from a good place trying to figure this out. Are we going down the line . One more thing, but ill let you go first. I just want to add two things. One is that i think hes a lightening rod because i thought what the student did was brilliant in terms of using wilson to raise a much bigger issue, which is i think a failure at universities to to think about the difference between access and inclusion, right . And so that, you know, places like princeton with their incredible Financial Aid have managed to become somewhat accessible, but not inclusive. And i think that was the larger point students wanted to make, that this is not a comfortable place to be black. And it wasnt and it isnt and it wont be for a while. And so i think thats the lightening rod. Thats why. And i think the question for how to meet that is i took a lesson from how georgetown has been dealing with its issues because what i saw in georgetowns response, this is the issue that they are financially viable today because it sold people. What i saw in georgetowns response i think wisely was going back to its roots and thinking about what does it mean to respond to this issue, this crisis as a catholic institution, what does it say about us . And institutions are going to have to respond to these questions by soul searching and thinking about who are we, what is it we stand for and the values. I dont think i saw that at princeton or maybe we did. I mean, maybe this is who princeton is. Im also ambivalent about removing names. I actually decided to split the baby and say you should remove the name from the dorm because this is where people live and this is their home. But i think it is a much bigger issue of what does the institution stand for, for whom does it exist and what happens there, what kind of container of learning and growth is this . And i thought they were brilliant to point at this building and say it is not a great container for learning and growth. I am going to go back to the audience because in the words of the great philosopher oh, did you . Ill try to be brief. But i just want to say that we have so much renaming to do. We have a lot of renaming work that needs to be done. And i think this goes to the fact that we still have such a limited idea of our own history. I mention i brought back wilsons line about the wilderness and holding up, you know, the greatness of what the people who first came to north america did to set something up because i want to suggest that we have to look at native American History, we have to look at africanamerican experiences. We have so much renaming to do. But i also wanted to say that wilsons desire to hold up the life of america and the purity of america, the question here about what is the pure story we are looking for and will changing the name i think there are good reasons to change the name. Im not disagreeing with that. But if we stop there and think that we have done all right if we just take that name out of that building without looking in a much more thorough going way at the problem, then were in trouble. I have more to say. That is what the university of carolina did with their renaming, right . In very North Carolina, they removed white see prupremists a just called it carolina hall. I just wanted to add to this. David, were at 10 29, so i think that people who have not commented on this probably should go and then we have two pink shirts who wanted to ask a question and well end with an answer to that question. Just two quick points. I think as said earlier, the questions about wilson and race are more questions about liberalism and what it means and i think that is whats going on with the naming, right . Its not just about wilson and the name on the wall. It is about society at large. Then i think and not that you didnt mean this, but we need more renaming and we need more teaching, right . And thats part of the renaming is teaching students and adults. I am going to ask yall to pose your questions and then come to the reception and well all work out answers. So you two. First of all, race is not simply a domestic issue for wilson. I think you make a false claim there. Thats a global issue. And do boys really to tap into it. This isnt quite the global issue and the treaty of versailles is full of race. It is not just the United States. Second, wilson is a presbyterian and none of yall acknowledged that. But presbyterians normally acknowledge their sin, which princeton has not done and, you know, part of being a presbyterian, which wilson was and defines him. I think gary wills years ago called him the presbyterian riche. It seems to me ive got monuments all around me and they tell me a lot about and my grandmother had to live right by the statue of lee, lee circle in an old folks home. So i think you speak of wilson in your sense of privilege. I see wilson as a very different kind of person. So yall acknowledgeds where you are coming from as well. Thats a party confessing their sin. Thank you. Id like to push back a little bit. Im elizabeth cogs from texas a m, and i think were underestimating Woodrow Wilson. He spoke for powerful discontinuities from the past and going back to the gentlemans point, i understand that he raised the expectations that therefore led to a lot of disappointment, money might say like lennen did, articulating a vision at great odds with the overall vision that the world had been sort of going along with for many, many centuries. I think we the end to think, oh, he just didnt know that. He said these 14 points. He didnt get the racial implications, he didnt get the implications for the selfdetermination for small states like vietnam and i dont think he was that stupid. Id just like to finish. I think that he i think that we the end to think that because he was he sides out poland. Of course he also talked about the break up of the ottoman empi empire, that that was more discontinuous than continuous with the previous history. And the other thing about i recently finished a book on Woodrow Wilson and womens suffrage. So i think its interesting that by the way, this wasnt the liberal consensus racism. The main ok stbstacle was race. And Woodrow Wilson came the staun chest probone innocent and the person who pushed hardest and i dont think he did it because he didnt know, but the selfdetermination, he did know that this would have down the line consequences for empires all around the world. That this tells us something about wilson. Now, hes kind of quiet about it. Why is he quiet about the fact that womens suffrage will franchise black women because he knows if he says a word, that there is no way this will pass at all. There is not a sickle person in the u. S. Congress who stands up and says, oh, i understand the 15th amendment was okay. There is not one person who defends black suffrage at the time of womens suffrage. So the fact that wilson pushes for that i think tells us something we need to acknowledge more fully than we are and i think we are in this panel about the man. The advocacy of social movements and making people do things they dont want to do. One final question. And then we have to go because its 10 35. Who perspective on the panel is the fact that right wingers hate wilson much more than left wingers and without any of this nuance. And im sorry. Well discuss that. Hes responding more to glen beck more than hes responding to us. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all of you. [ applause ] see you at 5 00. It resulted in a naval victory for the u. S. Over japan, just six months after the attack on pearl harbor. On friday, we will be live from virginia for the 75th anniversary of the battle of midway. Featured speerkers include the author of the admirals, the five star admirals who won the war at sea, Elliot Carlson with his book, the oddsy of a code breaker who outfitted midway. The coauthor of shattered swoshd and the coauthor of never call me a hero. Watch the battle of midway 75th Anniversary Special live from the Visitors Center in virginia on friday beginning at 9 30 a. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. On sunday, author and journalist matt taibbi will be our guest. One day you see that one face you feel was put on earth just for you, and thats instantly you fall in love in that moment. You know, for me trump was like that, except it was the opposite. When i first saw him on the campaign trail, i thought, you know, this is a person who is unique, horrible and amazing, terrible characteristics were put on effort, you know, specifically for me to appreciate or unappreciate or whatever the verb is. Because i had really been spending a lot of last 10 to 12 years without knowing it preparing for donald trump to happen. He is a contributor to Rolling Stone magazine and the author of several books, including smells like dead elephants, the great derangement, griftopia and his most recent book, insane clown president , dispatches from the 2016 circus. During our live threehour conversation, well take your calls, tweets and facebook questions on his literary career. Watch indepth with author and journalist matt taibbi live sunday. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas companies. And it is brought to you today by your cable and satellite provider. Now, more from this years meeting of the organization of american historians. In this part of the conference, a Panel Discusses their role as expert witnesses in recent court cases dealing with abortion, indian treaties, gay rights and affirmative action. This is 90 minutes