Racism was the Least of Woodrow Wilson's Crimes

The historical record has seemingly finally caught up to Woodrow Wilson as students at Princeton demand that the university remove his name from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. They're doing so to protest his racism and the policies of segregation that he enacted while president that did so much to harm African-Americans. These were certainly major crimes of his administration, but there are so many bigger issues to which Wilson should be held to account.

I won't bother going into the Federal Reserve or the Sixteenth Amendment, as these are political questions people can disagree on, but how about the fact that Wilson threw socialist Eugene Debbs in prison for the "crime" of speaking out against Wilson during World War I? After giving a speech arguing against the military draft, Debs was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison of which he served over three years. It seems odd that history is so forgiving to presidents, such as Wilson or Lincoln, who unconstitutionally throw dissidents in prison for the simple act of speaking their opinion, but apparently it's far worse to dislike people for their race than it is to throw people in prison for speaking out against your regime.

Then there's World War I itself, which is evidence in and of itself that the only way a school of international affairs should be named after Woodrow Wilson would be if it was meant as a joke. Despite lying to the American people about how he would never commit American troops to the European war, Wilson did everything he could to join the fray: He overtly aided the Allies while adopting a policy of "neutrality;" when the British enacted a blockade of Germany, leading to starvation of innocent civilians, Wilson said nothing, but condemned Germany when they responded with submarine warfare around Great Britain; and he demanded free passage for American citizens through declared war zones. This last policy is what led Wilson to use the sinking of the Lusitania as pretext for the United States to enter World War I.

Wilson's reasoning for wanting to get America involved in WWI was that he wanted a place at the table when the peace was inevitably drawn up so that he could try to remake the world and establish his League of Nations. Thanks to American involvement the Allies were able to defeat the Central Powers far more decisively than would otherwise have been the case, and the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up. Unfortunately for Wilson he was completely ineffective and was overshadowed in the peace talks by France who went after Germany with a special vindictiveness and took the opportunity to utterly destroy the Germans. The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to take full responsibility for the war, pay reparations, and give up much of their territory to the Allied Powers. Wilson was out of his depth and the equitable peace that he had hoped for was lost because he had gotten involved in the first place.

Had Wilson not gotten the United States involved the Allies and Central powers would likely have fought to a standstill and a far more judicious peace would have been the result. Furthermore, the disastrous Treaty of Versailles, which Wilson not only made possible with his involvement but was unable to stop during the peace negotiations, laid the groundwork for an uber-nationalist named Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist Party to come to power in Germany because they promised national greatness and the tearing up of the hated Treaty of Versailles, thus laying the foundation for the even more catastrophic World War II.

In short, Woodrow Wilson's naive jacobinism set the stage for Adolph Hitler, the Holocaust, and World War II. Wilson's hubris that he could remake the world the way he wanted it to be was directly responsible for some of the greatest tragedies of the 20th-century, which is saying a lot. Woodrow Wilson's name should be removed from the School of Public and International Affairs because he was nothing short of an absolute disaster when it came to foreign policy. Racism is one aspect of how evil Wilson was, but the massacres of World War I, which he is directly responsible for, and World War II and the Holocaust, which he caused indirectly, are far worse.