Monuments to racism toppling around the world.

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I imagine the pigeons will have their revenge for this slight, and will s(h)it on the dancers and the art instead.

Nkhruma should have had that mosquito statue built when he was in power in Ghana, as he suggested at one point.

Princeton University is removing Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges after trustees concluded that the 28th U.S. president’s “racist thinking and policies” made him “an inappropriate namesake.”

The Ivy League school’s trustees made the decision Friday, according to a statement released on Saturday.

Deleting Wilson’s name at Princeton may be the most high-profile act to date. The policy school will now be known as “The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.”

Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910 and, as a Democrat, served as governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. Wilson, born in Virginia in 1856, spent his early years in the South, including in Georgia and South Carolina.

“Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential, even by the standards of his own time,” Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber said in the statement.

Civil Service
“He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice,” he added. “He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today.”

Chartered in 1746, Princeton says it is the fourth-oldest college in the U.S. It’s been led by only 20 presidents, dating back to Colonial times. It’s also among the richest colleges.

As one of America’s oldest universities, Princeton has a fraught history with race and gender. It admitted its first black undergraduates in 1945, decades after other Ivy League schools. It didn’t accept women as undergrads until 1969 -- and even then, did so over opposition from some alumni.

The university had discussed removing Wilson’s name before, following student protests at the New Jersey school in November 2015. At the time, a committee that studied Wilson’s legacy at Princeton decided to retain the name.

Princeton student and alumni interest in the issue has persisted, and the trustees returned to the subject this month as the U.S. struggled profoundly with the injustice of racism, the university said in its statement.

Kudos to All
“As a Princeton alumni, I am THRILLED,” Keisha Blain, president of the African American Intellectual History Society, said on Twitter. “Kudos to the courageous faculty, students, and staff.”

Student activists renewed their effort to call for removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name in recent weeks, as BLM protests took on a global scale, sparking changes across corporations, governments, the sports world and beyond. Two groups of students at the school this week submitted demands for anti-racist action to administrators.

“This question has been made more urgent by the recent killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks, which have served as tragic reminders of the ongoing need for all of us to stand against racism and for equality and justice,” the trustees said. “Our commitment to those values must be clear and unequivocal.”

Protest organizers said changing the name was only “one small part” of their demands, and urged more “transformative change” at the school.

New Diplomas?
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who holds a master’s degree from the public policy school, applauded the decision on Twitter and asked, “will we be getting new diplomas.”

The U.S. is seeing a paradigm shift in what’s acceptable in terms of public memorialization and representation, said Leslie Harris, a professor of history at Northwestern University.

Harris added, “I am concerned that this decision was made only after the loss of Black life through extraordinary violence, rather than through reasoned discussion and debate, which is supposedly the hallmark of the university.”

“Nothing has changed in Woodrow Wilson’s record in the interim between which the university decided to keep the name, and today’s decision,” said Harris, whose research includes the history of U.S. slavery.

Eric Yellin, an associate professor at the University of Richmond, said Princeton “is trying to signal that it wants to be a place where students of color and historically marginalized students feel at home.”

“I don’t know what it means for reality on the ground for students of color at Princeton -- for Black students in particular. There’s a long history of finding Princeton a difficult place to be,” said Yellin, the author of “Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America.” “It certainly is a powerful signal of an intent to make change.”

Trustees at another New Jersey school, Monmouth University in West Long Branch, voted this month to remove Wilson’s name from its marquee building. It’s unclear how Princeton’s decision may affect other institutions in the U.S. that bear Wilson’s name, including high schools and elementary schools in several states.

A professor in New York City gave advice to protesters on how to topple monuments to historical figures.

“I’m a professor who studies the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and I just have to say … use chain instead of rope and it’ll go faster,” Erin Thompson, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said on Twitter.

The tweet, which received more than 93,000 retweets and over 382,000 likes as of noon Saturday, was made in response to the toppling of a Christopher Columbus monument in Minnesota this month.

The Mississippi state legislature -- both the House and Senate -- passed a resolution on Saturday that will begin the process to change the state's flag.

The newly passed resolution suspends the rules so that lawmakers can consider a bill that would change or remove the flag. First, the Mississippi House of Representatives passed the measure in a vote of 85-34 amid loud cheers in the chamber, followed by the Senate in a vote of 36-14.

The passage of the measure in both chambers now leads the way for a bill to be proposed and passed to allow for the change of the state flag. The bill is expected to be taken up on Sunday afternoon, when both the House and Senate go back into session.

Mississippi is the last state in the country whose flag features the Confederate emblem. The state flag features red, white and blue stripes with the Confederate battle emblem in the corner. It was first adopted in 1894.

Following the votes, Jefferson Davis' great-great-grandson, Bertram Hayes-Davis, agreed with the potential change of the Mississippi flag, saying that the "battle flag has been hijacked" and "does not represent the entire population of Mississippi."

"It is historic and heritage-related, there are a lot of people who look at it that way, and God bless them for that heritage. So put it in a museum and honor it there or put it in your house, but the flag of Mississippi should represent the entire population, and I am thrilled that we're finally going to make that change," Hayes-Davis told CNN's Ana Cabrera on "Newsroom" Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said in a tweet that he would sign a bill to remove Confederate imagery from the state flag if the legislature sends him a bill this weekend.

"The legislature has been deadlocked for days as it considers a new state flag. The argument over the 1894 flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it's time to end it. If they send me a bill this weekend, I will sign it," Reeves said.

"We should not be under any illusion that a vote in the Capitol is the end of what must be done — the job before is us to bring the state together and I intend to work night and day to do it," Reeves said.

"It will be harder than recovering from tornadoes, harder than historic floods, harder than agency corruption, or prison riots or th

I agree with the Aussie that there should be one for remembering the victims of the wars against the Native Americans such as at Wounded Knee. Maybe there is - haven't really checked it out?

I imagine the pigeons will have their revenge for this slight, and will s(h)it on the dancers and the art instead.

“I’m a professor who studies the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage"

Is that a thing?

Who says it's not just a personal interest? If I was a professor I could claim to be a professor who collects diecast of sports cars and subcompacts, but obviously that's not part of my profession.