Open Letter: More on Witherspoon Symposium Video and Other Matters

Plans to Update Witherspoon and Katz CPUC Complaints

Open Letter

Via Email
August 17, 2023

Professor Angela N.H. Creager
Interim Chair, CPUC Committee on Naming
Chair, Department of History

Christopher L. Eisgruber ‘83
President, Princeton University

Re:  More on Witherspoon Symposium Video and Other Matters

Dear Prof. Creager and President Eisgruber,

Following up on my May 8 letter, I thank you for posting the videos of the presenters at the Witherspoon Symposium on the Committee on Naming’s Witherspoon Statue page.  I learned about these postings only by chance on June 7.  I was surprised that the April 12 email by Nakia Barr announcing the then-forthcoming April 21 “John Witherspoon in Historical Context” did not have a companion followup email informing the same recipients that the promised videos were finally available.  I certainly received no such email from the University.  Nor am I aware of any other efforts to publicize their availability.  

I urge you to also include videos of the audience Q&A after each presentation.  The videos of the 2017 Symposium celebrating the inauguration of the Princeton & Slavery Project included the audience Q&A at the end of its sessions.  So did the video of the 2019 Thrive presentation and interview by the Project’s Founder and Director, Professor Martha Sandweiss.  

The Project, I note, holds itself out to the public as “an ongoing research project that will continue to grow, as users contribute new documents and additional research.”  But it is no surprise to me that the Project itself has failed to post the Witherspoon Symposium videos.  The Project’s ongoing failure to update or correct its “John Witherspoon” essay – despite the fundamental flaws brought to its attention – remains a shocking affront to the Project’s own stated purposes and to the University’s pursuit of truth itself.  As I have noted elsewhere, the Project is the “Flying Dutchman of Princeton” – a ghost ship that haunts Princeton with profound misinformation that defames Witherspoon and misleads the debate over the University’s statue honoring him.  

In her own Witherspoon Symposium presentation (video at 1:30 - 2:15), even the author of the Witherspoon essay acknowledges changes in her own view of Witherspoon’s historical legacy on slavery “as I saw it six years ago versus the history as I see it now.”  This is because “[R]esearch and history are always changing.”  Yet Princeton’s Flying Dutchman sails on blindly, untroubled by new learning.  

In her 2019 Thrive presentation, Prof. Sandweiss observed (video at 15:30), “Now a project like ours requires scrupulous attention to accuracy.  As I told my students again and again, one mistake can make people doubt everything we’re doing.”  Why the Project erred so badly with its Witherspoon essay and why it has refused even to acknowledge – much less correct – its numerous mistakes therein are important questions for which the Princeton community deserves answers.

I now direct my remarks to President Eisgruber.  

Major elements of your Administration support the Princeton & Slavery Project.  The Office of the Provost and the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity are two of its “Princeton Partners”.  The Project’s website is hosted at the University’s “princeton.edu” URL.  Moreover, with your open praise at the November 2017 Symposium celebrating the Princeton & Slavery Project (video at 0:45 - 1:20), you have given your personal imprimatur to the work of the Project.  

Thus, you and your Administration have assumed certain responsibilities regarding the Princeton & Slavery Project’s false depiction of John Witherspoon in its essay of his name.  The standards of conduct you set forth for yourself in your March 31, 2022 letter to the Academic Freedom Alliance’s Professor Keith Whittington have relevance to this issue.  Also, the Project is quite possibly the source of the a certain statement about Witherspoon (“He recognized the immorality of slavery but did not fight for abolition.”) on the “To Be Known and Heard: Systemic Racism and Princeton University” website.  The assertion “did not fight for abolition” is false and defamatory.  The standards you enunciated in your Whittington letter apply to this defamation of Witherspoon as well.  

I previously filed a complaint to the Council of the Princeton University Community regarding the derelictions of the Princeton & Slavery Project.  My email here is to give you notice that I intend to amend this CPUC complaint to include you individually for your continuing failure to stop the Project’s ongoing defamation of John Witherspoon.  I also advise you that I intend to make similar amendments to my previous CPUC complaint regarding the defamation of Joshua Katz.

In the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?”  Toward that end, by copies of this email to the chairs of the Princeton Department of History and the Department of African American Studies, I invite members of the Princeton Department of History and the Department of African American Studies and subject matter experts everywhere to provide the CPUC public assessment of whether and in what manner my criticisms of the Project’s Witherspoon essay may be in error, as well as the same for that essay’s treatment of Witherspoon.  Similarly, I invite all subject matter experts in the field of defamation to provide public analyses to the CPUC regarding the Witherspoon essay.  

Sincerely,

Bill Hewitt

Princeton Class of ‘74

CC:

Tera W. Hunter, Chair, Princeton Department of African American Studies