John Newton (1725 - 1807) as a British seaman and captain worked actively over six years in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Later he famously confessed, “I once was . . . blind, but now I see.”
May we, where we misapprehend, come to see more clearly.
Part 1 - Begin the Beguine?
I start with a brief observation on the great film director Stanley Kubrick. For him the best approach to the utterly serious problem of worldwide thermonuclear annihilation was a mordant, dark comedy. Here, too, I approach important matters, and at times venture ironic humor. I ask the reader’s indulgence in these diversions. Where with them or otherwise I annoy or offend, I ask the reader’s tolerance. Ronald Reagan’s young optimist provides a useful stance. Upon finding a pile of horse manure for him Christmas morning, the lad rejoiced, “There’s got to be a pony around here somewhere!” Such an attitude would gird those who proceed. Clueless johns, Greek ships, cat’s pajamas, and whatnot litter the path ahead. I do not promise a rose garden. I parade ponies and what follows them.
While writing this essay, I myself have come to see more clearly that I possess some as yet unresolved “anger issues” (not as severe as Howard Beale’s, I hope) in respect to the Trustees of Princeton University, of which I am a grateful alumnus. (According to the University’s Bylaws, the Trustees include the University's President. When below I use the term “Trustees” alone, don’t think for a moment I intend to let off the President.) If I do Princeton’s Trustees injustice herein, I now apologize in advance. I leave to the reader whether and to what degree I misjudge.
I do not question the Trustees’ intentions, as I believe them to be good. I do question the judgment guiding some of their actions. I certainly have grave concerns that with some of what the Trustees have sown – and may do yet again – Princeton will reap a harvest all Princetonians will come to experience – sooner or later – as corrosive, bitter, and enduring.
When we examine the past and review people’s values, decisions, and actions, what attitude might we ourselves be wise to adopt? It is temptingly easy simply to judge harshly those who have gone before us, and leave it at that. We would profit by asking ourselves how we would measure up to some of their standards and actions. “Women and children first!” is easy to say. “But to stand an' be still to the Birken'ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew.”
Understanding the lives of our forebears offers us the chance to better conduct our own. And the particular societal and personal circumstances of other times and places, I submit, can produce moral sensibilities, decisions and actions different from ours generally of today, as well as corresponding differences among us today. All of us (atheists, included) would do well to keep in mind the wisdom in the aphorism (and its implications for our own moral understandings and failings), “But for the grace of God, there go I.” Without such a grace, each of us might equally have found ourselves slave or slaver.
I invite Princeton’s Trustees – indeed, all interested in the welfare of Princeton and of our society at large – to give this essay earnest consideration. May we all not simply read what it says, but wrestle with the issues it addresses. What do we mean if we give honor? Are there moral stains so great as to bar honor, even where we have painted the “warts and all” and know, not simply a flattering half-truth, but the real and whole person? What do we do about unresolvable issues among us on these matters? And what do our choices – of whom to honor, whom to honor no longer, and why we have done so – themselves say about ourselves. On these matters and more, our successors will judge us.
So now let me – with apology to that Yalie songwriter – begin to beguile.
Part 2 - An Unknown Price for Self-Professed Virtue
In 2020, its President and Trustees decided Princeton University could no longer honor a long-deceased alumnus. Their stated reason was the latter’s racism – one that was pronounced (perhaps even for his time) and that animated his barring blacks from participation in the previously desegregated federal civil service.
And so the name of our nation’s 28th president (and Princeton’s own 13th), Woodrow Wilson, was declared no longer fit for Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs nor for its first residential college. This was notwithstanding Wilson’s great and still praiseworthy achievements, such as (1) his vital efforts to transform Princeton as a University, (2) his leadership of our nation’s decisive role to join forces against the ill-liberal alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire and bring to a rapid and successful end WWI and its years of horrific slaughter, (3) his advocacy of the principles of democracy and self-determination for all peoples, and (4) his tireless efforts and sacrifice of his own health to negotiate a sustainable peace following WWI and create an international framework to forestall future conflagration. (I note briefly that I have my own set of grievances against Wilson, but I nonetheless find him a great man worthy of honor.)
In deciding what to preserve of a person’s body for its journey into the afterlife, the ancient Egyptians extracted and separately preserved certain organs they deemed necessary, such as the spleen. Thinking it mere surplusage, they extracted and then tossed aside the brain. In their stewardship of Wilson’s honor in his afterlife, Princeton’s Trustees hold fast the spleen of his racist prejudice and toss aside the profound achievements that sprang from his great mind. We’ve lost something important here.
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
The University’s banishment of Wilson’s name was not total, but the reason for this omission is perhaps worse than the judgment that underlay the banishment the Trustees did undertake. The announcement of the Trustees’ decision to strip Wilson’s name also mentioned that the prominent award bestowed annually by the University on a deserving alum would continue to bear Wilson’s name. The stated reason was that the prize had been created with, and remained tied to, the prior donation of money. The possibility of return of such funds to enable complete dissociation from Wilson’s newly dishonorable name was not itself even mentioned in said announcement's discussion of the prize.
One of the themes further developed in my essay is the problem of unforeseen consequences. Princeton’s Trustees have provided us in their drop/keep of Wilson’s name a first example of this problem, an example that has a darkly comedic side and the further benefit of being true.
The Trustees have cast the august institution of Princeton, so dear to me, in the awkward light of the lady who protests that her virtue cannot be purchased – when she has already acknowledged that hers has a price. As for the money at issue with the University’s award that still bears Wilson’s name, this price of the University's self-professed new virtue on Wilson remains non-public, at least to my knowledge. Thanks to our President and Trustees, Princeton’s nickname “Old Nassau” now faces stiff competition from “Laputa,” the name of that fateful Russian missile base in Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” With its original Spanish meaning, of course. Knowingly or not, for Princetonians today, “In praise of Laputa we sing . . .” Hurrah. Hurrah. Hurrah.
I could venture more in my endeavor to entice Princeton’s Trustees to grant me a Dale Carnegie, “How To Lose Friends and Alienate People” award, so I’ll settle – at least for the moment – for this bon mot on yet a further way the Trustees proved wanting: Common sex workers can count rightfully among their virtues the simple awareness of what they are about. So, too, for their intermediaries.
Perhaps Princeton’s Trustees will come to see their situation here more clearly. (And instead I may be the one mistaken in my understanding – as notably was the case for Rick with the healing waters of Casablanca. Again, I leave discernment on such to the reader.) And some day not far hence, as a gesture of atonement, the Trustees may choose to rename the Wilson prize for Forton Weatherspoon. But I get ahead of myself here.
As we Princetonians seek our collective path ahead, I pray for our individual and collective awareness, tolerance, discernment, and wisdom. Yale’s 2015 Halloween costume advisory controversy is but one example of the treacherous environment colleges these days present. And viewing some of the video of discourse on the Yale campus grounds generated by this controversy – not to mention the outcome of the controversy itself – reminds me, yet again, to give thanks I’m not a Yalie.
Part 3 - The Witherspoon Statue Controversy
Less than three years after its decisions and pronouncements on the formerly good name of its own Woodrow Wilson, Princeton University today is deciding the fate of its statue of John Witherspoon (1723 - 1794). But this Witherspoon is no mere run-of-the-mill dead white male (the numbers of the latter being legion).
To sharpen the insight of the reader, I now disclose that presently I am a live white male, the same age of Witherspoon at his death, no less. I conjecture that a day may yet arise where I march in the great “passing” P-rade on my way to joining those formerly-living of whatever number of races, genders, and other identities. Speaking of the latter, I hopefully await society’s embrace of trans-age identities, so nobly advocated by the late social commentator Jack Benny. Perhaps such adoption will facilitate my quest to enjoy the affections of young, impressionable 50-year-olds. Fear not for my virtue, gentle reader. Like Oscar Wilde, “I can resist anything but temptation.”
In 1999 Princeton’s then President and Board of Trustees commissioned a prominent statue of this Witherspoon (the institution’s sixth president, theologian and more). The statue was installed two years later on a prominent campus location. The present controversy came into focus with a petition begun last year, and now signed by some 300 Princetonians, to remove this statue. The University’s decision on the matter is pending. The debate on the statue has been confined mostly to Princeton and related online venues, including my Opinion as an alum in The Daily Princetonian. Two notable exceptions have been a column by the nationally syndicated Princeton alum George Will *68 and an education publication that reviewed the controversy. The latter – noting contentious pre-Covid battles elsewhere over statues, building names, and memorials – judges Princeton’s as the present “highest profile controversy.” It implicitly commends Princeton’s “contained debate.”
This Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Speaking of which, in the interest of self-preservation, I hereby disclaim making in this forum any declaration of independence of my own. The one Princetonian I know to have done so online not long thereafter came to a troubling end. Perhaps it was all mere coincidence, but I don’t want to find myself in that cat’s pajamas.
And – lest I forget – the reasons for the petition to remove Witherspoon’s statue relate to his involvement with slavery. In my above-referenced Opinion I ventured, “The petitioners to remove his statue have a tragic misunderstanding, I submit, of the full measure of Witherspoon on slavery.” Perhaps I’m wrong, and all one need know or consider on whether to strip Witherspoon of honor at Princeton these days is the bare factoid that Witherspoon (like many of our nation’s Founders) owned slaves.
Again I ask the reader to proceed with my essay and wrestle with its issues. Doing so will reward. (But – you hopeful guys out there – not the rewards you would seek in Major Kong’s weekend in Vegas. So open your minds and bear down with thought as we continue.)
The implications of the issues this essay addresses go beyond Witherspoon and others of his time, or even Princeton today. They reach to ourselves, individually and as a society, not only on the important matter of whom we would choose to honor and why, but, moreover, on our stewardship of our freedoms.
Part 4 – Witherspoon and John Newton
In 1791 the then College of New Jersey, under the auspices of President John Witherspoon, awarded an honorary degree to the aforesaid Newton (quoted at the outset of this essay), who in the 1740s and 1750s had himself promoted a notorious embodiment of “racialized slavery” (to use Petitioners’ term), first by plying slave ships and then, after ill-health prevented his continuation of those endeavors, by investing in “African labor.”
Why on earth honor this Newton? By the 1780s he had become a foremost opponent to the Atlantic Slave Trade, particularly with the 1788 publication of his riveting account of what he himself had seen and done, “Thoughts Upon The African Slave Trade.” It was not until 1807, shortly before Newton’s death, that Britain outlawed it and commenced deployment of its Royal Navy, with sacrifice of blood and treasure, in a decades-long, but ultimately successful campaign to eradicate that Trade.
Newton, a largely self-educated man, had two great and culminating conversions in his life — to his Christianity and to his campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade. They are reflected by his words late in life as his powers were fading, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!” His adoption of Christianity brought with it a lasting and growing humility. This former slave trader declined the College of New Jersey’s honorary degree. Newton’s elegant explanation is preserved by the Princeton & Slavery Project, “The dreary coast of Africa was the University to which the Lord was pleased to send me, and I dare not acknowledge a relation to any other.” To my knowledge, no other college or university so honored Newton. Wikipedia, for its part, acknowledges only Princeton’s.
There are many crosscurrents to discern and navigate along the river of life. Here’s a tragic consequence of the enforcement on the high seas of the slave trade ban. When a British warship appeared on the horizon, slave ship captains – seeking to lighten their vessels to better outrun the warship and evade capture – sometimes ordered all slaves on board drowned forthwith in weights and chains. For myself, I have no present answer to the question of whether a British occupation of all African lands sourcing slaves would have been instead a possible and preferable course. One of the profound hazards of the human condition is that tragic consequences can attend well-intentioned – and even good – endeavors. Among the things we would be wise to do in any pursuit is to foresee and forestall bad consequences, both direct and the indirect.
I believe that the honor Witherspoon’s Princeton gave Newton in 1791 — when the African Slave Trade remained a grim, but perhaps vulnerable, reality — should be a source of pride for Princetonians today. I find it so. Those Princetonians who now stand against Witherspoon’s statue? I wonder. Given Newton’s participation in the “racialized slavery” for which they condemn Witherspoon, would they extinguish Princeton’s honorary degree for Newton as well as remove Witherspoon’s statue?
Part 5 - Witherspoon’s Slaves and Their Emancipation
The University's “Princeton & Slavery Project” states that Witherspoon owned two slaves.
I note in passing that this worthy Project has undertaken, in its own words, “[a]n exploration of Princeton University’s historical ties to the institution of slavery.” This digital repository makes this history universally accessible. In 2017, Joseph Yannielli observed, “Princeton & Slavery is the largest study of its kind yet produced, featuring hundreds of primary sources and around 90 original essays. Altogether, the site totals over 400,000 words – the equivalent of about 1,600 printed pages.”
I commend the Princeton & Slavery Project’s profound undertaking and recommend its body of work to anyone interested in this aspect of Princeton’s history, as I hope even more of us Princetonians become. I add that in respect to its treatment of Witherspoon, I believe that the Project’s work should be improved. I reserve exploration of this belief for a possible later essay. Suffice it for now that, as with superheroes, so, too, for the Princeton & Slavery Project – with great power comes great responsibility.
I now return to Witherspoon, with this guidepost for the reader: Those wishing for the moment to skip the details of Witherspoon’s slave ownership can proceed to the last two paragraphs of this section.
Just recently, thanks to the endeavors of Witherspoon scholar Kevin DeYoung, we have a new and fundamentally important contribution to our understanding of Witherspoon's participation with slavery. That work is DeYoung’s recently published “A Fuller Measure of Witherspoon on Slavery.”
I present below only a bare summary of DeYoung’s work. Further, I take full responsibility for any errors in my summary, as well as for any mistaken inferences made or implications drawn from DeYoung’s work that I may make, be they immediately below or elsewhere in this present essay.
I recommend anyone interested in Witherspoon to read DeYoung’s article. Moreover, I strongly urge anyone who would remove Witherspoon’s statue because of the slavery issue to read DeYoung’s article in full before passing final judgment.
So then, DeYoung sets forth “new evidence on the duration and nature of Witherspoon’s ownership of slaves” based on archival tax records. Those records are now the best evidence available on Witherspoon’s slave ownership.
DeYoung places in a new light what the Princeton & Slavery Project has seen as a contradiction (if not rank hypocrisy) in Witherspoon’s lecturing and laboring for the end of slavery while himself owning slaves. The archival tax records DeYoung only recently received show that Witherspoon indeed owned slaves, first one slave, then two, from 1780 to 1786 (and maybe 1787, as records for that year are missing).
In that year of the missing tax record (1787), we should note, Witherspoon guided passage of the national Presbyterian church’s historic resolution calling for “the final abolition of slavery.” That same resolution further called upon Presbyterians to provide their slaves prior to their emancipation “some share of property” or to “grant them sufficient time, and sufficient means . . . that may render them useful citizens.”
Again, the tax records for 1787 are missing, but they do exist for each of the years 1788 - 1794, the year of Witherspoon’s death. What do they show for these last seven years of Witherspoon’s life? The tax records show him as owning zero slaves.
These same tax records contain further information of interest. They show that for three of these zero slave years (1792 to 1794, the year Witherspoon died) a black man lived at Witherspoon’s farm as a householder and also owned cattle. These records even support the conjecture that this man owned land formerly part of Witherspoon’s. His name was Forton Witherspoon (sometimes spelled “Weatherspoon”). DeYoung suggests that the unnamed second slave was the spouse of this Weatherspoon.
In addition to the tax records, DeYoung also evaluates a property inventory taken by the executor of Witherspoon’s estate shortly after his 1794 death. That inventory states that Witherspoon’s property then included two slaves. So, what are we to make of this single 1794 document that conflicts with the property tax records for each of the years 1788 through 1794 showing Witherspoon having zero slaves? Additionally, the property tax records for Witherspoon’s widow (each of the years 1795 through 1797) show zero slaves.
DeYoung believes that — as Witherspoon urged others to emancipate slaves — he himself at this same time and in a similar manner prepared his own two slaves for a meaningful, self-sustaining emancipation.
DeYoung sums it all up with his closing, “It seems that Witherspoon likely practiced what he preached by making ‘Forton Weatherspoon’ a householder of his own and giving him the opportunity to be fully emancipated, which he appears to have been shortly after Witherspoon’s death.” DeYoung goes further, “If Witherspoon had been seen as a friend of slavery and an enemy of abolition in his own time, it is unlikely that Newton and Wilberforce would have thought of him so highly and praised his work so unreservedly.”
Last, if today we could ask not Newton, not Wilberforce, but Forton Weatherspoon whether Princeton did right in honoring the Witherspoon he knew, what would this man say?
Part 6 - Petitioners’ Case Against Witherspoon’s Statue
I first make a humble request to followers of the Witherspoon debate, “Hold my beer.” Should any find me misogynistic with the meme I just linked, let me acknowledge the ancient insight about marriage necessitating departing one’s past life to enable cleaving to the new. May we today show wisdom in choosing what – as well as whom – we would embrace or marry.
Second, as with the Trustees’ on Wilson, I do not question Petitioners’ motives in their bid to remove Witherspoon’s statue. And I again commend the Petitioners for the manner in which they have begun and continued the debate on this issue. Otherwise I never would have learned what I now know about Witherspoon, nor thought as much about the challenges presented by the call to remove his statue. Petitioners’ advocacy is a product of their understandings of the facts and issues at hand, as my advocacy is on mine. We differ. They believe the removal of Witherspoon’s statue to be a good measure for Princeton; I believe it a terrible one. I hope that our engagement over this disagreement will better inform the Trustees, the Princeton community, and all interested observers of this proposed measure and its attendant consequences for whither Princeton.
I now offer another guidepost to the reader: Those wishing for the moment to forego the pleasures of my point-by-point refutation of the Petitioners’ case can skip to the last two paragraphs of this section, wherein I offer Petitioners the strongest point in their favor and set forth my own suggestion for a replacement memorial should the Trustees decide to remove Witherspoon’s statue.
Before we proceed with the particulars of Petitioners’ case to remove Witherspoon’s statue (“Remembering Witherspoon, rejecting the status quo”), let me first restate the issue at hand. I do so with a judicious hypothetical removed from the passions on both sides in the present debate.
Here it is. Some 230 years from now, Americans for many decades have universally adopted veganism and regard meat eating and the use of animal products with revulsion. The University some 20 years previous has erected a statue honoring Princeton’s own Peter Singer, a foremost 20th and 21st century philosopher and advocate of animal rights. Then an indisputable photo ignites a great controversy. It shows Singer wearing leather shoes. Should this statue of Singer come down? I suppose my successors-in-spirit would say not. As I understand the Petitioners, theirs would demand the statue’s dispatch.
In their Opinion, the Petitioners observe that Witherspoon’s statue “does not tell us about the nuances of [his] history.” I agree. Neither that statue – nor any statue – is well suited to tell a full, nuanced history. Nor, I submit, can the mere plaque they propose to replace the Witherspoon statue.
With apology to Shakespeare, I come to honor Witherspoon, not to bury him under some mere, “nuanced” plaque.
Indeed, I strongly doubt that any of the many statues, edifices, and spaces on Princeton’s campus tell a full “nuanced history” of the person for whose honor they are named. Nor should they. Such histories are better suited to websites and other publications.
When in 1999 Princeton’s then President and Board of Trustees decided to commission the Witherspoon statue for prominent display on Firestone Plaza, they did so to honor Witherspoon, not to have it by itself tell the whole history of the man.
On the meaning of “honor” itself Petitioners err. To honor an individual is simply to show great respect, especially in public. They imply that to honor is instead to hold up an ostensibly perfect being for universal acclaim. To Petitioners the Witherspoon statue demands of its observer an indiscriminate "pure praise." They ignore, however, the multiple indicia this statue provides of the specific reasons the University honors Witherspoon.
So, look at this statue, especially the books around Witherspoon (Cicero, Locke, Hume); the statue praises Witherspoon the teacher of philosophy. Look at the plaques around the base; they praise Witherspoon the patriot, and other aspects of Witherspoon's career. Look at the eagle on the pillar; it evokes Witherspoon the Presbyterian clergyman. Last, this statue does not show Witherspoon with chains and whip in hand, literally or metaphorically. The statue does not praise Witherspoon for being a slaveholder.
Does this statue offer Witherspoon as a paragon of every virtue? No! Just a practitioner of the virtues that enabled him to sustain and guide the College of New Jersey from its perilous beginnings toward becoming the great and beloved institution that we Princetonians are privileged to have inherited today. May we wisely sustain and improve this Princeton for our own successors.
Petitioners would have us even believe that this statue’s attributes in their totality “combine to lift Witherspoon above all criticism.” Au contraire! I submit as dispositive evidence against this claim (1) Petitioners’ own Opinion, (2) their own petition of May 2022, and (3) the Princeton & Slavery Project essay “John Witherspoon.”
I find it telling that Petitioners seem unable to keep separate (1) the aesthetic considerations of the size and other attributes of an object to be placed on Firestone Plaza, and (2) the entirely different question of whether the University should give honor to the person the object represents.
As to the aesthetics of the statue at hand (including whether it is, in Petitioners' words, “unduly celebratory”), those matters presumably were vetted thoroughly when the Trustees undertook to commission the statue. Petitioners may find little comfort in this, but the hearts of countless Princetonians before them have ached – and their voices asked to no avail – that certain objects d’art not grace their campus, including no less a person than Princeton’s beloved Freddy Fox ‘39.
The issue for which Petitioners should provide more than a merely conclusory explanation is why the participation in slavery of any manner or duration in any place or era – and notwithstanding any conceivable consideration otherwise – should bar the University to honor such a person.
So, as an institution Princeton gives honor to individuals it duly determines so to designate. Should its doing so require complete unanimity throughout the University community? The Petitioners choose not to honor Witherspoon themselves. That is a personal judgment they are entitled to. Should their individual preferences and feelings stop the University from honoring Witherspoon with this statue in a prominent public space on campus? I think not. I hope most other Princetonians would agree.
Before closing my discussion of Petitioners’ case against Witherspoon, I should acknowledge their strongest point, although they give it but oblique treatment. That is the example of those buildings formerly named in honor of Woodrow Wilson. The University had once taken the position that it could both honor Wilson and openly acknowledge and detail his shortcomings (both grievous and less so). But just a few years later this same President and presumably many of the same individual Trustees abruptly reversed their own policy on Wilson. Was the cause the advent of new information about Wilson? No. According to their statement, the change was precipitated by certain high-profile killings elsewhere in the U.S., including that of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Perhaps when the police in another state again unjustifiably kill a minority person or it comes to the attention of Princeton’s President and Board of Trustees that slavery itself is still practiced elsewhere in the world, they will make another about-face and declare that henceforth Witherspoon, the slaveholder, must have Princeton’s honor no more.
Part 7 - “No Union With Slaveholders”
“In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, and was legal in most societies . . .” The New Jersey Witherspoon moved to in 1768 was no exception. But by his teaching, public advocacy, and personal example, Witherspoon helped lead Princeton and our nation away from the practice of slavery.
We today would be wise to bear in mind the following. While in the midst of an immemorial prevalence of slavery, for individuals – and societies – to develop the moral recognition, the will to act, and viable courses to achieve the fundamental and far-reaching changes to end the deeply rooted practice of slavery were most profound and arduous undertakings.
Choosing a good path that would not itself lead to terrible consequences presented a considerable and treacherous challenge. The famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison is an instructive example. Beginning in 1844 he advocated “No Union With Slaveholders,” a demand that Northern states secede from the slaveholding South. We now can see plainly that Garrison’s course would have led to grave consequences. The political fragmentation of Garrison’s path would have furthered slavery’s spread into the territories and their new states to follow.
The Northern states wisely disregarded Garrison here. When instead the Confederate States seceded, they handed the sword of war to Lincoln, who by its fateful wrath maintained the Union and, through his 13th Amendment, constitutionally prohibited slavery throughout that whole preserved Union. Garrison’s course would have meant no Lincoln, no Civil War, no 13th Amendment, and the continuation of slavery in parts of America for who knows how long.
So, the Northern succession Garrison advocated would have had consequences for the practice of slavery incomparably worse than any conceivable harm that came from Witherspoon’s policies and actions, public and private. If today Princeton were to propose to honor Garrison, would the Princetonians now against Witherspoon also oppose Garrison? I simply don’t know. Myself? No. Notwithstanding his faults, Garrison was a great man who condemned slavery as a moral wrong and is himself worthy of honor. So, say I, of Witherspoon.
Witherspoon advocated a course and engaged in conduct that was a good path to enable slaves to support themselves and become emancipated. His course did not have the catastrophic consequences that Garrison’s separatism would have had.
I refuse to damn Garrison for his mistaken advocacy of a path that would have caused ends that none of us would want. Nor, I think, should others condemn Witherspoon for his advocacy of a path of gradual emancipation to end slavery that was slower than an unfettered ideal. Moreover, in Witherspoon’s own life immediate legislative abolition was almost certainly unobtainable in New Jersey. Even a gradual emancipation law did not pass there until 1804, ten years after Witherspoon’s death.
On slavery, Witherspoon’s influence overwhelmingly was to promote its ending. This does not fundamentally oppose Princeton’s mission “in the nation’s service and service to humanity,” then or now. Witherspoon advanced both.
Part 8 - Witherspoon’s Statue and Free Speech at Princeton
Does Witherspoon’s legacy fall with his statue? Pulling down Witherspoon’s statue would be a proclamation by Princeton that none of Witherspoon’s many good deeds can make him worthy of honor. In my judgment, such an act would speak vastly worse of Princeton today than of Witherspoon’s importance for his time or ours.
Petitioners’ challenge presents an issue beyond Witherspoon’s status and utterly more fundamental to the vitality of Princeton as a university. Acceding to Petitioners’ call to remove Witherspoon’s statue would compress freedom of speech at Princeton. How so?
In Witherspoon’s statue we have a form of speech (here, symbolic) that offends some individuals at Princeton (“someone who does not feel that Witherspoon stands with them” in Petitioners’ words). With complete disregard for the reasons for the statue (none of which are that Witherspoon be honored because he owned two slaves), Petitioners would pull it down simply because the statue offends some individuals. Such a ready stance declares that no such honorific speech embodied by this statue can be tolerated at Princeton. “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning,” those on the ocean heed even today. And efforts to turn its whole campus and the entire institution into a unitary “safe space” court turning Princeton into an intellectual dead zone.
Princeton’s free speech code affirms, “[I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.” Notwithstanding the University’s stated protections even for controversial speech, Petitioners urge the University to ban the symbolic speech at issue because some find it offensive. For the University to do so would go against its own code and diminish free speech at Princeton.
For Princeton’s President and Board of Trustees to remove Witherspoon’s statue because it is offensive to Petitioners and others would speak not simply about Witherspoon. It would send a strong, far-reaching warning to any who might attempt free speech at Princeton: They and their speech can be pulled down for the unforgivable offense of offending. As my grandfather was fond to exclaim, “That’s the cat’s pajamas!”
Freedom of speech, diversity of thought, intellectual independence, and the pursuits of knowledge, meaning and truth at Princeton, as well as elsewhere, depend upon a supportive and sustaining culture if they are to remain vital. They require, as well, vigilance and labor to those ends by its leaders and their administrators.
Shall all of us Princetonians sustain and strengthen such a culture to persevere against inevitable forces of dissipation and destruction? History and human nature itself are replete with awakenings and movements that bear forces both good and ill. Shall the aforesaid culture survive? Even more than we can understand is at stake.
And to what ends does Princeton now educate its students? Here’s a traditional view: “[The] primary mission is not to promote a particular set of doctrines. It is to provide a forum in which faculty and students representing a vast range of religious, political and moral opinions can engage each other fruitfully in the pursuit of truth and the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. A robust culture of free speech and academic freedom is essential to that mission.”
Here’s a decidedly different end: “I envision a free speech and an intellectual discourse that is flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that. And in order for that work to be realized richly and capaciously it behooves all of us who are on the faculty to think about ways in which we can provide effective mentoring to our students—instruct and guide them about the institutional peculiarities of Princeton and Princeton culture—but not with a view to habituating them into a practice of assimilation or indoctrinating them in the belief that somehow this is the best damn place of all, but in order to supply them with the tools with which they can tear down this place and make it a better one.”
This latter call is a sweet Siren song to dismantle Princeton. Just where would its “one specific aim . . . of . . . anti-racist social justice” take us? Quo vadis, Princeton?
As for the present, a Princeton senior reports in a New York Times guest essay, “All students should welcome challenges to their most cherished beliefs, but from what I’ve seen on campus, [Princeton] students are not invited to debate; they are expected to conform.” Engage in intellectual inquiry and freedom of speech? No, conform. What should we make of this example? Extrapolating from one individual’s experience presents challenges of inference.
Here’s a 2018 statement about free speech by then Princeton politics professor and current Dean of the School of Public & International Affairs, Amany Jamal, “Power matters, and the way power is distributed does not advantage minorities. This idea of free speech is to secure privilege for those who are already privileged.” Perhaps the proper context is missing from this PAW article.
And as of this writing, Princeton’s balance between freedom of speech and institutional restraint allows the Chair of the Princeton English Department to have it both ways on whether his Department (home of the contentious ”Statement on Anti-Racism”) does or does not issue collective statements: “[T]he Department as a whole does not issue statements. It is an important principle for us that neither I nor anyone else among us attempts to speak for a diverse collective.” Schrödinger’s cat would be envious.
So how safe are the Princetons of today and tomorrow for free speech and independence of inquiry? Would Eric Blair himself recognize a place for cats and all other creatures where all speech is free and, moreover, some speech is more free than others?
Part 9 - “By the lights of perverted science”
Pondering the fate of the freedoms we enjoy at Princeton and in our nation, I recall an ad campaign’s signature line, “Run, Rhino, run! Extinction is forever.” Speaking for myself, a fan of “On The Beach,” I remain hopeful yet mindful, “There is still time, brother!”
So, too, a sorry end for speech and other freedoms at Princeton and beyond? Our world today is inhabited with capabilities that would make Big Brother himself mourn the paltry tools of oppression at his disposal. As a nation, do we face a future replete with “social credit systems” – not to mention untold tender mercies enabled by burgeoning Artificial Intelligence? Might we with the challenges of our time fail and “sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”? Will we come to conform our lives to an imposed “social justice” on our way to our utopian version of a society with an American version of the New Soviet person?
Do I overstate the dangers to freedom for Princetonians and Americans? I certainly hope these dangers do not come to fruition. I take rueful comfort in my quip, “Rome didn’t fall in a day.” But here’s another, more troubling truth well-founded in history. Freedom’s loss could overtake us as bankruptcy did Hemmingway’s Mike Campbell, “Gradually, then suddenly.”
Part 10 - On Replacing Witherspoon
Should Princeton’s Trustees decide to move the Witherspoon statue to a less offending place, may they demonstrate the courage of their convictions by calling upon the National Park Service to move the Washington Monument from its current location to a place of lesser prominence – the bottom of the Grand Canyon, perhaps. In response the National Park Service might itself suggest that the Trustees first remove from their own meeting place – The Faculty Room in Nassau Hall – that same slave owner’s prominent portrait that gazes over the Trustees during their meetings. Of course, I may misjudge the National Park Service. Times being what they are, the Service already may have identified resting places in the Grand Canyon. I counsel patience, dear reader, while all this plays out.
As Princeton wasn’t born yesterday, it provides those seeking to condemn or eradicate anything with the stain of racism or slavery a target-rich environment. The Harvey S. Firestone Sr. family and that namesake library now bear crosshairs, perhaps justifiably. Given the history of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Liberia as presented by the Princeton & Slavery Project, Petitioners arguably could have a more compelling case against Firestone than the one they made against Witherspoon.
More memorials, buildings and grounds with a questionable nexus of some degree or another comprise the Princeton campus. So proponents of yea and of nay on whether to keep any of these (in name or otherwise) shall meet again. Just when? Don’t know. With apology to that Kubrick film, “But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.”
I now propose as replacement for the Witherspoon statue – should it be removed from Firestone Plaza – a memorial to the unnumbered victims of a wholesale effort to purge society of suspected secret evildoers. I speak of the tragedy arising from the 1233 Papal Bull “Vox in Rama.” This being a work of art, my image for this memorial is subject to more than one interpretation.
Part 11 - On Replacing Princeton
I do not dismiss as mere rhetorical flourish calls to entering undergraduates to “tear down this place,” this Princeton. What sort of phoenix would arise from the heralded destruction, I wonder. I understand the appeal of such calls. To paraphrase Paul, I once was an undergraduate and thought like an undergraduate. Moreover, the full consequences of our actions at any age we see but darkly. And there burns within each of our breasts at every age a desire for a better place.
Like it or not, the inevitabilities of life dictate that, plank by plank, Princeton is being replaced. So it is, was, and will be. The Ship of Theseus comes to mind. But I do not speak of buildings or monuments, but of the people who constitute our Princeton. Aside from the changes each of us undergoes with time, eventually each of us Princetonians joins that “passing” P-rade, no longer to have an active voice or hand in the Princeton of the day. (I like to think that each of our new shades will march unseen at the head of the next P-rade, and that at the far end of Poe Field we will gather with all earlier Princeton shades to rejoice in our new community, remember our old Princetons, keep hopeful watch over the Princeton of the day, and grouse about sundry matters therein.)
And so we Princetonians, each making our own paths, march through Princeton. Along the way, we change and eventually are no longer of this world. And inevitably Princeton itself changes, and in ways more profound than for the Ship of Theseus. In the Princeton of today, any taint of racism, slavery, and certainly, “racialized slavery” marks a person, statue, memorial or building for condemnation or worse. Even decisions of less than 25 years ago about whom and how to honor – heck, of just three years ago by the same President and Trustees – are subject to obloquy and reversal. What changes lie ahead in this and untold other respects? May we endeavor – and, I pray, come to find – that these new Princetons prove for the better.
The Roman god Janus had two faces – one looking backward, the other forward. The past is unchangeable, the future not yet here. Learning from the immutable past, may we well use our present and better shape our future. These are our responsibilities, to our being and our becoming. Lincoln’s remark is instructive, “I don’t know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.” Whether our forebears came here by Mayflower, slave ship, or otherwise, we, too, should be much more concerned with who we will be.
Part 12 - Remember This
In 1675 Isaac Newton acknowledged, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” As we attempt to find our way among and along the paths before us, it would do us well to better understand how we arrived to our present circumstances. This includes the contributions for good and ill by those who precede us.
Witherspoon was a giant and for the good. He did not get us all the way into the promised land of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Nor have we in our times done so. But, without Witherspoon, Princeton and our nation might well never have progressed this far. Witherspoon richly deserves honor by Princeton and our nation. And it would speak well of my Princeton to keep his statue and continue to honor our Witherspoon.
The filmmaker Jean Renoir, director of “La Grande Illusion,” once observed, “The real hell of life is everyone has his reasons.” Our challenges in life include discernment of where these reasons would take us — others’ and our own. With apology to Casablanca’s Sam, we must remember this.
Witherspoon’s statue hangs in the balance of judgment by Princeton. Shall the fulcrum weigh solely an “anti-racial social justice” and nothing else, or instead take the full measure of Witherspoon? Whither Princeton? Our freedoms? Time will tell.
Bill Hewitt is an alumnus of Princeton in the Class of 1974. In this exercise of free speech, Bill is prepared to be labeled a Concerned Reactionary Alum of Princeton (CRAP), preferably by Yalies. He can be reached at hewitt74@alumni.princeton.edu.