For the Love of Woodrow

Pity Edith Wilson. The one thing she really wanted was to be left alone with her husband, Woodrow, the 28th president of the United States. But a century after his death first separated the Wilsons, they are drifting ever further apart.

In June of 2020, Princeton University, which Woodrow attended as an undergraduate and where he later served as university president, removed his name from its school of public policy, citing his “racist thinking and policies.” Always hidden in plain sight, his unbounded racism—lowlights included hosting a screening of The Birth of a Nation at the White House—had become too much for an enlightened 21st-century institution to bear.