Sanford Ungar, an author and former president of Goucher College (might he also be the historian whose articles on the FBI or the CIA I read for my dissertation many moons ago?), has an oped in the Washington Post, criticizing the recent efforts to remove Wilson’s name from Princeton, take Jackson off the $20 bill, and so on. There isn’t anything new in the piece (Wilson was complicated, Jackson did some good things, etc.) But this last paragraph caught my eye: What is at stake, in the end, is an understanding of our own history. We certainly must confront the reality that many of our greatest public figures did not always live up to American ideals. But wiping out the names, Soviet-style, […]