Princeton University announced this weekend that it's removing noted racist crackpot President Woodrow Wilson's name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges, where presumably some Black students live. Princeton's board voted in 2016 to keep the 28th president's name on campus buildings and programs, despite student protests, so this is four years and a few dozen dead Black people late. But it's something.

Princeton's president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, released a statement acknowledging that Wilson wasn't just racist “for his time" -- a cop-out statement that diminishes the victims of racism at that time -- but was exceptionally racist.

Wilson's racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today.

Wilson's segregationist policies make him an especially inappropriate namesake for a public policy school. When a university names a school of public policy for a political leader, it inevitably suggests that the honoree is a model for students who study at the school. This searing moment in American history has made clear that Wilson's racism disqualifies him from that role. In a nation that continues to struggle with racism, this University and its school of public and international affairs must stand clearly and firmly for equality and justice.