Jonathan Holloway, President of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, will present the Bloustein School’s annual Robert A. Catlin Memorial Lecture on Monday, March 22, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. He will discuss “Racial Memory, Woodrow Wilson, and the Making of the Nation.”
President Holloway’s scholarly work specializes in post-emancipation U.S. history with a focus on social and intellectual history.
The talk will be a consideration of the role that race played in shaping the leadership and political world view of Woodrow Wilson. As the president of the United States, Wilson led the country toward war in order to make the world safe for democracy.
If that narrative is embraced as a form of progressive international politics, Wilson’s domestic policies tell a different story. Wilson’s racial views informed his administration’s punitive approach to labor, citizenship, and belonging.
As contemporary sensibilities shifted in our new century, Wilson’s legacy came under closer scrutiny, particularly at Princeton University which he once led. The university wrestled over the “racial memory” of Wilson’s ideologies in ways that can inform our current thinking about race, citizenship, and public policy decision-making.
The Robert A. Catlin Memorial Lecture honors the legacy of Robert A. Catlin, Bloustein School professor, who died in July 2004. Catlin began his career as a staff planner for governmental agencies and community organizations in several cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York. He also served as dean of the College of Social Science at Florida Atlantic University, dean of the Camden College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers, and provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University, Bakersfield. He was inducted as an AICP Fellow in 2001. At the Bloustein School, he specialized in urban revitalization and the impact of race in public policy decision-making.