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Colleges Address Controversy Over Donors' Past

By Steve Goldstein
Published: Friday, February 5, 2016 - 4:54pm
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Colleges and universities have honored prominent leaders and donors for decades. But lately, controversies have been generated by the pasts of some of those people.

Students at Princeton University staged a protest calling for the acknowledgment of racially-offensive quotes by former President Woodrow Wilson, whose name is on the university’s school of public policy. At Oxford in England, a group of attendees is pushing for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes — best known for the Rhodes scholarship — because of concerns about his colonialist past.

So how closely do universities need to take this into account, especially when it comes to accepting large donations? David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy spoke about the issue.

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