Excerpt: The Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming held the Witherspoon Symposium on Friday, April 21 to examine the historical legacy of John Witherspoon, the University’s sixth president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A poster advertising the event describes it as “a panel of scholarly experts [who] will explore John Witherspoon’s life in Scotland and America, his theological and political formation, his contributions to Princeton and the US, and his complex relationship to slavery and abolitionism.”
The symposium comes as part of ongoing deliberations regarding the fate of the statue of John Witherspoon in Firestone Plaza.