Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, President C.O. of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate. The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode, we discuss a new book by Christopher Cox, Woodrow Wilson, The Light Withdrawing.

Cox explores Wilson's illiberal record in the defining constitutional battles of his time,

focusing on his opposition to women's suffrage, free speech, and racial equality.

Christopher Cox is a scholar in residence at the University of California, Irvine.

He previously served as a U.S. representative from California and is the chair of the Security and Exchange Commission.

He's joined by Jeffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levy Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago,

an author of Perilous Times, Free Speech and Wartime, from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism.

Dear we the people, friends, I am so grateful to share with you every week these meaningful conversations

about American history and the Constitution, sending you warm wishes for a happy Thanksgiving.

Welcome, Christopher Cox and Jeffrey Stone. Chris Cox, let's begin with you. This is a time when Woodrow Wilson's legacy is being re-examined.

And your book is so timely because it argues that in light of his shameful record on women's

suffrage and race in particular, he really deserves rethinking. Tell us about what led you to

write about Woodrow Wilson and what you concluded about his legacy in light of your research?

Well, it's a great question to try and sum up Woodrow Wilson

in light of further exploration of his views on race and on gender,

as academia has very much been doing for several decades now.

And it's very difficult because comparing his achievements with his detriments, you know, puts you in a position of comparing a lot of

apples and oranges and, you know, different kinds of moral issues and so on. But to get to the

first part of your question and then return to that at the end, what led me

into this pursuit of 14 years of research and writing about Woodrow Wilson was an initial

impulse to write about the simple, relatively, at least straightforward subject of the history of women's voting rights

...