In 1913, he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson to protest his administration's racial segregation of federal offices in Washington, D.C., a change from previous integrated conditions.

We were radical in our demand for free trade and our complete opposition to the whole protective system.Villard was also a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which favored independence for the territories captured in the Spanish–American War.

Not surprisingly, Villard made a personal appeal to ex-president Grover Cleveland, a hero of the gold Democrats, urging him to be the candidate.

[3] In 1910, he donated space in the New York Evening Post for the "call" to the meeting that formally organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

He protested by writing to Wilson in July 1913 about his administration's segregation of federal offices in the capital, a change from previous practice.

[1] In addition, Wilson did nothing to encourage the end of disenfranchisement of blacks in the South by Democratic-dominated legislatures, which had largely excluded African Americans there from the political system.

He also published many of his articles and addresses on a wide range of subjects including militarism, music, the Garrison family, and racial discrimination.

In 1943, he engaged in a debate with philosopher Ayn Rand on the topic of collectivism versus individualism, sponsored by the American Economic Association, which was published in a number of newspapers.

He was an early member of the non-interventionist America First Committee which opposed U.S. entry into World War II, and used the editorial page of The Nation to express his views: No, the truth is that if reason and logic, and not sentiment, hysteria, and self-interest, were applied to this question, the American army and navy would take the lead in advocating disarmament—always provided that we are not going to be so insane as to go to war in Europe again.

I am even hoping that my friends the editors of The Nation will now turn about and join me in exposing the needless waste of the terrific military expenditures we are now making, to say nothing of the steady militarization of the country.

Also, he deplored the air raids carried out by the allies in the later years of World War II, saying: What was criminal in Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw and London has now become heroic in Dresden and now Tokyo.

[8]After 1945, Villard made common cause with "old right" conservatives, such as Senator Robert A. Taft, Felix Morley, and John T. Flynn, against the Cold War policies of Harry S. Truman.