The Educational Legacy of Woodrow Wilson: From College to Nation

Front Cover
James Axtell
University of Virginia Press, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 267 pages

In The Educational Legacy of Woodrow Wilson, James Axtell brings together essays by eight leading historians and one historically minded political scientist to examine the long, formative academic phase of Wilson's career and its connection to his relatively brief tenure in politics. Together, the essays provide a greatly revised picture of Wilson's whole career and a deeply nuanced understanding of the evolution of his educational, political, and social philosophy and policies, the ordering of his values and priorities, and the seamless link between his academic and political lives.

The contributors shed light on Wilson's unexpected rise to the governorship of New Jersey and the presidency, and how he prepared for elective office through his long study of government and the practice of academic politics, which he deemed no less fierce than that of Washington. In both spheres he was enormously successful, propelling a string of progressive reforms through faculty and legislative forums. Only after he was beset by health problems and events beyond his control did he fail to push his academic and postwar agendas to their logical, idealistic conclusions.

Contributors James Axtell, College of William and Mary * Victoria Bissell Brown, Grinnell College * John Milton Cooper Jr., University of Wisconsin * Stanley N. Katz, Princeton University * W. Bruce Leslie, SUNY-Brockport * Adam R. Nelson, University of Wisconsin * Mark R. Nemec, Forrester Research * John R. Thelin, University of Kentucky * Trygve Throntveit, Harvard University

 

Contents

Acknowledgments
Woodrow Wilson on Liberal Education for Statesmanship 18901910
Woodrow Wilson in the Era of University
Anglophilia in Wilsons Princeton
Woodrow Wilson in the Golden Age of American
Politics and Wilsons Academic Career
Wilson Princeton and the Ideal of the American State
Politics as Social Inquiry
Afterword
Notes on Contributors
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2012)

James Axtell, Kenan Professor of Humanities Emeritus at the College of William and Mary, is the author of many books, most recently The Making of Princeton University: From Woodrow Wilson to the Present.

Bibliographic information