“The Papers of Woodrow Wilson ’79”

It is particularly appropriate, therefore, that the papers and correspondence of Wilson will be published at Princeton under the editorial direction of Professor Arthur S. Link (see previous page), who will join the faculty next fall as professor of history and Director of the Woodrow Wilson Papers. The series will be published by Princeton University Press in about 40 volumes at a cost of $1,000,000; the project, largest ever to relate to a 20th century American, is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, which has received grants from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and, in addition to its own financial contribution, is to raise the full amount.

A committee headed by Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick ’05, a director of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, organized the project. His committee includes:

Jonathan Daniels, Dr. Harold W. Dodds, Dr. Philip C. Jessup, John B Oakes, Prof. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Francis B. Sayre.

The largest collection of Wilson’s writings is in the Library of Congress and the National Archives; the Princeton Library contains the next largest. Dr. John W. Davidson, author of Cross Roads of Freedom: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson, and David Hirst, who will work with Dr. Link as associate editor and assistant editor, have already begun to assemble the material. Microfilmed copies of Wilson’s papers will be received from all over the world.

Dr. Link taught here from 1945 to 1949 before joining the faculty at Northwestern. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Albert Shaw Lecturer at the John Hopkins University, and last year was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. In addition to three volumes of his seven-volume biography of Wilson published by Princeton University Press and discussed on the previous page, he has also written Woodrow Wilson and The Progressive Era (1945) in the New American Nation Series: American Epoch: A History of the United States Since the 1890’s (1955), a textbook: Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (1957); and Problems in American History (1952,rev. 1957), in collaboration with his Northwestern colleague, Richard W. Leopold ’33. All this at 39 years old.

This was originally published in the January 15, 1960 issue of PAW.