Woodrow Wilson ’79: The “Princeton Schoolmaster” and President-Elect

A short while before his departure from Princeton to assume office as the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson was photographed at his Cleveland Lane residence with a group of thirteen undergraduates who had come to wish him well. The photograph was unearthed by the research department of Twentieth-Century Fox in preparation for the moving picture on Wilson’s life. With the end in view of framing an enlarged reproduction of this picture in the proposed Woodrow Wilson Hall, the Third Century Fund Committee, through the Alumni Weekly, will welcome letter identifying all or part of the group of undergraduates in the photograph.

The Importance of Training

With the future of the United Nations depending upon an intelligent and informed public opinion, and with the United States bearing an increasingly heavy burden of responsibility for the preservation of world order, it is more urgent than ever before that the nation’s potential leaders receive training which will prepare them to understand the broader aspects of the problems with which they must deal.

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Woodrow Wilson ’79 As A Spectator

Princeton Alumni Weekly. May 9, 1947.

Looking to the future with these thoughts in mind. Princeton confidently expects that the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will become one of the chief training grounds for representatives of the United States in foreign nations, for other federal officials, for state and local government experts, and for business officials in daily contact with the governments of the world.

It is important that men whose ability gives special promise of leadership have opportunity for additional study and training. The School plans, therefore, to expand its present graduate work and to offer a new kind of graduate program in public affairs. Involving the establishment of new courses and new methods, this program will stress practical understanding of broad problems rather than attempt to train men to be teachers or scholars.

Gift Opportunities

To meet its financial goal for the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Third Century Fund Committee, through a special sub-committee headed by Dean Mathey ’12, has prepared a plan providing a number of gift opportunities which will associate the name of the donor with that of Princeton’s thirteenth president and the twenty-seventh president of the United States.

Included among these gift possibilities is the memorial building, Woodrow Wilson Hall, to be provided through a single gift or through a number of smaller gifts for individual units, such as the auditoriums, lecture rooms and offices.

A major part of the additional endowment needs of $1,500,000 will consist of a group of professorships, each endowed at $250,000, in major fields of study. Additional opportunities for endowment gifts exist in the need of graduate fellowships, travel scholarships, and allotments for research and publication. These require capital funds varying in amounts from $10,000 to $150,000.

The potential field of service of the Woodrow Wilson School is broad. Wilson himself outlined the area when he said, “It is plain what the nation needs as its affairs grow more and more complex and its interests begin to touch the ends of the earth. It needs efficient and enlightened men. The universities of the country must take part in supplying them.”

A school having this goal before it offers the finest possible medium through which a man interested in the education of youth for citizenship can, either by gift or will, leave a lasting memorial not only to Woodrow Wilson but to himself.

This was originally published in the May 9, 1947 issue of PAW.