Woodrow Wilson

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In late 1883, Wilson enrolled at the recently established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for doctoral studies. Built on the Humboldtian model of higher education, Johns Hopkins was inspired particularly from Germany's historic Heidelberg University in that it was committed to research as a central part of its academic mission. Wilson studied history, political science, German, and other areas. Wilson hoped to become a professor, writing that "a professorship was the only feasible place for me, the only place that would afford leisure for reading and for original work, the only strictly literary berth with an income attached." Wilson spent much of his time at Johns Hopkins writing Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, which grew out of a series of essays in which he examined the workings of the federal government. He received a Ph.D. in history and government from Johns Hopkins in 1886, making him the only U.S. president who has possessed a Ph.D. In early 1885, Houghton Mifflin published Congressional Government, which received a strong reception; one critic called it "the best critical writing on the American constitution which has appeared since the 'Federalist' papers."

In 1885 to 1888, Wilson accepted a teaching position at Bryn Mawr College, a newly established women's college near Philadelphia. Wilson taught ancient Greek and Roman history, American history, political science, and other subjects. There were only 42 students, nearly all of them too passive for his taste. M. Carey Thomas, the dean, was an aggressive feminist and Wilson was in a bitter dispute with the president about his contract. He left as soon as possible, and was not given a farewell.

In 1888, Wilson left Bryn Mawr for Wesleyan University in Connecticut, an elite undergraduate college for men. He coached the football team, founded a debate team, and taught graduate courses in political economy and Western history.

In February 1890, with the help of friends, Wilson was appointed by Princeton to the Chair of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, at an annual salary of $3,000 (equivalent to $90,478 in 2021). He quickly gained a reputation as a compelling speaker. In 1896, Francis Landey Patton announced that the College of New Jersey would henceforth be known as Princeton University; an ambitious program of expansion followed with the name change. In the 1896 presidential election, Wilson rejected Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan as too far to the left. He supported the conservative "Gold Democrat" nominee, John M. Palmer. Wilson's academic reputation continued to grow throughout the 1890s, and he turned down multiple positions elsewhere including at Johns Hopkins and the University of Virginia.

Wilson published several works of history and political science and was a regular contributor to Political Science Quarterly. Wilson's textbook, The State, was widely used in American college courses until the 1920s. In The State, Wilson wrote that governments could legitimately promote the general welfare "by forbidding child labor, by supervising the sanitary conditions of factories, by limiting the employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, by instituting official tests of the purity or the quality of goods sold, by limiting the hours of labor in certain trades, [and] by a hundred and one limitations of the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to out-do the scrupulous and merciful in trade or industry." He also wrote that charity efforts should be removed from the private domain and "made the imperative legal duty of the whole," a position which, according to historian Robert M. Saunders, seemed to indicate that Wilson "was laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state." His third book, Division and Reunion (1893), became a standard university textbook for teaching mid- and late-19th century U.S. history.

In June 1902, Princeton trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president, replacing Patton, whom the trustees perceived to be an inefficient administrator. Wilson aspired, as he told alumni, "to transform thoughtless boys performing tasks into thinking men." He tried to raise admission standards and to replace the "gentleman's C" with serious study. To emphasize the development of expertise, Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements. Students were to meet in groups of six under the guidance of teaching assistants known as preceptors. To fund these new programs, Wilson undertook an ambitious and successful fundraising campaign, convincing alumni such as Moses Taylor Pyne and philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie to donate to the school. Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians. He also worked to keep African Americans out of the school, even as other Ivy League schools were accepting small numbers of black people.

Wilson's efforts to reform Princeton earned him national notoriety, but they also took a toll on his health. In 1906, Wilson awoke to find himself blind in the left eye, the result of a blood clot and hypertension. Modern medical opinion surmises Wilson had had a stroke—he later was diagnosed, as his father had been, with hardening of the arteries. He began to exhibit his father's traits of impatience and intolerance, which would on occasion lead to errors of judgment. When Wilson began vacationing in Bermuda in 1906, he met a socialite, Mary Hulbert Peck. According to biographer August Heckscher II, Wilson's friendship with Peck became the topic of frank discussion between Wilson and his wife, although Wilson historians have not conclusively established there was an affair. Wilson also sent very personal letters to her, which were later used against him by his adversaries.

Having reorganized the school's curriculum and established the preceptorial system, Wilson next attempted to curtail the influence of social elites at Princeton by abolishing the upper-class eating clubs. He proposed moving the students into colleges, also known as quadrangles, but Wilson's Quad Plan was met with fierce opposition from Princeton's alumni. In October 1907, due to the intensity of alumni opposition, the Board of Trustees instructed Wilson to withdraw the Quad Plan. Late in his tenure, Wilson had a confrontation with Andrew Fleming West, dean of the graduate school, and also West's ally ex-President Grover Cleveland, who was a trustee. Wilson wanted to integrate a proposed graduate school building into the campus core, while West preferred a more distant campus site. In 1909, Princeton's board accepted a gift made to the graduate school campaign subject to the graduate school being located off campus.

Wilson became disenchanted with his job due to the resistance to his recommendations, and he began considering a run for office. Prior to the 1908 Democratic National Convention, Wilson dropped hints to some influential players in the Democratic Party of his interest in the ticket. While he had no real expectations of being placed on the ticket, he left instructions that he should not be offered the vice presidential nomination. Party regulars considered his ideas politically as well as geographically detached and fanciful, but the seeds had been sown. In 1956, McGeorge Bundy described Wilson's contribution to Princeton: "Wilson was right in his conviction that Princeton must be more than a wonderfully pleasant and decent home for nice young men; it has been more ever since his time."

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