-
The Unappreciated Legacy: Wilson, Princeton, and the Ideal of the American State
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The Unappreciated Legacy Wilson, Princeton, and the Ideal of the American State Mark R. Nemec D espite its interdisciplinary ambitions, this essay remains a product of its disciplinary home, political science, and its subfield, American political development. American political development posits that three major forces drive public policy and political action: interests (individual and collective), institutions (governmental and societal), and ideas (public and private). At the confluence of the later two, institutions and ideas, my larger work on universities and the leaders who guided them has resided.∞ In assessing Woodrow Wilson’s impact upon the development of American higher education and its relationship to the American state, one is reminded of Emerson’s declaration that ‘‘an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.’’≤ While social scientists and historians might quibble about the specific implications of this assertion, it provides a useful touchstone for our broader consideration of Wilson’s legacy. Upon first glance, Wilson’s time as academic executive and political leader can suggest a pall as much as a shadow. While guiding Princeton, Wilson experienced several early successes.≥ But the latter half of his tenure was also marked by some significant disappointments, most notably in attempting to reform campus intellectual life and to develop a first-class graduate school at the heart of the campus.∂ After a number of pitched battles (primarily with Dean Andrew Fleming West and his allies), Wilson’s tenure came to an ‘‘abrupt and acrimonious end.’’∑ In the White House, Wilson undertook even grander initiatives to reform civil service and the party system. Similar to his tenure in academia, however, his e√orts often fell short. Seeking to reform both the contemporary practice and percep- 186 Mark R. Nemec tion of public administration, he struggled to achieve his full vision. Speci fically, in regard to governmental structure, Wilson ‘‘could do little to secure the integrity of the Civil Service Commission or the professional ideal,’’ and he ‘‘failed to place relations between party and bureaucracy on a new plane. His programmatic achievements remained personal and circumstantial and left this basic structural tension between party power and administrative modernization unresolved.’’∏ More broadly in the realm of public opinion, Wilson found that ‘‘the complexity and subtly of the ideas . . . [he] had developed did not lend themselves to e√ective translation into political speech intended for a general public audience, or to the political practice necessary for governing the diverse, contentious, ‘multiform’ American polity.’’π These assessments are typical of institutional and policy scholars in the field of American political development. A common theme in their appraisal of Wilson’s academic and political leadership is that his middling execution inhibited his ability to achieve his lofty ambitions. At the same time, Wilson’s steady progression from university president to governor to chief executive of the United States is rightly recounted as representing a high point for the ‘‘collegiate ideal.’’∫ Whatever his shortcomings in execution, through his biography (professor, university administrator , political leader) and his progressive philosophy, Wilson has come to embody the era’s movement to apply knowledge to public a√airs. Yet, to view Wilson’s presidency at Princeton as primarily a preamble to his time as governor of New Jersey and later president of the United States is to miss the fact that his tenures connect not only personally but institutionally as well. In other words, although Wilson’s legacy at individual postings may have been marked by narrow successes, Wilson’s shadow is longer, his impact greater, if we view it in the context of advancing higher education’s place within, as well as support of, one larger institution, the modern American state. Fundamental to our evaluation of Wilson’s legacy is that he significantly advanced the idea of a burgeoning national state and an emerging university closely connected to it. In the long evolution of political development and state building, defining rhetorical and ideological gains is as influential as short-term organizational and policy victories. This is especially true in the American context, where political ideas are essential to our national [3.138.172.0] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 23:14 GMT) The Unappreciated Legacy 187 conceit. As political theorist Eldon Eisenach noted, ‘‘Our only source of a common American identity is political; our fundamental political ideas are largely constitutive of our personal ideas as Americans. If the moral and intellectual integrity of our most basic political ideas is in doubt, so, too are its ideological products...