This is the best of our knowledge, a presentation of national productions.
I don't know about you, but one of my favorite classes in school was always American history,
especially stories about the men who have sat in the Oval Office.
It's been a while since we've had a history class here on T-books, so let's go for it.
One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most
influential figures of the 20th century and one of the most enigmatic.
He really invented the 20th century for the United States and in many ways the world.
Today on the best of our knowledge we'll hear from the author of one of the most complete
biographies of the man who, among other things, led the US through World War I.
Then we'll spend an academic minute finding out that size really does matter.
I'm Bob Barry and this is the best of our knowledge.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson as president of the
United States. Now, after more than a decade of research and writing,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has written Wilson, the most personal and penetrating
biography ever written about the 28th president. Wilson is a commanding and revealing portrait of
one of America's most influential yet misunderstood presidents. The best of our knowledge is Joe Donohue
spoke to Berg about what drew him to write about Woodrow Wilson.
Well, actually this goes back to my teenage years when I read a book on Wilson and became rather
intrigued by him and I was always sort of interested in the fact that he always seemed like a tragic
idealist and I could never really find a book that told me much about him as a man because he
had such an academic life. There were so many books written on a very academic level and I wanted
to find out more about what made Woodrow Wilson tick and because he really, I think, invented the
20th century for the United States and in many ways the world. When you look at those early years,
how impressive is his upbringing? Well, I think his upbringing made a great impression upon him. He
being the son and the grandson and great grandson of Presbyterian ministers. So his life was infused
not just with religion but with a really deep sense of morality and I think we see that coming out
throughout Woodrow Wilson's life during his academic years as a real leader in higher education
in this country but certainly in his presidency on the national and international stages.
And taking on this particular president, I'm curious as to whether the portrait that we have of
this stoic figure sometimes ever got in the way of what you were doing or challenged you in some
way of finding out about this man. Well, I think you've put your finger on the great challenge for
me. In fact, and I still think most people, those who even know who Woodrow Wilson is, I think the
first image that leaps to mind is the one you painted of the stoic or the very doer Scottish
Presbyterian ministers son. And that is not who he was. He was a deeply emotional, romantic,
passionate man and nobody has ever seen this side of him, this rather human side of him.
And I think that really informed so much of what he did in his presidency because he really had
this emotionally turbulent presidency both in his personal life and certainly would happen
on the world stage. Sok a little bit about that presidency in his first term, the new freedom.
Give us a sense of the new freedom and how this very progressive agenda was advanced in this country.
Yes, the new freedom was the nickname given to the Wilson program, which was largely an
economic new freedom. And that's what the program was basically about. There was a theme that runs
throughout Wilson's life, even when he was a student at Princeton and then when he became the
president of Princeton, which had to do with leveling the playing field. He felt that part of being
an American was being able to achieve anything you wanted and that you should have the same
advantages that any rich person had. So as a result of that, so many of the actions, so much of
the legislation that he proposed for the new freedom was toward that end of leveling the playing field.
It really starts with his creating the Federal Reserve system in fact, which was a way of taking
some power away from a handful of East Coast banks and basically spreading economic influence
around the rest of the country. But then the other things that come along involve the Federal Trade
Commission loans for agriculture and so forth, great educational boosts. All these things were
very much on Wilson's mind and on his plate. You think about and you write about this in the book
about obviously World War I breaks out in Europe during the second year in office and this is his
rallying cry and re-election campaign for a long time of Wilson kept us out of war. Exactly.
And the irony of course is shortly after his re-election he was urging the country to get into
the war. Wilson really did try to keep us out of the war as long as possible even though many
Republicans were, Teddy Roosevelt, chief among them, was urging us to get into the war from the very
beginning. You know, one has to remember and I tried to paint this in my portrait of Wilson
that he grew up in the South during the Civil War. He saw the devastation of the South. He saw
what war does. He saw how it destroys an economy, how it kills people, how it just tears lives apart.
And so as a result of that, he really did everything he could. He dug every diplomatic channel he
possibly could to keep us out of the war and he was successful for three years. But finally by 1917,
the Germans had torpedoed so many ships that had gone down taking American lives. They had really
turned their backs on Wilson's repeated diplomatic efforts so many times that it really did
behooves us to go to war. So you sort of see in 1916 into 1917 Wilson's rhetoric is changing and
he's really urging the country to mobilize not just in terms of building material but also in our
morale and getting us ready to go to war such that by April of 1917 a month after his second
inauguration he appears before the United States Congress and he gave one of the most important
speeches well not just of his life but really of the 20th century in which he said the world must
be made safe for democracy. And in so saying that he really introduced a new moral component
into American foreign policy that we observed to this day. His 14 points, one of those points being
the League of Nations which was to be an international parliament intended to prevent the outbreak of
any future wars. This was something he was unable to to get through. Unfortunately he was
unable to realize that it was the 14th point and it is the real reason Wilson led us into the war.
He really believed rule war one could have been the war to end all wars. He believed that
had a League of Nations existed in 1914 when the first shots were fired in Europe. Had a League
existed he believed they could have prevented that war from breaking out that the leaders of the
world could have all sat down at a table and hashed out their problems and come up with a diplomatic
solution to things. So he came back to America after having been gone for six months he the
president. This is just so hard to fathom today that the president of the United States left the
country for six months went to Paris to negotiate the peace and he returned where he had to face
basically part of the Constitution which says only the Senate has the power to ratify treaties.
So even though Wilson had drawn up this rather magnificent document which included a League of
Nations the Senate was the one who had to approve it. So Wilson really had his work cut out for him
at that point because he returned to an extremely hostile Republican Senate. I'm curious about the
background you mentioned his time as president of Princeton University. How does a president of a
university become a national figure? You've really asked the big question about Wilson's life because
Woodrow Wilson had the most meteoric rise in American history. Imagine in late 1910 in October of
1910 he is still the president of a small old male college in the middle of New Jersey and within two
years in the election of 1912 he's elected president of the United States and he did that in a unique
fashion. No other president has done what Wilson did and that is he became president by becoming a
public intellectual. He did it through his books he did it through speeches on public policy and so
and in that period he did become governor of New Jersey for a very short time and what happened
when he was governor of New Jersey was he had been hand picked by the democratic machine in the
most corrupt state in the union and he made no promises to that machine but once he became governor
of New Jersey he kicked the machine out he literally dismantled them and now everybody in the
United States was turning toward New Jersey and saying who is this man who who broke the New Jersey
machine I mean that was just extraordinary so he did it with a combination of his public
intellectualism and really sharp elbows as a politician. Did he as time as a student at Princeton
ultimately help him as president? I think there's no question that is that is Princeton years
helped him as president because early on he became a student not just of American history but really
of American politics and shortly after he graduated he studied law and then he also got a PhD in
in political science he's our only president with a doctorate degree and Wilson wrote a dozen books
most of them on either American history or on political science. You know political science was a
was a brand new area at the end of the 19th century and Wilson became one of the very first practitioners of it.
Still to come Joe Donahue's conversation with A. Scott Berg about his new biography of Woodrow Wilson
continues that's next on the best of our knowledge.
Got any questions or comments about the best of our knowledge send them in our email address is
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be sure to ask for the best of our knowledge number 1201
this is the best of our knowledge i'm Bob Barrett our guest today is Pulitzer prize winning
author A. Scott Berg who is talking to the best of our knowledge is Joe Donahue about his new
biography of Woodrow Wilson the 28th president of the United States you spoke a few moments ago about
the the tribulations of his of his time as president both professionally and personally we we've
spoken of course about many of the things that that happened politically personally the death of
his first wife Ellen during his first time during his first term in office what effect did that
ultimately have on him do you think well it was quite devastating on him and in fact this was
this was one of the things i tried to bring out in my book is what a romantic and passionate
figure he was there are thousands of love letters between him and his wife Ellen while he was
quarking urban and even during their marriage when he often traveled to give speeches or to teach
at other colleges and so forth and they were so joined they were so married and here she is in
the white house little more than a year and she dies of kidney failure and he was distraught there
was a period where he could barely get out of bed and it was only this very strong
presbyterian sense of duty that got him to carry on so that had a very deep effect
and then within the course of the next year he met a young widow in Washington DC whom he
rather privately courted and then married her and this you know in some ways changed history too
because this was was something that was was not seen and and was was was not often accepted of being
remarried so quickly exactly right i mean all his political advisors said oh you can't do this
mr. president i mean this this will have a devastating effect on you politically you'll never get
reelected if you do this and it was almost like the Duke of Windsor you know i mean he really did
it to marry the woman he loved and so he did and of course it had no political effect
and it's quite ironic because she was not an especially educated woman and she certainly was not
political but Wilson almost from the very first day they married began to include him in
in all the work he was doing he shared his memorandum with her he began to even bring her to
certain political meetings as though he's trying to educate her for something and the irony is
that later on in the administration he would suffer from a stroke and in some ways
Mrs. Wilson the second Mrs. Wilson Edith would become the first female president of the United
States you do talk about the the rumors of him having an affair during his first marriage
i do talk about that because they were much talked about in wilson's day there were these rumors
of his having met a woman in bermuda where he used to vacation back when he was still a college
president he knew this woman through well through the rest of his life i came to discover that
the affair actually did not exist that it was a a very deep friendship although i think it was
a little like president jimmy Carter talking about lust in one's heart i think there was that
occasion of sin in in wouldrow wilson's life in which i think there was not a physical affair but
there certainly was for a moment an emotional affair and it had some effect on his marriage
Mrs. Wilson the first Mrs. Wilson said it was the only sadness in their marriage but she believed
that there had not been an actual affair and it was sort of interesting when you know there were
so many rumors about it but teddy Roosevelt who ran against wilson said we don't even want to talk
about this affair because it only makes wilson sound more interesting than teddy Roosevelt
probably actually was there's so many fascinating aspects to his life and to his career and one
of the ones i found on the book to to be most fascinating was his his friendship and his
ultimate dependence on was brand i's brand i's really is a fascinating figure not just in american
history but as you point out certainly in the life of wouldrow wilson he was largely the architect
of the new freedom before wilson ran for the presidency Lewis brand i's uh who was called the
people's lawyer really was a big part of wilson's thinking and spent a lot of time with wilson
and then of course Wilson put brand i's on the supreme court which was a very bold move
because Lewis brand i's was the first Jew to be appointed to the court and this was very
difficult this was really almost something of a scandal and really the first public hearing
on a supreme court nominee was brand i's and you could see that it dragged on for so long
largely because of anti-semitism and little more it was his second court pick was he
concerned about it the first time around wilson would have liked to have appointed him that first
time around and there were so many other things going on i think he felt it's not a fight i can
afford to fight right now i do as we wrap up i do want to mention the op-ed that you wrote for
the new york times recently you draw parallels between the wilson presidency and the presidency
of barok obama what parallels do you see well i see a number of them both personally and professionally
the personal parallels are here are two highly intellectual presidents who have written a lot
they are both constitutional scholars both obama and wilson were considered sort of cool and a
loop what i tried to point out also however is that wilson and obama are quite different i don't think
obama uses all the political tools that wilson did and the point of my op-ed was to recommend that he
do exactly that that he have more sustained dialogue between the white house and the congress
would real wilson believe that the executive branch and the legislative branch should co-operate
and i mean that quite literally that they should co-operate the government and so as a result of that
wilson became the first one to go back to congress to deliver state of the union addresses
in person which presidents hadn't done for over a hundred years he called joint sessions of congress
all the time whenever he had an important measure and he sat in a little room in the congress called
the president's room which is just a small room with a desk and a few chairs where the president could
basically lobby he could twist arms he could grab senators as they were walking out of off of the
senate floor the whole point of my op-ed was to encourage obama to do just that to rip a page out of
the wilson playbook again the name of a scott burgs new book is simply wilson he spoke with the best
of our knowledge is joe donny if evolution is taught us anything it's this size really does
matter that's the topic of today's academic minute welcome to the academic minute i'm lind
pascarella president amat holiote college many mammalian species have evolved into extraordinary
size over the past 60 million years jordan okey postdoctoral fellow in the school of earth and
space exploration at arizona state university outlines a theory of why some species have grown so
large the diversity of life is largely a matter of body size which can vary by over 24 orders of
magnitude and mass to put this in perspective the earth is almost 23 orders of magnitude larger than
an adult human my research seeks to understand the underlying laws that govern the evolution and
ecology of this diversity specifically what factors influence the rate of evolution of body size
and what influences the maximum body size evolved by a lineage collaborating with other scientists
i developed a new quantitative theory from the observation that some organisms live fast and die
young while others take their time and mature much more slowly since larger organisms tend to
live longer than smaller organisms much of the diversity among species can be attributed to body
size but we show that once these effects are accounted for important residual variation remains
the variation along this continuum reflects differences in the lifestyles and ecological niches of
species the theory demonstrates that lineage is at the fast end of this continuum can more quickly
evolve larger sizes and can evolve larger maximum sizes than lineage is at the slow end our theory
was well supported by data called from fossil records and mammals over the last 70 million years
the groups and mammals at the fast end of the lifestyle continuum such as whales evolve larger
maximum body sizes they also evolve these maximum sizes more quickly than groups at the slow end
such as primates by uncovering a new law of nature this work provides insight into patterns
of recovery from mass extinction events and the potential for modern species to adapt to climate change
that was Jordan Oki of Arizona State University you can find this other segments and
more information about the professors at academicminute.org production support for the academic minute
comes from Newman's own foundation in partnership with Mount Holyoke College
that's all the time we have for this week's program if you'd like to listen again join us
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knowledge at www.wamc.org i'm Bob Barrett be sure to join us next time for another edition of the
Best of Our Knowledge Bob Barrett is producer of the Best of Our Knowledge Dr. Alan Shartock is
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