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Robertson Hall, which houses the Woodrow Wilson School.

The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (often truncated to Woodrow Wilson School or abbreviated WWS; known as "Woody Woo" in campus slang) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948. It has three graduate degree programs: masters' degrees (in the M.P.A. and M.P.P. programs), and doctoral degrees.

The School of Public and International Affairs, as it was originally named, was founded at Princeton in 1930, created in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson's interest in preparing students for leadership in public and international affairs. Beginning in September 2005, the Woodrow Wilson School celebrates 75 years of preparing talented individuals for careers in the service of the nation and the world.

The School's initial venture was an interdisciplinary program for undergraduates in Princeton's liberal arts college, although a graduate professional program was planned from the beginning.

According to the School's first catalog from February 1930, "Throughout its history the sons of Princeton have been prominent in the service of the nation--statesmen, soldiers, judges, diplomats, men of science and men of letters, leaders of religious thought at home and abroad. It was this background which prompted Woodrow Wilson in 1896 to define the University's destiny as: 'Princeton in the Nation's Service'...Upon this foundation Princeton has established the School of Public and International Affairs which will...prepare [its students] for the new movement in national and world affairs."

The graduate professional program was added in 1948. That same year the School was renamed to honor Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, who was a member of Princeton's Class of 1879, governor of the State of New Jersey, and the 13th president of Princeton University. The phrase "Princeton in the Nation's Service" was the theme of two speeches Wilson gave at the University, first during its sesquicentennial celebration in 1896, and again at his inauguration as the University's president in 1902.

In the 1990s, the motto was expanded by then-president Harold T. Shapiro to read "Princeton in the Nation's Service, and in the Service of All Nations." It is a concept that Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson School regard as an educational mission.

In 1961, Charles '26 and Marie Robertson provided a historic gift to expand and strengthen the graduate school as a place where men (and later women) dedicated to public service could obtain the knowledge and skills that would qualify them for careers in government service, particularly in the areas of international relations and affairs, upon graduation or later in their careers. In doing so, the Robertsons hoped to reach a larger ultimate objective: to strengthen the government of the United States and increase its "ability and determination to defend and extend freedom throughout the world." The gift and the Foundation it funded were initially anonymous: the "X Foundation" provided the means to build Robertson Hall, greatly expand the number of graduate students in the M.P.A., M.P.P., and Ph.D. programs, and build a world-class faculty in multiple disciplines.

Today, the School educates a wide range of students from the U.S. and around the world who seek to apply their knowledge and skills to the solution of vital public problems in both the domestic and international realms. It boasts a faculty of superb scholars and practitioners in disciplines that include politics, economics, sociology, psychology, physics, molecular biology, and geosciences, who, individually and as members of a variety of world-class research centers and programs, react to and influence the international and domestic environment through policy research, which in turn adds depth and vitality to the teaching program.

The Woodrow Wilson School is the only selective undergraduate major at Princeton. Every year, about 180 second-semester sophomores apply to the Wilson School; 90 are admitted.

A $35 million grant from Charles and Marie Robertson, the owners of the A&P grocery chain, funded the construction of the school's current home in Robertson Hall designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Their donation provided the base of its endowment, which stands at roughly $558 million. The heirs of the Robertsons are presently engaged in a lawsuit with the University over control of that endowment. The Robertsons claim that the school has not met its mission of preparing students for government service, as too few of its graduates take positions in government, that the University has improperly attempted to commingle the WWS endowment with the University endowment, and that WWS endowment funds were used to fund non-WWS ventures --- the construction of Wallace Hall, for instance, which houses the WWS offices and the WWS library, along with unrelated offices for the Department of Sociology.

A preliminary ruling has been issued on the case granting the Robertson Foundation the ability to spend realized gains like other charities, overturning the Robertsons heirs' attempts to sever the endowment from University control[1]. The ruling on the status of the University as the sole beneficiary of the Foundation will be made after the trial is completed. Regarding the issue on whether or not the University has failed to achieve the original missions of the Robertson Foundation, Judge Shuster expressed reservations, declaring that the court "is not satisfied, at this stage in the litigation, that there has been a sufficient showing of a legal or practical impediment to the accomplishment of the Foundation's mission as set forth in the Foundation's Certificate of Incorporation."[2]

• Samuel Alito, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
• Bob Abernethy, television journalist
• Kit Bond, U.S. Senator from and former Governor of Missouri
• Joshua B. Bolten, White House Chief of Staff and former Director of Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush
• Bill Bradley, U.S. Senator
• Brendan Byrne, former Governor of New Jersey
• Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense
• Barbara Cassani, founder of Go Fly and leader of London's successful olympic bid.
• Steven Colloton, judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• Edward F. Cox, lawyer
• Ted Cruz, Solicitor General of Texas
• Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana
• Joschka Fischer, former Foreign Minister of Germany
• Bill Frist, U.S. Senate Majority Leader and Senator from Tennessee
• Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, former U.S. Attorney General
• Wendy Kopp, founder, Teach for America
• Lawrence Kudlow, political commentator
• Anthony Lake, U.S. National Security Advisor (1993-1997)
• David Madden, 19 time champion on the television game show Jeopardy!
• Mike McCurry, press secretary to President Bill Clinton
• Jeff Merkley, Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives
• Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter covering the Valerie Plame affair
• Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army General, commander of Multi-National Force - Iraq
• Stuart J. Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court
• Graham Richard, mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana
• Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU
• William Rusher, publisher, National Review
• Paul Sarbanes, U.S. Senator from Maryland
• George P. Shultz, Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor
• Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School
• Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York
• Bob Taft, former Governor of Ohio
• Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987)

• WWS official
• WWS history
• Article on the Robertson lawsuit from the Daily Princetonian
• Website on the Lawsuit