Woodrow Wilson remains one of the most complicated figures ever to occupy the White House, praised as a visionary and condemned as a regressor, often in the same sentence. He was the only American president to hold a Ph.D., a former university president who believed the nation could be guided, instructed, and improved if only it understood itself properly. That belief reshaped the American state, modernized the economy, and carried the United States onto the world stage. It also justified segregation at home, repression during wartime, and a moral certainty that left little room for dissent.