December 9, 1892

Woodrow Wilson, Professor of Politics and Jurisprudence, Princeton University, lectured in the Chapel on “Democracy.” “A large number of students,” reported The Vassar Miscellany, “heard and enjoyed” his proposition that democracy’s “fundamental idea is that the people are sovereign.” Admitting that “history shows that the concurrence of majorities does not always express the general will,” Wilson proposed, “by the sovereignty of the people…we mean tha tthe people agree to be governed by individuals chosen from themselves; the people govern well when they use discrimination in this choice.”