Political scientist Henry Brady is new Goldman School dean
| 02 April 2009
Henry Brady (Peg Skorpinski photo)BERKELEY — Political scientist Henry Brady, a leading scholar of public opinion, political movements, politics, and public policy in the United States, Canada, Russia, Estonia, and other countries, has been appointed dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Brady, the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Berkeley and president-elect of the American Political Science Association, takes over the Goldman School post on July 1. His appointment by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau was approved March 18 by the UC Board of Regents. Professor Michael Nacht stepped down as dean last year to return to teaching; subsequently, John Quigley and Steven Raphael, both public-policy professors, served periods as interim dean.
The Goldman School was founded in 1969 as one of the nation's first graduate programs of its kind. Through the 1970s it led the modern public-policy movement in American universities, and today it is consistently rated as one of the top two public-policy schools in the United States.
The school prepares nearly 200 students every year for careers in national and international policy analysis, program evaluation, management, and planning — most of them in its two-year master's program and about 20 in its Ph.D. program.
"In the last 40 years, policy analysis has become an important force in Washington, Sacramento, and around the world for developing better public policies based upon reasoned analysis," Brady said. "With the new millennium, better public policy has become a global concern with the challenges of global warming, world food and economic security, AIDS in Africa, stopping terrorism, and improving governance."
He noted that the Internet and information technology have changed the ways that public policy is formulated, advanced, and evaluated, while science and engineering have become essential components of public issues such as global warming, homeland security, public infrastructure, and telecommunications policy. Because of that, he said, he sees the Goldman School leading the way in showing how public policy can creatively use the Internet and information technology, how policy analysis can contribute to solving problems around the world, and how public-policy approaches can be integrated into scientific and engineering analysis.
"To do this, the Goldman School will surely continue to improve the techniques of policy analysis, but it will also work to prepare the next generation of policy entrepreneurs who will provide both rational policy analysis and outstanding leadership to make public policy work," he said.
George Breslauer, executive vice chancellor and provost, said Brady is "a giant in the field of political science, a wide-ranging intellect who holds Ph.D.s in both political science and economics, and a proven academic administrator. Chancellor Birgeneau and I are very excited that Henry has agreed to lead the Goldman School of Public Policy to new heights of achievement and influence."
Brady earned his bachelor of science degree in mathematics and physics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont in 1969 and was a master of divinity student for a brief time at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He then worked in and around government in Washington, D.C., for four years in the early 1970s, where his jobs included a stint in the federal Office of Management and Budget. He received a Ph.D. in economics and political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.
He taught at Berkeley from 1978 to 1984, and returned in 1990 after teaching at Harvard and the University of Chicago. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Brady is co-director of the Goldman School's Class of '68 Center on Civility and Democratic Engagement; director of the Survey Research Center, a laboratory for social scientists developing research tools for gathering and compiling data about people's attitudes, behaviors, relationships, and experiences; and director of UC DATA (Data Archive and Technical Assistance).
In the 1990s, Brady led major evaluations of welfare reforms in California and contributed to state welfare-reform legislation. After the 2000 presidential election and the butterfly-ballot snafu in Florida, Brady became an advocate for replacing punch-card ballots. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals briefly halted the 2003 California gubernatorial recall vote in part due to Brady's research on how punch-card systems disproportionately lost votes in minority communities.
A 2003 profile of Brady is on the College of Letters and Science website; he was also the focus of a recent Berkeleyan feature about the Survey Research Center.