| Abstract: | Aaron Wildavsky, a founder and president of the California Association of Scholars, died on September 4, at the much too early age of 63. Professor Wildavsky's life exemplified a total commitment to the university, and his achievements were prodigious. He authored or edited, alone or with colleagues, some three dozen books, and he wrote hundreds of articles. In the thirty years he spent at Berkeley, he was at various times chairman of the Department of Political Science and founding Dean of the Graduate School of Public Policy. He also found time to serve as president of the American Political Science Association and the Policy Studies Association, and to be active in myriad other organizations. When Yale, where he had earned his doctorate in 1959, earlier this year made him an honorary Doctor of Social Science, it stated, “You have improved every institution with which you have been associated.” Aaron Wildavsky was profoundly concerned about the future of the university, the institution that he loved so much and served so well. At the Fourth National Conference of the NAS, held in San Francisco this past April, he expressed his fears about the effect of politically correct faculty hiring practices on the long-range future of education. Academic Questions here reproduces his remarks in the hope—one that, in fact, he shared—that for once his predictions will be proved wrong. |
