George Graham

On February 25, George Graham died at the age of 100 in Chapel Hill NC. A faculty member at Princeton University for 28 years, he helped establish the Woodrow Wilson School's professional graduate program in public administration and went on to leadership positions at the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and the National Academy of Public Administration where he served as the first executive director. He later served on the faculty of Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as a professor of public administration, retiring to emeritus status in 1985 at age 80.

James W. Fesler

Professor James Fesler died at age 94 on April 26 in Branford, CT. After a career of public service under FDR and faculty positions at the University of North Carolina and University of Minnesota, Fesler joined the faculty at Yale University in 1951 where he served as department chair for many years as well as the Alfred Cowles Professor of Government. A former eidtor-in-chief of Public Administration Reivew, Fesler was well known for his classic works on administrative decentralization. He remained an active scholar after retirement and had recently published the 3rd edition of his "The Politics of the Administrative Process" (with Don Kettl). Further rememberances of Professor Fesler are planned for ASPA and this newsletter in the future.

Judith Gruber

by
Judith Innes
Professor of City and Regional Planning
University of California Berkeley

With additional notes from Janet Weiss, University of Michigan

Professor Judith E. Gruber, author of Controlling Bureaucracies: Dilemmas in Democratic Governance (University of California Press), died at her home in Berkeley California on June 1, 2005 after a 20-month battle with brain cancer.

Before her illness she was Chair of UC Berkeley's Political Science Department, taught the department's large introductory course on American politics, mentored many students and played a significant leadership role on campus.

Her successor as Chair, Pradeep Chhibber, said "Judy Gruber's intellectual life was devoted to answering a question central to the governance of modern democracies - how can a citizenry make a bureaucracy more responsive to the people? She made the department and Berkeley a better and a special place. She was universally adored by her students for her dedication and commitment, widely admired as an administrator by her colleagues because of her deep sense of fairness, and the policies she initiated made life better for all on campus."

In her book on bureaucracy, Gruber explored the conditions and strategies by which ordinary citizens can exert democratic control over government officials, who have greater resources, knowledge, and expertise. In later work with Janet Weiss, she examined further the relationship between information and public policy, looking at how bureaucracies collect and use information, and how different levels of government used information to influence one another (see, for example, "Reflections on value: Policy-makers evaluate federal information systems," Public Administration Review, 1986, 46, 497-505.)

For the last 15 years, she and I collaborated on major research projects on regional or metropolitan policy in the absence of hierarchies that could coordinate decision making across fragmented urban jurisdictions. We examined a wide range of California cases in growth and environmental management and in transportation and focused particularly on collaborative policy making efforts among agencies and stakeholders. We sought to learn how and why they were established, what they could accomplish, and how they worked.

Her idea that these collaborative efforts produced social, political and intellectual capital has been widely used (Coordinating Growth Management Through Consensus Building: Incentives and the Generation of Social, Political and Intellectual Capital Institute of Urban and Regional Development Working Paper 617, 1994 http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/abstract_wp617.htm ) Two in-depth monographs grew out of this work: Coordinating Growth and Environmental Management through Consensus Building (California Policy Seminar, UC Office of the President http://www.ucop.edu/cprc/innes1.pdf and http://www.ucop.edu/cprc/innes2.pdf; and Bay Area Transportation Decision Making in the Wake of ISTEA (University of California Transportation Center Working Paper UCTC no. 514, http://www.uctc.net/papers/514.pdf). Her most recent article, "Planning Styles in Conflict: The Metropolitan Transportation Commission," was published in the Spring 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Judith Gruber played a major leadership role on the Berkeley campus and led successful efforts to change the University's policies on work and family at Berkeley and throughout the University of California system. She focused on improving child care for faculty and staff, adult dependent care, parenting and pregnancy, and gender issues. In an important sense these initiatives to improve her own institution were her way of translating research into the practice of public administration. In 2003 in recognition of extraordinary service to the university, she was awarded the Faculty Distinguished Service Award as well as the Berkeley Citation, the highest award the campus offers.

Professor Gruber was an exceptional colleague and she loved doing research. She was a rigorous thinker, yet collaborative and inquiring. She was always a pleasure to work with. Working with her permanently changed how I think and improved my own scholarly work. She was also much sought after as a mentor for graduate students, because she was a wonderful teacher, an incisive critic, a warm and supportive friend, and a brilliant political scientist.. She will be very much missed on the Berkeley campus.

Judith Gruber graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University and received a Ph.D. with distinction, from Yale University in 1981. Her dissertation won an American Political Science Association award as the best of the year in public administration.
Gruber is survived by her husband, Joseph Houska, and her two sons, David, 19 and Aaron, 16, of Berkeley, California, and her father, Irving Gruber, of New York City.

Donations in honor of Professor Gruber may be made to the Early Childhood Education Program Annual Fund and sent to the following address:
Early Childhood Education Program Annual Fund, Development & Community Relations, Office of Undergraduate Affairs, 203 Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1530, attn: Judy Gruber Scholarship Fund.