Rae, Douglas W. 1939–

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Rae, Douglas W. 1939–

(Doug Rae, Douglas Whiting Rae)

PERSONAL:

Born May 2, 1939, in Indianapolis, IN; son of W. Douglas (a clergyman) and Katherine Rae; married Natalie Bradley, 1965 (divorced, 1972); married Ulla Kasten (an editor), 1973; married Ellen Shuman, 1993; children: (first marriage) Hugh, Katherine, Kimberley. Education: Indiana University, B.A., 1962; University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.A., 1965, Ph.D., 1967. Politics: "Libertarian socialist."

ADDRESSES:

Home—New Haven, CT. Office—Yale School of Management, 135 Prospect St., Box 208200, New Haven, CT 06520-8200. E-mail—douglas.rae@yale.edu.

CAREER:

Political scientist, educator, and writer. University of Vermont, Burlington, instructor in political science, 1964-65; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, assistant professor of political science, 1966-67; Yale University, New Haven, CT, assistant professor of political science, 1967-71, associate professor, 1971-c. 1974, professor, beginning 1974, chairman of the department of political science, 1985-89, Richard Ely Professor of Public Management, 1989-94; City of New Haven, CT, chief administrative officer, 1990-91. Served as a consultant for the Parliament of Spain, the Italian Christian Democratic Party, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Fellow of Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, 1972-73. Member of publications committee of Yale University Press. Also chairman of commission on poverty, New Haven, CT, 1983; member of Youth Planning Council, 1983-86; board member of Inner City Scholarship Fund, 1983-85; trustee of Hamden Hall School, 1984-89; board of directors of Project More, 1985-2003, New Haven Scholarship Fund, 1987, and New Haven Law Club, 2003; commissioner of Public Housing Authority New Haven, 1986-89; president of Tweed-New Haven Airport, 1992; and board chairperson of Leeway, Indiana Aids Care Facility, 1993.

MEMBER:

American Political Science Association, U.S. Soccer Federation, U.S. Tennis Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hurfurth Prize, University of Wisconsin, 1968; Guggenheim fellowship for England, 1969-70; Netherlands Institute Advanced Study fellow, Wasenaar, 1975; American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, Boston, 1983; Elm and Ivy Award for Town-Gown Relations, New Haven, CT, 1984; George Hallett Prize, American Political Science Association.

WRITINGS:

The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1967, 2nd edition, 1971.

(With Michael Taylor) The Analysis of Political Cleavages, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1977.

(Editor, with Theodore J. Eismeier) Public Policy and Public Choice, Sage (Beverly Hills, CA), 1979.

(With Douglas Yates and others) Equalities, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1981.

(Preparer, with Yoshitaka Nishizawa) An Electoral System for Curacao: Consulting Document Prepared for Kousa Komun, Kousa Komun (Curacao, Netherlands Antilles), 1988.

(With Victoriano Ramirez) El sistema electoral espanol: quince anos de experiencia, McGraw-Hill (Madrid, Spain), 1993.

City: Urbanism and Its End, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2003.

(With Paul Bass) Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Kingman Brewster, and the Redemption of a Killer, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to Handbook of Political Science and to political science journals in the United States and abroad. Member of editorial board of American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, and British Journal of Political Science. Editorships at Civic Arts Review and Theoretical Politics. Consulting editor for Random House. Equalitites was translated into Italian; Political Consequences of Electoral Law was translated into Italian and Spanish.

SIDELIGHTS:

Douglas W. Rae is a political scientist who specializes in the political economy of cities, electoral politics, political ideology, and power relations. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books focusing on his areas of expertise. In his book City: Urbanism and Its End, Rae explores the history of the burgeoning American metropolis and then the beginnings of its decline. "The story he tells with deep conviction is how American capitalism first created the vibrant ‘urbanist’ city of a century ago, and then incrementally destroyed it," wrote Harold Henderson in Planning. As his prime example, the author focuses on the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where he served as Chief Administrative Officer in the early 1990s, and on the municipal governments that ran the city. Among the topics he discusses as playing a role in the city's eventual decline are cars, the movement of manufacturing plants to the west, the growth of suburb, the growing lack of civic-mindedness, and the city's reliance on help from the federal government. Janet Ingraham Dwyer, writing in the Library Journal, commented that "this accomplished study is an important addition to regional libraries and urban studies collections." J.R. Laverty wrote in the Australian Journal of Politics and History that Rae "presents a closely argued thesis … illustrated by many informative maps, graphs, plates and tables." Laverty added: "It represents a valuable addition to the literature on the history and politics of a significant and, in many ways, a representative American city."

Rae collaborated with Paul Bass to write Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Kingman Brewster, and the Redemption of a Killer. The book focuses on the political implications of a murder committed in Connecticut in 1969 by four members of the radical political group called the Black Panthers. The victim was a member of the party who was suspected of being an FBI informant. Basing the book largely on interviews with Warren Kimbro, who admitted to shooting the suspected informant and went on to become a model prisoner who turned his life around, the authors detail the murder and then follow the subsequent arrest and trial of nine members of the party accused of participating in the murders. Much of the book also focuses on the outcry of protests by activists, who believed that all but two of the accused were innocent. In turn, the people of Connecticut and New Haven spurned the protestors as the president of Yale University, Kingman Brewster, faced protests, property destruction, and injuries on his campus. "In spite of their [the authors'] nostalgia for the age of protest and for the ‘innocence’ of the era, Bass and Rae never hesitate to show how the radicalism of the left helped make liberalism a dirty word," wrote Weekly Standard contributor David Adesnik. A California Bookwatch contributor commended the authors for "bringing to life the sentiments of all sides."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, October 30, 1982, Francisca Goldsmith, review of Equalities, p. 257.

American Political Science Review, June, 1990, Arend Lijphart, review of The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, 1945-85, p. 481.

Australian Journal of Politics and History, March, 2006, J.R. Laverty, review of City: Urbanism and Its End, p. 166.

California Bookwatch, October, 2006, review of Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Kingman Brewster, and the Redemption of a Killer.

Christian Century, March 23, 2004, Richard Luecke, review of City, p. 36.

Ethics, July, 1985, Amartya Sen, review of Equalities, p. 934.

Futurist, May, 2004, review of City, p. 39.

Historian, summer, 2005, Richard Fusch, review of City.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June, 2006, Mike Savage, review of City, p. 470.

Journal of the American Planning Association, summer, 2004, Jill Grant, "Urban History."

Journal of Economic Literature, March, 2004, review of City, p. 304.

Library Journal, January 1, 1982, review of Equalities, p. 96; November 1, 2003, Janet Ingraham Dwyer, review of City, p. 112.

National Review, December 11, 1981, review of Equalities, p. 1502.

New Republic, May 12, 1982, Brian Barry, review of Equalities, p. 36.

Planning, August-September, 2004, Harold Henderson, "The Death of Urbanism," p. 45.

Publius, fall, 2005, Joseph P. McLaughlin, review of City.

Regional Science & Urban Economics, January, 2005, William Strange, review of City, p. 83.

Social Service Review, March, 2005, Harold Pollack, review of City, p. 186.

Times Literary Supplement, April 13, 2007, Peter Brooks, "Yale Not Burning," review of Murder in the Model City, p. 14.

Urban Geography, April 1, 2005, Joel Rast, review of City, p. 278.

Urban History Review, fall, 2004, Christopher Leo, review of City.

Weekly Standard, December 11, 2006, David Adesnik, "When Bobby Met Eli; Radical Chic on the Streets of New Haven," review of Murder in the Model City.