Wolfe, Alan S.
WOLFE, ALAN S.
WOLFE, ALAN S. (1942– ), U.S. scholar of political science. Born in Philadelphia, Wolfe received his bachelor's degree from Temple University in 1963. He did graduate work in political science at Vanderbilt University and in 1967 received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1966 to 1968 he was an assistant professor of political science at Douglass College, and from 1968 to 1970 was assistant professor at the College of Old Westbury of the State University of New York. Wolfe taught as a visiting scholar at several universities, including Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1979 he joined the faculty of Queens College as an associate professor, later becoming a full professor of sociology.
In 1991 Wolfe was named the dean of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science and the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the New School for Social Research. In 1993 he joined Boston University as university professor and professor of sociology and political science. He was named the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College in 1999, also holding an appointment as professor of political science.
A contributing editor of The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly, Wolfe also wrote for Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and Commonweal. He wrote America's Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (1981), in which he argues that differences between the Republican and Democratic parties have diminished as the demands of economics have become paramount. His works One Nation, After All (1998) and Moral Freedom: The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice (2001) were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His many other works include The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Practice Our Faith (2003), An Intellectual in Public (2003), and Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It (2005).
Wolfe received numerous grants and awards, including grants from the Russell Sage Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the Lilly Endowment. He was the George Herbert Walker Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2004, and he received the Award for Public Understanding of Sociology from the American Sociological Association in 2001. He served as an advisor to President Bill Clinton for the State of the Union Address in 1995.
[Dorothy Bauhoff (2nd ed.)]