At age 93, William H. Young died at his home in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 3, 2006. His long career was distinguished for contributions not only to political science and to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on whose faculty he served for 36 years, but also to Wisconsin state government, international educational development, particularly in Asia, and several Madison organizations on whose boards he remained an active member for more than two decades after his academic retirement in 1983. Bill was wise and prudent, and, as I well knew from our 35 years as faculty colleagues, his advice was judicious and generously provided.
Born in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, on October 7, 1912, Young received his B.A. (1933) and M.A. (1937) from the University of Pittsburgh, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (1941). He taught political science at the University of Pennsylvania, before World War II and again in 1946–1947 (as an assistant professor), after serving in the U. S. Army's Adjutant General's Office. He returned to Madison as an associate professor of political science in 1947.
Although Young was soon drawn into state and university administration, he nevertheless had a substantial academic record at Wisconsin. He authored journal articles on city government and the American state governorship, and in the 1950s and 1960s he revised three successive editions of a long-established American government textbook of which Frederic Ogg, in the Wisconsin department, had been the principal author until his death. Young also participated in a pioneering study of presidential nominating politics in 1952. His specialized interest in the presidency led him to develop a course on the subject that he continued to teach for many years. In the 1950s, he lectured and managed the department's large introductory course in American government. And, as a measure of his intellectual versatility, Young taught a year-long graduate course in the history of political thought until the department recruited political philosophy specialists.
Impressive too were Young's contributions to the department's administration and staffing. He served as chair for eight crucial years, 1952–1960, and his leadership, judgment, and skill played a major part in establishing the foundations for the department's development during the expansionist years that followed. In the slow growth years of the mid-1950s, with limited funding, Young made the most of available resources by encouraging the recruitment and retention of the ablest and most promising new faculty members. He never ducked a tough decision, and persuaded most of us to agree. On the positive side, he was similarly effective. A striking example was his management of the appointment of the department's first woman, Clara Penniman, whose merits he and some of the rest of us knew from her student years at Wisconsin before she went to Minnesota for her Ph.D. The problem was a temporary shortage of department funds, and Young solved that by arranging a joint appointment in the University's Extension Division for a few years until a full-time department position became available. No judgment was more fully vindicated by subsequent accomplishments: Clara became a leading scholar in her field of state tax administration and the first woman to chair a major university's political science department.
Nor was Young without influence as a teacher. What he offered is captured in the testimony of his best-known Ph.D. student, Frank Sorauf:
“His canniness and hard-headed realism about the world of politics were very important ingredients in my education as a political scientist. Bill also convinced me that political science often ignored a major source of data: the experiences and recollections of political actors of all kinds and that the data could be collected by field interviewing. Beginning with my dissertation written under Bill's supervision, all of my research projects included a substantial field interviewing component. I believe it enriched my work, and it also added adventure and excitement to the business of research.”
Though the “hard-headed realism” may have been partly a natural gift, it was no doubt enhanced by considerable administrative experience. Much of that experience was in budgeting at the Pentagon during World War II, and in state and university government in the postwar years. On leave from the University, in 1949–1951 Young was a chief assistant in the state administration of Governor Oscar Rennebohm. And, back in his University departmental role, Young also served as budgetary assistant to the University president, 1953–1963, and patent officer for the University, 1963–1970.
From 1967 to 1983, Young headed the University's Center for Development. Begun with an $800,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, the Center provided graduate education in administration for mid-level civil servants from developing nations and for American students interested in careers in development or technical cooperation. Students came from many parts of the world, especially from Asia, where Young frequently traveled, before and after his formal retirement, and where he had many friends among former students and associates.
Among Young's numerous services, extending into retirement years, was membership on the Board of Directors of the Rennebohm Foundation (one of Madison's major private foundations), the Board of Directors of the Hilldale Corporation (formed to help the University benefit from the proceeds of a shopping center built on what had been University land), and the Board of Trustees of Edgewood College (a Catholic college in Madison). In response to his service to that College's building program, Edgewood created the William H. Young Center for Global Studies and awarded him an honorary degree (to add to one previously received from the University of Pittsburgh). Young was also devoted to the development of research and training programs in the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin.
Living alone after the death of his wife Sally in 1982, Bill had many friends with whom he shared an enjoyment of opera, books, politics, and story-telling. He is survived by his son Jeffrey, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, and his daughter Eleanor Oppriecht of Rio, Wisconsin, seven grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren.
