Alfred de Grazia
Encyclopedia
Catastrophism
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
thesis of Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
.
Education
De Grazia attended the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, receiving an A.B.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
there in 1939, attended law school at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
from 1940–1941, and in 1948 gained a PhD from the University of Chicago in political science. His thesis was published as Public and Republic: Political Representation in America by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York (1951): “A thoroughgoing examination of the meaning of representation, the fundamental element in any definition of republic.” (The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
)
Military activity
In World War II, Alfred de Grazia served in the ranks from private to captain, in artillery, intelligence, and psychological warfarePsychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
. He received training in this then new field at in Washington D.C. and the newly established Camp Ritchie, Maryland.
He served with the 3rd, 5th and 7th US Armies and as a liaison officer with the British 8th Army. He took part in six campaigns, from North Africa to Italy (Battle of Monte Cassino
Battle of Monte Cassino
The Battle of Monte Cassino was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome.In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans...
) to France and Germany, receiving several decorations. He co-authored a report on psychological warfare for the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. By the end of the war, he was Commanding Officer of the Psychological Warfare Propaganda Team attached to the headquarters of the 7th Army. With his fiancée, then wife, journalist Jill Oppenheim, he carried on an extensive wartime correspondence of well over 2,000 lengthy letters, probably one of the largest such correspondences still extant, published on the web under the title “Letters of Love and War.” http://www.grazian-archive.co/love_letters_NEW/letint.html He wrote manuals of psychological warfare for the CIA for the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
and organized and investigated psychological operations for the Department of Defence
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. His reports on psychological operations, now largely declassified, include Target Analysis and Media in Propaganda to Audiences Abroad (1952), Elites Analysis (1955), as well as Psychological Operations in Vietnam (1968).
Academic career
He was assistant professor of political sciencePolitical science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis from 1948 to 1950, before becoming associate professor of political science Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
. He was appointed at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1952 as director of the Committee for Research in the Social Sciences, supported by a Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
grant, but in 1955 he was turned down for academic tenure at Stanford.
From 1959 he was professor of government and social theory at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
In 1957 Alfred de Grazia founded PROD; Political Research: Organization and Design, later renamed The American Behavioral Scientist, an academic journal devoted to the Chicago school
Chicago school (sociology)
In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere...
of behaviorist sociology. In 1965, he created the Universal Reference System, the first computerized reference system in the Social Sciences.
Support for Velikovsky
De Grazia became interested in Immanuel Velikovsky's catastrophism. Following considerable criticism of Velikovsky's claims by the scientific communityScientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
, de Grazia dedicated the whole September 1963 issue of American Behavioral Scientist to the issue. He also published two books on it, The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism and Cosmic Heretics: A Personal History of Attempts to Establish and Resist Theories of Quantavolution and Catastrophe in the Natural and Human Sciences.
Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...
stated:
In a review of the second book, Henry Bauer
Henry Bauer
Henry H. Bauer is an emeritus professor of chemistry and science studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University . He is the author of several books and articles on such topics as the Loch Ness Monster and Immanuel Velikovsky, and is an AIDS denialist...
suggests that de Grazia's efforts may be responsible for Velikovsky's continuing notability.
In both books de Grazia subscribes to the thesis that, in the words of Henry Bauer, "the affair revealed something seriously rotten in the state of science". The review however suggests that the rejection came about…
The review further suggests that "de Grazia does not understand how the content of science is generated" and that his "understanding of science as a social activity is ambiguous."
In the second book, de Grazia upholds Velikovsky's most general claim, that geologically recent (in the last 15,000 years) extraterrestrially-caused catastrophes occurred, and had a significant impact on the Earth and its inhabitants. De Grazia terms this belief 'Quantavolution'.
Later career
In the early 1970s, de Grazia founded the "University of the New World" in Haute-NendazHaute-Nendaz
The resort/commune of Haute-Nendaz is located in the Swiss canton of Valais, comprising the villages of Nendaz, Siviez, and Basse-Nendaz.Haute-Nendaz is situated on a plateau at an altitude between 1300m and 1500m. In winter it forms part of the Four Valleys and is one of the most extensive ski...
Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, as an unstructured alternative to American universities. He invited Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
author William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
to teach at it. In his biography of Burroughs, Ted Morgan described the students that it attracted as "drifters and dropouts on the international hippie circuit"; he suggested that this resulted in a culture clash with the "prim Swiss", and that the university lacked adequate facilities or a sound business model.
In 2002, de Grazia was appointed "visiting professor" in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, Computing and Applications of the University of Bergamo
University of Bergamo
The Bergamo University is a university located in Bergamo, Italy. It was founded in 1968 and is organized in 5 Faculties.-History:The University of Bergamo, founded in 1968, was originally named "The Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature"...
. He has previously been a visiting lecturer at the University of Rome, University of Bombay, University of Istanbul, and University of Gothenburg.
Personal life
Alfred de Grazia was married to Jill Oppenheim (d. 1996) from 1942 to 1971, to Nina Mavridis from 1972 to 1973, and is presently married to Anne-Marie (Ami) Hueber de Grazia (since 1982),a French writer. He had seven children with Jill Oppenheim. One of them, Carl, a musician, died in 2000. One of his daughters, Victoria de Grazia, a Professor of Contemporary History at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, is a member of the American Academy
American Academy
American Academy can refer to:*American Academy in Berlin*Dubai American Academy*American Academy of Larnaca*American Academy in Rome*Üsküdar American Academy...
.
Works
- Michels, Robert, First lectures in political sociology. Translated, with an introduction, by Alfred de Grazia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1949]. And Harper & Row, 1965.
- Public and republic: political representation in America. New York: Knopf, 1951.
- The elements of political science. Series: Borzoi Books in Political Science. New York: Knopf, 1952. And second revised edition: Politics and government: the elements of political science. Vol 1: the element of political science and Vol. 2: Political organization. [1962]. New York: Collier, 1962– . And new revised edition, New York: Free Press London: Collier Macmillan, 1965.
- The Western Public: 1952 and beyond. [A study of political behaviour in the western United States.]. Stanford: Stanford University Press, [1954.]
- The American way of government. National edition. New York : Wiley, [1957]. There is also a "National, State and Local edition".
- Foundation for Voluntary Welfare. Grass roots private welfare : winning essays of the 1956 national awards competition of the Foundation for Voluntary Welfare. Alfred de Grazia, editor. New York: New York University Press, 1957.
- American welfare. New York: New York University Press, 1961 (with Ted Gurr).
- World politics: a study in international relations. Series: College Outline Series. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962.
- Apportionment and representative government. Series: Books that matter. New York : Praeger, c1963
- Essay on apportionment and representative government. Washington : American Enterprise Institute, 1963
- Revolution in teaching: new theory, technology, and curricula. With an introduction by Jerome BrunerJerome BrunerJerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
. New York: Bantam Books, [1964] (Editor, with David A. Sohn). - Universal Reference System. Political science, government, and public policy: an annotated and intensively indexed compilation of significant books, pamphlets, and articles, selected and processed by the Universal Reference System. Prepared under the direction of Alfred De Grazia, general editor, Carl E. Martinson, managing editor, and John B. Simeone, consultant. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Research Pub. Co., 1965–69. Plus nine more volumes on the subjects of: International Affairs; Economic Regulation; Public Policy and the Management of Science; Administrative Management; Comparative Government and Cultures; Legislative Process; Bibliography of Bibliographies in Political Science, Government and Public Policy; Current Events and Problems of Modern Society; Public Opinion, Mass Behavior and Political Psychology; Law, Jurisprudence and Judicial Process.
- Republic in crisis: Congress against the executive force. New York: Federal Legal Publications, [1965]."Republic in Crisis is a significant and important book deserving to be read widely and widely pondered; it ought not to be ignored, lightly dismissed, or put out of hand or sight" in Charles W. Shull, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1966, p;162. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1036190
- Political behavior. Series: Elements of political science; 1. New, revised edition. New York: Free press paperback, 1966.
- Congress, The First Branch of Government, editor, Doubleday – Anchor Books, 1967
- Congress and the Presidency: Their Roles in Modern Times, with Arthur M. Schlesinger, American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
for Public Policy Research, Washington, 1967. - Passage of the Year, Poetry, Quiddity Press, Metron publications, Princeton, N.J., 1967. http://www.grazian-archive.com/poetry/Passage/Passage.htm
- The Behavioral Sciences: Essays in honor of George A. Lundberg, editor, Behavioral Research Council, Great Barrington, Mass;, 1968.
- Old Government, New People: Readings for the New politics, et al., Scott, Foresman, Glenview, Ill., 1971.
- Politics for Better or Worse, Scott, Foresman, Glenview, Ill., 1973.
- Eight Branches of Government: American Government Today, w. Eric Weise, Collegiate Pub., 1975.
- Eight Bads – Eight Goods: The American Contradictions, Doubleday – Anchor Books, 1975.
- Supporting Art and Culture: 1001 Questions on Policy, Lieber-Atherton, New York, 1979.
- A Cloud Over Bhopal: Causes, Consequences, and Constructive Solutions, Kalos Foundation for the India-America Committee for the Bhopal Victims: Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1985.
- The Babe, Child of Boom and Bust in Old Chicago, umbilicus mundi, Quiddity Press, Metron Publications, Princeton, N.J., 1992.http://www.grazian-archive.com/autobiography/babe/BABE_01.htm
- The Student: at Chicago in Hutchin's Hey-day, Quiddity Press, Metron Publications, Princeton N.J., 1991. http://www.grazian-archive.com/autobiography/student/STU1.htm
- The Taste of War: Soldiering in World War II, Quiddity Press, Metron Publications, Princeton, N.J., 1992. http://www.grazian-archive.com/autobiography/taste_of_war/Foreword.htm
- Twentieth Century Fire-Sale, Poetry, Quiddity Press, Metron Publications, Princeton, N.J., 1996. http://www.grazian-archive.com/poetry/Firesale/
- The American State of CanaanCanaanCanaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
– the peaceful, prosperous juncture of IsraelIsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and PalestinePalestinePalestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
as the 51st State of the United States of America, Metron Publications, Princeton, NJ, 2009 LCCN 2008945276. http://americanstateofcanaan.com/home/index.html
About Alfred de Grazia
- Quantavolution - Challenges to Conventional Science, Festschrift in honor of Alfred de Grazia's 90th birthday, compiled and edited by Ian Tresman, Knowledge Computing, UK (2010) ISBN:9786187309161161 & ISBN:9786187309161365