Myron Weiner (11 March 1931 – 3 June 1999) was an American
political scientist
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
and renowned scholar of India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.
Education and career
Weiner was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
in 1931. He received a BSS degree from the
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...
in 1951 and MA and PhD degrees from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
in 1953 and 1955. He taught at Princeton and the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
before coming to
MIT as an associate professor in 1961, where he worked for 38 years before retiring in April 1999. He was promoted to the rank of full professor in 1965 and served as head of the Department of Political Science From 1974-77. He was named the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT in 1977. He was also director of MIT's Center for International Studies from 1987–92, and acting director in 1995-96.
"Myron Weiner was a brilliant scholar, and an inspiring teacher and colleague, who had a large impact on the world, in particular on the lives of children," said Professor
Joshua Cohen, then-head of the MIT Department of Political Science.
Professor Weiner served as a consultant to the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...
, the
Agency for International Development, the
US State Department, and the
U.S. National Security Council. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
, and was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
,
Council on Foreign Relations, and a past president of the New England Association of Asian Studies. He held visiting appointments at
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
's
Balliol College,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
,
Delhi University,
Hebrew University and the
University of Paris
The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
. Dr. Weiner was chair of the External Research and Advisory Committee of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, l ...
from 1996 until his death.
Research and publications
He was the author or editor of 32 scholarly books and numerous
peer-reviewed articles. His most recent research involved three projects: child labor and education policy in India and other developing countries; comparing immigration, refugees and citizenship policies in Japan, Germany, South Africa and the USA; and analyzing the causes and effects of migration and refugee flows.
Dr. Weiner's 1991 book ''The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in Comparative Perspective'' (Princeton University Press, 4th ed., ) had a major impact in Indian debates on how to end child labor, and was perhaps his ''
magnum opus''. "It was his crowning achievement. It made all of us think about the question of illiteracy," according to
Jagdish Bhagwati, a
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
economist and colleague since the mid-1950s. Dr. Bhagwati said the book prompted economists to recommend more investments in education for the poor, and policies to help poor people recognize education as a valuable investment.
Prior to his book, the prevailing view of many was that countries like India were too poor to do much about child labor or access to education by the poor, because parents needed working-children to support the family and only when incomes rose would this change. Using impassive data and scholarly language, Weiner's work reversed the causal direction, showing that historically (e.g. in Scotland) and cross-nationally (e.g. in even-poorer Africa and China), the reforms which expanded education preceded higher incomes. The 1991 book showed how India had fared worse on illiteracy and education than
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. Joshua Cohen said the book had a profound impact in India: "Here was a work, written by a friend of India, which presented irrefutable facts. It presented comparative statistics, and while it raised moral issues, it was not written as a moral diatribe."
His contrarian views sometimes caused controversy, e.g., showing that
democratization can exacerbate
ethnic conflict, or the perverse effects of well-intentioned
affirmative-action or
child labor policie
With
Samuel P. Huntington and
Lucian Pye, he was a co-founder and co-director for many years of the Harvard-MIT
Joint Seminar on Political Development (JOSPOD) research project. Critics associated him, fairly or not, with the
Modernization school of thought, and with certain US policies during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
.
His most recent books were ''The Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and to Human Rights'' (HarperCollins, 1995 ); ''Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and US Policy'' (co-editor, W. Norton, 1995); ''The New Geopolitics of Central Asia and its Borderlands'' (co-editor, Indiana University Press, 1994); ''The State and Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan'' (co-editor, Syracuse University Press, 1994); and ''International Migration and Security'' (editor, Westview Press, 1993).
Other books include ''Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India'' (Princeton Univ Pr 1978 ; reprinted 1988 by Oxford University Press
).
Among his many former students are
Baldev Raj Nayar,
Ashutosh Varshney, and
Steven Wilkinson.
Personal life
Weiner died of brain cancer on June 3, 1999, at his home in Moretown, Vermont, at age 68. He was married to
Sheila Leiman Weiner. They had two children, Saul Weiner of
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
and a daughter, Beth Weiner Datskovsky, of
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community and census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania and borders the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route ...
.
References
Bibliography
* "Myron Weiner, 68, Expert on Child Labor in Developing Lands," by Michael T. Kaufman, ''New York Times'', June 9, 199
* "Professor of Political Science Myron Weiner is dead at age 68," ''MIT Tech Talk'', 9 June 199
* ''Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America'', by Nils Gilman (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
* "CIS Turns 60: An Interview with Three Directors," ''Précis'' Spring 2011, MIT Center for International Studie
* ''India and the politics of developing countries: essays in memory of Myron Weiner'', by Myron Weiner and Ashutosh Varshney (Sage Publications, 2004 ).
External links
*
Myron Weiner papersat Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, Cambridge, MA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiner, Myron
1931 births
1999 deaths
Princeton University alumni
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Princeton University faculty
20th-century American political scientists