James Q. Wilson
James Quinn Wilson, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, taught at Harvard from 1961 to 1987. Perhaps the most prominent political scientist of his generation, he died in Boston, Massachusetts, from complications of leukemia, on March 2, 2012. He spread his mind over most of political science: as a pioneer who defined or redefined the study of political parties, city politics, policing and crime, and bureaucracy; as a judge of American government scholarship in his textbook; as a master of both the current in our politics and the permanent in human nature; as skeptic of political science methodology and all grand theory; and as student of the morality of character. His work was known to every social scientist and he received nearly every high honor the political science profession can bestow. He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003, the U. S. Government’s highest civilian award—marking a rare point...