The Andersen Library Blog

Former state assemblyperson and state senator and current UW-Milwaukee professor of governmental affairs Mordecai Lee will present “Trying to Understand Wisconsin Politics, circa spring 2011” as the UWW Political Science Dept.’s 26th annual Kyle Lecture on Wed., Apr. 13th, at 7pm (location: UC Summers Auditorium).

Mordecai Lee is a native of Milwaukee who graduated from UW-Madison and then received degrees of MPA and Ph.D. in public administration from Syracuse University. In 1975 he was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution and then legislative assistant to a Congressman from Milwaukee (Henry Reuss, WI-5). He returned home to be a lecturer in political science at UW-W for spring semester 1976. In the fall of 1976 he was elected to the first of three terms in the State Assembly. In 1982 he was first elected to two terms in the State Senate, from a district comprising Milwaukee’s northwest side. Milwaukee Magazine named him one of Wisconsin’s “Ten Best” legislators in 1986. After voluntarily leaving politics, he was the executive director of a faith-based nonprofit, the Milwaukee Jewish Council from 1990 to 1997. There he engaged in advocacy for social justice. Currently, Lee is a professor of governmental affairs at the UW-Milwaukee School of Continuing Education. He specializes in public administration and nonprofit management, writing mostly about historical topics and about public relations as a management tool.

Dr. Lee’s books include The first Presidential communications agency: FDR’s Office of Government Reports; Bureaus of efficiency: Reforming local government in the Progressive Era; and Nixon’s super-secretaries: The last grant Presidential reorganization effort. In August, the University of Oklahoma Press will publish Congress vs. the bureaucracy: Muzzling agency public relations. Except for the forthcoming title, these books may be borrowed from other UW libraries by UWW students and staff via the free Universal Borrowing service.

You also can search the article databases to find Dr. Lee’s articles, such as “Panning for gold: Finding a few nuggets of positive images of government in American pop culture” (Public Voices, 2010, vol.11:no.1, pp.1-7) and “Reporters and bureaucrats: Public relations counter-strategies by public administrators in an era of media disinterest in government” (Public Relations Review, 1999, vol.25:no.4, pp.451-463).

Please ask a librarian if you would like assistance with finding materials.