White, Leonard Dupee, 1891-1958

The Chicago Citizens Police Committee was active from 1929 to 1931. Its primary purpose was to investigate the Chicago Police Department. The results of the study were described in The Chicago Police Problems, which was published in 1931 by The University of Chicago. The Committee consisted of eight members who were selected from The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and The Chicago Crime Commission. The first Chairman of the Committee was John H. Wigmore. He was followed by Leonard D. White.

Leonard Dupee White (1891-1958) was Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Public Administration at the University of Chicago. He was one of the first to teach Public Administration in a university classroom and even in the early 1920s was becoming a leader among the political scientists who shared this interest. Professor White served on various governmental committees, both at the local and national levels. In 1939 President Roosevelt appointed him to the Committee on Civil Service Improvement, under the chairmanship of the Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed, on which he served until 1941. Within the University of Chicago, Professor White also served as a member of several committees.

Leonard Dupee White, Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Public Administration at the University of Chicago, was born in Massachusetts in 1891. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from Dartmouth in 1915 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1921. He taught at Clark College, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago, where he remained until his death in 1958. Within the field of government, White was primarily interested in public administration. He was one of the first to teach this subject in a university classroom and even in the early 1920s was becoming a leader among the political scientists who shared this interest. His Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, first published in 1926 and revised in 1939, 1948, and 1955, was the first, and for many years the preeminent, textbook in the field.

Professor White served on various governmental committees, both at the local and national levels. From 1931 to 1933 he was a member of the Chicago Civil Service Commission. From 1934-1937 he served on the United States Civil Service Commission and the Central Statistics Board. As a commissioner, White was primarily responsible for developing a system of junior civil service examinations, for college graduates only, intended to draw better educated persons into governmental careers. To help government employees provide better service and advance professionally, he worked with American University to develop a program of in-service training for them. In 1939 President Roosevelt appointed him to the Committee on Civil Service Improvement, under the chairmanship of the Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed, on which he served until 1941. Additionally, White worked with both of the Hoover Commissions on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, the first in 1948-1949 and the second in 1953-1955. In both cases he helped to prepare the report on personnel management, which advocated the creation of a career executive program. It was initiated by executive order in 1957 to help identify, retrain, and advance government employees who should be moved into positions of greater responsibility.

Within the University of Chicago, Professor White also served as a member of the Trustee-Senate Committee on Academic Reorganization (1943-1945), on which he served as Chairman of the Senate Committee; a member of the University Council and Spokesman of the Committee of the Council (1945-1946); and a member of the Senate Advisory Committee to the Board of Trustees in the selection of a new chancellor (1950-1951).