Schottland, Charles I. (Charles Irwin), 1906-1995

Charles I. Schottland was born on October 29, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois. He received a B.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1927. He completed graduate school in Social Work at the New York School of Social Work, 1928 to 1929, and received a Social Work certificate in 1929. He graduated from the University of Southern California Law School in 1933. He was an administrator for the California Relief Administration, 1933 to 1936; executive director of the Federation of Jewish Welfare Organizations, Los Angeles, California, 1936 to 1941; and assistant chief of the Children's Bureau at the Department of Labor, 1941 to 1942. During World War II, he was on the staff of General Eisenhower (SHAEF) and the lieutenant colonel in charge of the section dealing with displaced persons. He was decorated by the governments of France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands for his work in the care and repatriation of five and a half million displaced persons. Following World War II, he was assistant director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration for refugees and displaced persons in Germany.

Schottland worked in private law practice from 1948 to 1950. California Governor Earl Warren appointed him Director of the California Department of Social Welfare from 1950 to 1954. He is best known for his work with the Social Security Administration as Commissioner of Social Security, appointed by President Eisenhower in 1954. He is well known for his work at this agency from 1954 to 1959, and for the first visit to the Soviet Union when exchanges were permitted in the early 1950s. From 1959 to 1979 he was on the faculty at Brandeis University, where he was dean of the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Study and Social Welfare, and also served as president of the University from 1970 to 1972.

He is a past president of the national conference of social welfare and the International Council on Social Welfare. Additionally, he was chairman of the 1981 Arizona White House conference on aging; a past chairman of the Arizona Governor's Council on Aging; past president of the National Senior Citizen Law Center; past president of the American Society on Aging; Board member of the Pima Counsel on Aging; and the National Council on Aging. He was the author of three books and over 130 published articles. He died on June 27, 1995 in Tucson, Arizona.