Lawrence Mead

Lawrence M. Mead III (born 1943, in Huntington, New York) is a professor of politics and public policy at New York University (NYU).[1]

Lawrence M. Mead
Born (1943-06-06) June 6, 1943
Huntington, New York
EducationAmherst College (1966)
Harvard University, M.A. (1968), Ph.D. (1973)
OccupationPolitical scientist
EmployerNew York University
Known forArguing that employment is an obligation of citizenship.
Notable work
Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship, The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America
TitleProfessor of Politics and Public Policy
Political partyRepublican

Education

He received his B.A. from Amherst College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1966, and his MA and PhD from Harvard University in 1968 and 1973.[2]

Career

Mead has taught at New York University (NYU) since 1979. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin (1987), Harvard University (1993-4) and Princeton University (1994-5). He was a visiting fellow at Princeton (1995-6, 2001-2) and the Hoover Institution at Stanford (1988). Prior to NYU, Mead was Deputy Director of Research for the Republican National Committee (1978–1979), a Research Associate at the Urban Institute (1975–1978), a speechwriter to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (1974–1975), and a policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1973–1975).[2]

Mead has written on poverty and welfare in the United States. In the books he wrote between 1986 and 2004, he provided the main theoretical basis for the American welfare reform of the 1990s, which required adult recipients of welfare to work as a condition of aid. His books have also influenced welfare reform in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.[3]

Mead has written three books, coauthored one book, and edited or coedited three others, all of them on poverty and/or government welfare policies. Government Matters, his study of welfare reform in Wisconsin, was a Co-winner of the Louis Brownlow Book Award (2005), which is given by the National Academy of Public Administration.[4] He has published dozens of articles on poverty, welfare, program implementation, and related subjects in scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Public Administration Review, The Public Interest and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His book reviews and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other outlets.[5]

Theories on welfare and poverty

Mead believes that welfare should be means-tested, so as to guide behavior in poor populations that he believes would reduce poverty. According to Mead, poverty is mainly found in minority groups and is caused by a lack of work ethic in their cultures. Mead believes that so-called "entitlement" form a harmful welfare culture of dependence. In a study conducted by economist Stephen M. Petterson, Mead's argument was not supported, and Petterson found that differences in employment between Black and White men could not be attributed to differences in "willingness to work."[6][7] Scholars Stanford M. Lyman and Arthur J. Vidich have compared his idea of requiring the poor to work to an earlier theory of 'warrantism,' a theory of mandatory labor espoused by Henry Hughes that paralleled slavery in the Antebellum South.[8][9]

The worldview of Blacks make them uniquely prone to attitudes contrary to work, and thus vulnerable to poverty and dependence.

— Lawrence M. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America (1992)[7]

On July 21, 2020, Mead published a commentary in the journal Society entitled "Poverty and Culture" based on ideas from his 2019 book Burdens of Freedom.[10] In the paper, Mead argues that Black and Hispanic people in the United States are poor because they "typically respond only weakly to chances to get ahead through education and work" due to cultural differences in adapting to the "individualist culture" of the United States, a culture he posits is derived from Europe.[11] The paper drew widespread outrage[12][13] from the academic community for perpetuating racist, xenophobic and classist stereotypes,[14] and multiple petitions were circulated requesting a retraction.[13] Mead's home institution of NYU issued a statement expressing their rejection of "false, prejudicial, and stigmatizing assertions about the culture of communities of color in the United States" in his paper.[15] The journal publisher launched an investigation, and on 31 July the editor-in-chief retracted the paper and apologized for having published it.[11]

The seriously poor are mostly blacks and Hispanics, and the main reason is cultural difference. The great fact is that these groups did not come from Europe. Fifty years after civil rights, their main problem is no longer racial discrimination by other people but rather that they face an individualist culture that they are unprepared for.

— Lawrence M. Mead, Poverty and Culture (2020)[16]

Books
Books authored
  • Mead, Lawrence M. (2019). Burdens of Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1641770408.
  • Mead, Lawrence M. (2004). Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12380-6.
  • Mead, Lawrence M. (1993). The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-05069-7.
  • Mead, Lawrence M. (1986). Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-7432-2495-6.
Books co-authored
Edited
  • Mead, Lawrence M.; Beem, Christopher, eds. (2007). Welfare Reform and Political Theory. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications. ISBN 978-0-87154-588-6.
  • Mead, Lawrence M., ed. (1997). The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8157-5651-4.
  • Mead, Lawrence M.; Deacon, Alan, eds. (1997). From Welfare to Work: Lessons from America. London, UK: Institute of Economic Affairs. ISBN 978-0-255-36399-0.

References
  1. Lawrence M. Mead, from the New York University Department of Politics website. Retrieved on May 14, 2009.
  2. Lawrence M. Mead III Curriculum Vita, March 2007. Retrieved on January 19, 2011.
  3. Randeep Ramesh,"Does Getting Tough on the Unemployed Work?" The Guardian, June 16, 2010
  4. "Academy Honors Three Books with the 2005 Louis Brownlow Award," Archived 2008-11-27 at the Wayback Machine December 9, 2005, from the National Academy of Public Administration website. Retrieved on May 14, 2009.
  5. Lawrence M. Mead III, Curriculum Vita, March 2007. Retrieved on January 19, 2011.
  6. Petterson, Stephen M. (1997). "Are Young Black Men Really Less Willing to Work?". American Sociological Review. 62 (4): 605–613. doi:10.2307/2657429. ISSN 0003-1224. JSTOR 2657429.
  7. Petterson, Stephen M. (1998). "Black-White Differences in Reservation Wages and Joblessness: A Replication". The Journal of Human Resources. 33 (3): 758–770. doi:10.2307/146341. ISSN 0022-166X. JSTOR 146341.
  8. Stanford M. Lyman (ed.), Arthur J. Vidich (ed.), Selected Works of Herbert Blumer: A Public Philosophy for Mass Society, Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2000, pp. 14-19
  9. Strong, Tracy B. (2019-11-26). Learning One's Native Tongue: Citizenship, Contestation, and Conflict in America. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-62336-8.
  10. Mead, Lawrence (2019). Burdens of freedom : cultural difference and American power (First American ed.). New York. ISBN 978-1641770408.
  11. Mead, Lawrence M. (2020-07-29). "Poverty and Culture". Society. doi:10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1. ISSN 1936-4725.
  12. "Leading voice on welfare reform accused of racism". www.insidehighered.com. Retrieved 2020-07-30.
  13. "Hundreds Call Paper 'Unscholarly' and 'Racially Violent'". Medscape. Retrieved 2020-07-30.
  14. Marcus, Author Adam (2020-07-27). "Hundreds petition to retract paper they call "unscholarly, overtly racist" and full of "racially violent narratives"". Retraction Watch. Retrieved 2020-07-30.
  15. "Statement From Faculty of Arts and Science and Wagner Leadership Regarding Professor Lawrence Mead". NYU. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  16. Mead, Lawrence M. (2020-07-21). "Poverty and Culture". Society. doi:10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1. ISSN 1936-4725.
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