Background
Arthur Maass was born on July 24, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was the son of Arthur Leopold and Selma (Rosenheim) Maass.
Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
In 1939, Maass received a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University.
Cambridge, MA 02138
In 1941, Maass received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1949.
(Analyzes the role of Congress, examines its relationship ...)
Analyzes the role of Congress, examines its relationship with committees and the executive branch, and discusses the process of Congressional decision making.
https://www.amazon.com/Congress-Common-Good-Arthur-Maass/dp/0465013856/?tag=2022091-20
1983
Arthur Maass was born on July 24, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was the son of Arthur Leopold and Selma (Rosenheim) Maass.
In 1939, Maass received a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University. In 1941, he received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1949. His dissertation, which examined the development of the water resources of the United States, led to his first book, Muddy Waters: The Army Engineers and the Nation’s Rivers, which was published in 1951.
Maass served in the Navy from 1942 to 1946, and both before and after World War II with the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, the National Resources Planning Board and the U.S. Bureau of the Budget.
Joining the Department of Government at Harvard in 1948, he was made an assistant professor in 1949, received tenure in 1954, became a full professor in 1959, chaired the department from 1963 to 1967, in which year he was appointed to the Thomson professorship, and retired to emeritus status in 1984.
While Director of the Harvard Water Program from 1955 to 1965, he led and edited a massive multidisciplinary effort entitled Design of Water Resource Systems: New Techniques for Relating Economic Objectives, Engineering Analysis, and Government Planning, published in 1962.
He devised an elegant methodology for characterizing and comparing irrigation systems, in 1978 publishing with R. L. Anderson, comparative study, And the Deserts Shall Rejoice: Conflict Growth and Justice in Arid Environments. Interspersed with his books he also published a number of substantial articles and monographs on this and other relevant topics.
While American problems were Arthur Maass’s main concern, he also studied similar questions in other countries. His attention being attracted by irrigation, he traveled widely in and wrote about arid regions not only in the American West, but also in Spain, Morocco and most surprisingly China at a time when the Chinese were severely restricting contacts with foreigners.
In his last major work, Congress and the Common Good (1983), Arthur shifted his focus from the executive to the legislative branch, although, philosophically speaking, as in his earlier work the underlying problem was still how to make the Many into One.
On retirement, he moved from Dunster House to a penthouse high above Boston Harbor where he became well known as “il professore” in the Italo-American community.
He enjoyed other governmental and academic appointments in addition to those mentioned above in the United States, China, Spain, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
(Analyzes the role of Congress, examines its relationship ...)
1983During the disorders brought on by the Vietnam War, Maass took a strong line against the radicals and their faculty allies, displaying rare talents as a political manager. In these years his political opinions having swung unmistakably from liberal to conservative.
Rejecting the widely held view that the democratic process, electoral, legislative and executive, reaches decisions by bargaining and log-rolling among fixed interests, he argued that discussion on the basis of shared values makes a further and decisive contribution by transforming such preferences. In this deliberative model, the achievement is not merely to reflect what is brought to the process, but rather to discover something by means of the process. In exact, detailed analysis of the relation of Congress as a whole to its committees and to the Presidency, he showed how this function was performed. His leadership in this field did a great deal to offset the influence of positivist and behavioral viewpoints. Moreover, his unparalleled knowledge was recognized not only by colleagues, but also by the Congress itself. He was asked to testify on even such intimate matters as reform of the rules.
Quotations: “Make no little plans; they have not the power to move men’s souls.”
Maass was a member of the Harvard Club.
A tutor in Dunster House, Maass had a close relationship with its undergraduates, a warm friend but also a stern task master, enforcing the wearing of coats and ties and other antique customs then practiced in Cambridge. His care and affection were illustrated by his bequest of a substantial sum to finance free Boston Symphony tickets for Harvard undergraduates.