Background
Born in Dundee, the son of an ophthalmologist, and educated at Lathallan School in Fife, Moodie contracted polio at the age of nine (which left him with a lifelong limp) and was taught in hospital until 1936.
Born in Dundee, the son of an ophthalmologist, and educated at Lathallan School in Fife, Moodie contracted polio at the age of nine (which left him with a lifelong limp) and was taught in hospital until 1936.
His schooling was completed at the well-known Quaker school, Leighton Park near Reading, Berkshire and he then studied economics and political science at Street Andrews University.
He is most notable as principal author of The Moodie Report, which set out what is now the general model for student participation in the governance of modern British universities, and The Government of Great Britain (1961), regarded as a classic in its field and a standard textbook for students of British politics. While studying at Queens College, Oxford, he was elected president of the Junior Common Room and the University Liberal Club. In 1946 he obtained a first-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Moodie spent a year after graduating as an external tutor in politics at Keble College, Oxford and then returned to Street Andrews University as a lecturer in political science.
Between 1949 and 1951 he was a Commonwealth Fund fellow at Princeton University, and in 1953 returned to Street Andrews as senior lecturer in politics, spending a further year (1962–1963) at Princeton. He pursued his interest in politics outside academia, standing as the Labour Party candidate for Dumfriesshire in the 1959 general election, and gathering 42% of the vote.
Moodie became the first professor of politics and head of department at the newly founded University of York in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 1980. During this time, he helped to establish the University"s Centre for Southern African Studies, and continued work in this field after his retirement, researching post-apartheid academia and particularly academic freedom.
In 1991 he was a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Chairman & Vice-President, Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom Chairman of the Society for Research in Higher Education 1970- 1977, Provost, Langwith College, University of York 1986 & 1993, visiting Professor at University of California, Berkeley 1981 - 84, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of New York
Crucially, in 1968, at the peak of the 1960s radicalism, he chaired the staff-student committee on the place of students in the university.
Parliamentary candidate Labour Party, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 1959. Chairman Heslington Village Trust, York, 1975-1998. Chairman York Older People's Forum, 1998-1902, president, since 2003.
Fellow Society for Research in Higher Education (chairman 1968-1971), Political Studies Association (vice president, chairman 1969-1972), Royal Photographic Society.
Married Kathleen Marion Cremin, April 28, 1956 (deceased 1985). Children: Jennifer, Herald, Daniel, Mark. Married Andrea Joan Russell, August 15, 1997.