American political theorist Charles S. Hyneman (1900–1985) was born on a farm in Gibson County, Indiana, in 1900. He received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1923 and his master’s degree in 1925. After spending a short time doing graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, he transferred to the University of Illinois where he received his PhD in 1929. Hyneman held appointments early in his career at Syracuse University and at the University of Illinois before he became the chair of the Department of Government at Louisiana State University in 1937. While at LSU he was instrumental in organizing the Louisiana Municipal Association and initiating a merit system for the state civil service. While Hyneman was a student of pragmatic politics, this in no way limited his accomplishments as a theorist. Much of his later work focused on the philosophical underpinnings of the American founding and the struggle inherent in developing representative government.
During World War II (1939–1945), Hyneman held three separate government posts. He worked first in the Bureau of the Budget, then in the Office of the Provost Marshal General in the War Department as chief of the training branch. Finally, he worked in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), first as the director of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service and later as assistant to the chairman and then executive officer of the FCC.
After leaving government service, Hyneman returned to teaching, first at Northwestern University in 1947 and then at Indiana University. While he would have many visiting appointments over the next few decades, he stayed at Indiana University until his death in 1985. While at Indiana he was named as a Distinguished Professor in 1961 and from 1960 to 1961, he was the president of the American Political Science Association. Some of Hyneman’s most famous books are Bureaucracy in a Democracy (1950), The Supreme Court on Trial (1963), Popular Government in America (1968), and American Political Writing During the Founding Era: 1760–1805 (1984), which was coedited with one of his former students, Dr. Donald S. Lutz.
Hyneman was an outstanding scholar and practitioner, but he was equally successful as a teacher, inspiring hundreds of students to partake in their own study of the American regime. His legacy was passed on by his students, including Donald Lutz and Ross Lence, and to those who were fortunate to study under them in turn. Throughout his career, Hyneman was concerned with popular control of government. He sought to understand the American founding experience in order to illuminate how those conditions relate to contemporary political life. His understanding of politics and manner of study was pragmatic and theoretical, principles displayed in his work and his life.
Bibliography:
- Gilbert, Charles E., ed. The American Founding Experience: Political Community and Republican Government. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
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