James Quinn Wilson (May 27, 1931 – March 2, 2012) was an American academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration. Most of his career was spent as a professor at UCLA and Harvard University. He was the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985–1990), and the President's Council on Bioethics. He was Director of Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard-MIT.

He was the former president of the American Political Science Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society and Human Rights Foundation. He also was a co-author of a leading university textbook, American Government, and wrote many scholarly books and articles, and op-ed essays. He gained national attention for a 1982 article introducing the broken windows theory in The Atlantic. In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President George W. Bush.

He completed his B.A. at the University of Redlands in 1952, and he was its national collegiate debate champion in 1951 and 1952. He completed an M.A. (1957) and a Ph.D. (1959) in political science at the University of Chicago. From 1961 to 1987, he was the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University.

His 1975 book Thinking About Crime put forward a novel theory of incapacitation as the most effective explanation for the reduction in crime rates observed where longer prison sentences were the norm. Criminals might not be deterred by the threat of longer sentences, but repeat offenders would be prevented from further offending, simply because they would be in jail rather than out on the street.^[1]

The broken windows theory was first introduced by social scientists Wilson and George L. Kelling, in an article titled "Broken Windows" and which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.^[2]

From 1987 to 1997, he was the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at the UCLA Anderson School of Management at UCLA. From 1998 to 2009, he was the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy.^[3][4]

Wilson's university text American Government (now coauthored with John J. DiIulio, Jr.) is widely sold. The Amazon Best Sellers Rank of his text was 386,812 on April 19, 2012. American Government was reviewed by the publisher and the College Board after the discovery of factual inaccuracies and allegations of conservative bias regarding issues such as global warming, school prayer, and gay rights. Among those who criticized the textbook was James E. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who wrote to the publisher that the book contained "a large number of clearly erroneous statements" which cause "the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain."^[5]

Wilson was a former chairman of the White House Task Force on Crime (1966), of the National Advisory Commission on Drug Abuse Prevention (1972–1973) and a member of the Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime (1981), the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985–1990), and the President's Council on Bioethics. He was a former president of the American Political Science Association. He served on the board of directors for the New England Electric System (now National Grid USA), Protection One, RAND, and State Farm Mutual Insurance.

He was the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.

Although as a young professor he "voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the last's presidential campaign," ^[6] Wilson was later recognized as a leading conservative scholar, as indicated by his advisory position to the American Enterprise Institute.

Wilson was a staunch advocate for perseverance in the War on Drugs:

Even now, when the dangers of drug use are well understood, many educated people still discuss the drug problem in almost every way except the right way. They talk about the "costs" of drug use and the "socioeconomic factors" that shape that use. They rarely speak plainly—drug use is wrong because it's immoral and it is immoral because it enslaves the mind and destroys the soul.^[7]

Wilson also pioneered the idea that public administration was increasingly replete with political calculations and concerns:

This is because our constitutional structure and our traditions afford individuals manifold opportunities not only to bring their special interests to the attention of public officials but also — and this the important thing — to compel officials to bargain and to make compromises. The nature of the governmental system gives private interests such good opportunities to participate in the making of public decisions that there is virtually no sphere of 'administration' apart from politics.^[8]

Wilson was known to be at once courteous and gentle in demeanor but also intellectually tough and held strongly to his opinions. As a former student of Wilson, former American Enterprise Institute President Christopher DeMuth said, "He was sociable, amiable, he loved the Red Sox. He kept up on the NCAA brackets. He knew all about all of those things. He was interested in music and cooking and food, he was very companionable. But... he was intellectually tough as nails and he would be very agreeable in explaining to you that your intuitions about something actually weren't correct."^[9]

• Honorary doctorate from Harvard University
• Lifetime Achievement Award, American Political Science Association, 2001
• Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2003

Wilson died in Boston from complications from leukemia.^[10]

• American Politics, Then and Now (2010)
• American Government, 12th ed. (2010, with John J. DiIulio, Jr.)
• Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation (2008, ed. with Peter Schuck)
• The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Damages Families (2002)
• Moral Judgment (1997)
• The Moral Sense (1993)
• On Character: Essays by James Q. Wilson (1991)
• Bureaucracy (1989) – "his masterwork"^[11]
• Crime and Human Nature (1985, with Richard Herrnstein)
• Watching Fishes: Life and Behavior on Coral Reefs (1985, with Roberta Wilson)
• The Politics of Regulation (1980)
• The Investigators (1978)
• Thinking About Crime (1975)
• Political Organizations (1973)
• Varieties of Police Behavior (1968)
• The Amateur Democrat (1966)
• City Politics (1963, with Edward C. Banfield)
• Negro Politics (1960)

• Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression (2011)

• Biography at Boston College
• Wilson's page at Pepperdine's website
• James Q. Wilson Archives online articles
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Interview at PBS
• James Q. Wilson Collection at the RAND Library
• No easy answers, an interview with Wilson in Reason
• Center for Inquiry's Textbook Accuracy Report [PDF]
• Wilson's rebuttal to textbook criticisms at the Wayback Machine (archive index)

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