Maxwell Perspective: Sense of Balance
July 7, 2012
From Maxwell Perspective...
Sense of Balance
Having served as Deputy Secretary of State and dean of a school of public affairs, Maxwell’s new chief appreciates the many pieces that make the School whole.
James Steinberg, incoming dean of Maxwell, with daughters Jenna (left) and Emma
The Maxwell School is a complicated place. James Steinberg gets that. His sense of Maxwell’s tricky alliances, tensions, and trade-offs is already sophisticated.
And it will grow even more so starting this summer, when Steinberg becomes the Maxwell School’s ninth dean, so named in April after a nationwide search.
Among its varied and interconnected parts, the School’s programs in public administration, international relations, and policy are most familiar to him. Much of his own career has been in public service and in those fields. Plus, Steinberg was for three years dean of the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, which is chiefly focused on professional programs in public and international affairs.
However, as its soon-to-be dean, Steinberg ruminates about what makes the Maxwell School different — things with which he’s had a little less experience.
“I am excited about the chance to work with undergraduates,” he says. At the LBJ School, his chief involvement with undergrads was through an isolated, multidisciplinary initiative; it left his appetite whetted. “I think there’s an opportunity at that stage, before people are focused on careers, to expose them both to the values of public service — which I feel very strongly about — and to how the social sciences and intellectual disciplines help them across a range of challenges they’ll face, not only professionally but as citizens.”
“I feel very strongly about. . . the values of public service.”
-Dean James Steinberg
Similarly intriguing are the graduate programs in the social sciences. “There’s an important place,” he says, “for academic inquiry that has no particular connection to practice.” He finds Maxwell’s commingling of scholarly and practitioner programs convincing, and he is eager to build new bridges between them. “The traditional social sciences get beyond day-to-day incrementals to understanding the deeper questions that are at stake,” he concludes.
As a practitioner and scholar, Steinberg brings particular strength in public affairs, national security, and foreign policy, about which he’s written extensively. For the past two years, he has been U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, chief assistant to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Prior to his stint at the LBJ School he was vice president at the Brookings Institution and, before that, deputy national security adviser to President Clinton. He’s been director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, deputy assistant secretary of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a senior analyst at RAND, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an appellate court law clerk, minority counsel to a U.S. Senate committee, special assistant to a U.S. assistant attorney general, and an aid to Senator Edward Kennedy. He has a law degree from Yale.
He joins SU as University Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law. His wife, Sherburne Abbott, also joins SU, she as a University Professor and vice president for sustainability initiatives. They have two daughters, Jenna and Emma.
Natives of New England, he and Abbott are eager to start their new life in Central New York. His wife and daughters are downhill skiers; he prefers cross-country. He’s a passionate fisherman, as is Abbott. And he expects to involve himself in local arts and politics. “It’s very important in schools like Maxwell to build ties to the community, be a resource to the community, and really feel part of it,” he says. “We’re looking forward to that.”