Quincy Wright
Philip Quincy Wright (December 28, 1890 – October 17, 1970) was an American political scientist based at the University of Chicago known for his pioneering work and expertise in international law and international relations. Daniel Gorman argues that Wright played a major role in transforming international law "from a set of guidelines by which states governed their interactions to a tool for enacting peaceful change in international relations." He is also a pioneer in the field of security studies. Biography. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Wright received his B.A. from Lombard College in 1912. He completed his Ph.D. at the  University of Illinois in 1915. He also received an LL.D. He taught at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota before joining the department of social sciences at the University of Chicago in 1923. In 1927, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was one of the co-founders of Chicago's Committee On International Relations in 1928, the first graduate program in international relations established in the United States. In addition to his academic work, Wright was an adviser to Justice Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials, and often provided advice  to the U.S. State Department. During World War II, Wright was a consultant in the U.S. State Department. In 1956 he became Professor of International Law in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. He retired in 1961 and became a visiting professor at numerous universities, both within the United States and abroad, including, Tsing Hua University in Beijing, Geneva, Mexico, Cuba, the Hague and Turkey. Throughout his career Wright served as president of several scholarly bodies, including the American Association of University Professors (1944–1946), the American Political Science Association (1948–1949), the International Political Science  Association (1950–1952), and the American Society of International Law (1955–1956). He was a member of the editorial board of the American Association of International Law from 1923 until his death. He was also active in the U.S. United Nations Association. See Eleanor R. Finch, "Quincy Wright, 1890–1970" (obituary), The American Journal of International Law 65 (January 1971): 130–131. Wright's father was the economist Philip Green Wright and his brothers were the geneticist Sewall Wright and the aeronautical engineer Theodore Paul Wright. Academic work. During the 1920s, the horrors of World War I were foremost in the thoughts of many  social scientists. Soon after his arrival at Chicago, Wright organized an ongoing interdisciplinary study of wars, which eventually resulted in over 40 dissertations and 10 books. Wright summarized this research in his magnum opus "A Study of War" (1942). According to Karl Deutsch of Harvard University, Wright's study of warfare inspired many social scientists and his database of wars is an indispensable resource for anyone seriously interested in quantitative studies of human conflicts. Other than "A Study of War", Wright published a further 20 books and nearly 400 journal articles during his career. Several of his books became standard  texts, including "Mandates Under the League of Nations" (1930) and "The Study of International Relations" (1955). Wright was a prominent legal expert on the mandates system. While conducting research for "Mandates Under the League of Nations" (1930), which was funded by a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Wright visited Damascus less than two weeks after it had been shelled during the Great Syrian Revolt. His experiences in Damascus shaped his views on the mandates system and colonialism. Wright rebutted notions that Syrians were barbarians who could not govern themselves. He argued that the Syrian rebels were a state in the making and  that French actions to repress the Syrians were a "policy of terrorism" and war crimes.