John H. Bunzel

About

John H. Bunzel passed away on July 19, 2018.

Bunzel, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, specialized in current political and educational problems and frequently wrote and lectured on issues of public policy. He was a former commissioner of the US Civil Rights Commission.

He was an expert in the field of civil rights, race relations, higher education, US politics, and elections. His most recent research centered on race and race relations in US society, with a focus on affirmative action, multiculturalism, and diversity in higher education, as well as US politics and elections.

From 1970 to 1978, when he joined the Hoover Institution, he was president of San Jose State University.

Bunzel's most recent book was Race Relations on Campus: Stanford Students Speak (1992). He also published Anti-Politics in America (1968); Political Passages: Journeys of Change through Two Decades, 1968–1988; and The American Small Businessman (1962).

In 1990, he received the eighth annual Hubert Humphrey Award from the American Political Science Association for his years of service as "an outstanding public policy practitioner." He holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Santa Clara; in 1968 he was a California delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 1974 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors awarded him its Certificate of Honor for "unswerving devotion to the highest ideals of brotherhood and service to mankind and dedicated efforts looking to the elimination of racial and religious bigotry and discrimination."

He also wrote numerous articles on trade unions, discrimination and affirmative action, and the relationship between quality and equality in education. He has taught at San Francisco State College (1953–56, 1965–70), Michigan State University (1956–57), and Stanford University (1956–63). The American Voter, his 1964 weekly television program on KPIX (CBS affiliate) in San Francisco, won a national award.

He received an AB in political science from Princeton University, an MA in sociology from Columbia University, and a PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1943 to 1946, he served in the US Army.

His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.

To read the family-written obituary that was published in local newspapers, click here.