Lester W. Milbrath

Les Milbrath was born in Bertha, Minnesota on 29 October 1925, the son of Walter Rudolph and Lila Henrietta Milbrath. He grew up on his parents’ farm in Todd County, Minnesota. In 1945, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving as an electrician on the USS General H. W. Butner (AP-113) and a Landing Craft Infantry ship (LCIL-820).[2]

After the war, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Minnesota, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He received a doctoral degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1956.

After his graduation, Milbrath held a research fellowship at the Brookings Institution. He then taught at Duke University, Northwestern University, and the University at Buffalo , where he spent most of his career.

Milbrath joined the Department of Political Science at University at Buffalo in 1966, which had a newly established doctoral program in political science. (He also held a joint appointment in the Department of sociology beginning in 1987.) He continued to write 80-plus chapters and papers in political science journals or edited books. He regularly taught undergraduate and graduate courses on political psychology, political attitudes and behavior, and research methodology.

Between 1969 and 1976, Milbrath directed the campus-based Social Science Measurement Center and the Social Science Research Institute between and served as the associate provost of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Administration during the same period of time. Between 1976 and 1987 he headed the Environmental Studies Center, and he later directed the Research Program in Environment and Society, which focused on the issues of the sustainability of future societies, environmental beliefs and values, public policy, political beliefs, social measurement and social change. He also served as a fellow of the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

Milbrath retired from teaching at University at Buffalo in 1991. Milbrath spent three winter quarters teaching and lecturing at the University of California, Irvine.

In 1997, Milbrath received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association. The award was presented, said an APSA spokesperson, in recognition of Milbrath’s "distinguished lifetime achievement in scholarship, teaching and advancement of the field of ecological and transformational politics."[3]

On October 11, 2001, he received a Lifetime Environmental Achievement Award from the University at Buffalo Environment and Society Institute. In addition to the award, the Institute established The Lester W. Milbrath Environment and Society Institute Fellowship in his honor for a graduate student .[4]

Milbrath died Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at Canterbury Woods in Amherst, New York. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York in the Rosewood Mausoleum.[5]

In 1963, while at Northwestern University, Milbrath published The Washington Lobbyists.[6] Building upon his early interest in the role money plays in politics, he sought to analyze and explain the influence of lobbyists on congressional actors in Washington, D.C. Very little empirical research had been conducted on them before that time. The Washington Lobbyists was considered a path breaking work. Much to the surprise of political scientists at the time, his survey suggested that lobbyists exerted little influence and, instead, were a critical source of information for legislators. Exactly how lobbyists communicated with legislators was a focus of Milbrath's study.

In 1965, he published Participation: How and Why do People Get Involved in Politics.[7] It examined the literature on citizen political participation, organizing empirical findings reported in previous studies. The book became widely cited, prompting him to co-author a second, substantially updated edition of the volume in 1977 with M. Lal Goel[8]

The topics of environmental beliefs and values, and environmental policy making became a research focus for Milbrath throughout the remainder of his career. In addition to his numerous journal articles and book chapters, he published Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society (SUNY Series in Environmental Public Policy) State University of New York Press 1985 ISBN 978-0873958882 in 1984. This book compared and contrasted the attitudes, values, and perceptions of environmentalists with those of the "rearguard," a group of people who embrace the dominant social paradigm of economic growth at any cost. The book, based on extensive survey data, received a great deal of acclaim by political scientists and scholars in environmental studies.

He tackled the problem of sustainable development in Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out? State University of New York Press ISBN 978-0791401637. As with his previous books, this one received very favorable reviews.

After his retirement Milbrath continued to write, and to testify in public settings on environmental matters. In 1996 he published Learning to Think Environmentally: While There is Still Time with a foreword by David T. Suzuki, In the book, he utilized a fictional conversation with a neighbor about important environmental issues and what we must do to develop a sustainable society. Time is running short, he told the neighbor, and we must act now. Unlike his previous publications, this book was intended for reading by the general populace. At first, SUNY Press was reluctant to publish the book because of its nontraditional approach. However, it has been widely adopted in many environmental studies, policy, and politics courses.