Kenneth Prewitt

Biography Prewitt was born March 16, 1936, in Alton, Illinois. He graduated from Alton High School in 1954 and then attended DePauw University for one year before transferring to Southern Methodist University. Prewitt received a B.A. in 1958 from Southern Methodist; a M.A. in 1959 from Washington University in St. Louis, and a 1963 Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University with a thesis "Career patterns and role-orientations: an inquiry into the political behavior of city councilmen" and was a Danforth Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School from 1959 to 1960. and Director of the National Opinion Research Center. He has also served as president of the Social Science Research Council, as senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and as Dean of the Graduate School at the New School University. Since 2015, he has been the president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Prewitt has two children by his first marriage, and was married to Susan Mullin Vogel, an art historian, museum curator and leader, and filmmaker. Prewitt died in 2026 at the age of 90.

Honors He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship and a Lifetime Career Award from the American Political Science Association. He also has received honorary degrees from Southern Methodist University and from Carnegie Mellon University.

Publications

Books Kenneth Prewitt. What is Your Race? The Flawed Effort of the Census to Classify Americans Princeton University Press, 2013. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 207 libraries Kenneth Prewitt; Thomas A Schwandt; Miron L Straf, eds.. Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy National Research Council of the National Academies, 2012 . free download Kenneth Prewitt, ed. The federal statistical system : its vulnerability matters more than you think (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 631) Sage Foundation, 2010/ Kenneth Prewitt. The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization Russell Sage Foundation, 2010 Kenneth Prewitt., ed. The Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations: United States and European Perspectives. New York: R. Sage Foundation, 2006 Prewitt, Kenneth. The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen-Politicians. Westport Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981 Prewitt, Kenneth, and Sidney Verba. An Introduction to American Government. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. 9780060452841; 2nd ed, 1977; 3rd ed. 1979; 4th ed. 1983 (this and subsequent eds. with Robert Holt Salisbury); 5th ed. 1987; 6th ed. 1991. Abridged version publ.as Principles of American Government 1975. Prewitt, Kenneth, and Alan Stone. The Ruling Elites: Elite Theory, Power, and American Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 631 libraries Prewitt, Kenneth. Education and Political Values: An East African Case Study. Nairobi: East African Pub. House, 1971 OCLC 643528

Other publications He has also published 100 articles and book chapters.