Political and Academic Career
Brownlow came to Washington, D.C., as a reporter for two Tennessee newspapers, and made the acquaintance of President Theodore Roosevelt. He caught the attention of President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 after being one of the few newspaper reporters to correctly predict that the German Empire would go to war with Serbia over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (which caused the start of World War I). Expressing a desire to put into practice many of the administrative practices he had reported on from Europe, Brownlow sought and won from President Wilson appointment in 1915 as a commissioner of the District of Columbia, serving until 1920. From 1917 to 1920, he was president of the commissioners, and a vocal proponent of home rule. During this period, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia unionized, and Brownlow supported its unionization (although not its affiliation with the American Federation of Labor). He helped guide the city through the 1918 flu pandemic, closing schools and businesses and banning all public gatherings. He also served on the District of Columbia Public Utilities Commission and the District Zoning Commission from 1917 to 1919. He was City Manager of Petersburg, Virginia, from 1920 to 1923; City Manager of Knoxville, Tennessee, from 1924 to 1926; and City Manager of Radburn, New Jersey, from 1927 to 1931. He briefly worked for the United States Daily newspaper in 1927. He was a consultant to the City Housing Corporation in New York City from 1928 to 1931, and was elected a director of the corporation in 1931.
Brownlow began teaching political science at the University of Chicago in 1931, and later that year was appointed director of the Public Administration Clearing House (which he had helped organize in 1930) at the university. He remained the Clearing House's director until 1945. Brownlow became chairman of the Committee for Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council in 1933, where he worked to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners. He was also chairman of the National Institute of Public Affairs from 1934 to 1949.
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