Frank Johnson Goodnow - Career

Career

Goodnow took up his teaching in October 1884 at Columbia, giving some instruction in History as well as in United States Administrative Law.

Made Adjunct Professor in 1887, Goodnow became Professor of Administrative Law in 1891, and in 1903 Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science. He became the first president of the American Political Science Association in 1903. Governor Theodore Roosevelt made him a member of the commission to draft a new charter for Greater New York, and President Taft chose him as a member of his Commission on Economy and Efficiency.

In October 1912 he accepted, on the recommendation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the commission of Constitutional adviser to the Chinese Government which took him to China in March 1913. During the years 1913–1914 he served as legal adviser to the Yuan Shikai government in China, helping draft the new constitution. In China, he became known for his assertion that the Chinese people were not mature enough for a republican form of government, a fact that was later utilized by Yuan, as he attempted to proclaim himself the Emperor of China in 1915-6.

In 1914 he became the third president of Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins, he is best remembered for his attempt to eliminate the bachelor's degree by cutting the first two years of undergraduate work. He is considered an important early scholar in the field of public administration and administrative law, as well as an expert in government. Goodnow argued for the centrality of law in public administration. (Other public administration theorists have argued that other non-legal values ought to guide civil servants.)

Goodnow resigned the Johns Hopkins University Presidency in 1929, but thereafter frequently gave graduate lectures in his special subjects. He was for some time a regent of the University of Maryland and a member of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore.