Biographical Data

Born March 16, 1927, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Died March 26, 2003.
Interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Education

Received his primary and secondary education in the public and parochial schools of New York City.

Attended City College of New York, 1943.
Graduated from Tufts University, 1948.
Received his graduate and law degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1949, 1961, and 1968.
Studied as a Fulbright Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1950-1951.

Military Service

Served in the United States Navy, 1944-1947.
Member of Navy Reserve until 1966.

Career

Assistant and secretary to New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, 1955-1958.
Member of New York State Tenure Commission, 1959-1960.

Director of Syracuse University's New York State Government Research Project, 1959-1961.

Served in the Department of Labor, 1961-1965; rose to the post of assistant secretary.

Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1966-1969.

Ambassador to India, 1973-1975.
United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 1975-1976.

Elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1976; re-elected in 1982, 1988, and 1994; served from January 3, 1977 to January 3, 2001. Was not a candidate for re-election in 2000.
During his tenure he served as: chairman, Committee on the Environment and Public Works; and, member, Committee on Finance.

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 9, 2000.

Professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, 2001.
Senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2001-2003.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M001054

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on 08/10/2011.