In the broad marketplace of ideas, it's not unusual to find sharp differences of opinion on the merits of cultural, racial, gender and religious diversity. Even college campuses have been torn by emotional battles over politically correct speech, race-based admissions and gender pay equity for professors.
 Jack C. Knight, Ph.D., is the University's Sydney W. Souers Professor of Government in Arts & Sciences. |
Although he has spent much of his academic career building a case for the benefits of diversity, Jack C. Knight, Ph.D., chair and professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, would be among the last to stifle those who speak out against it.
Indeed, it is diversity's contributions to the marketplace of ideas that provide the intellectual cornerstone for many of Knight's theories on how and why humans interact in so many strange and fascinating ways.
Diversity, he contends, has long played a critical role in shaping our most basic societal institutions - the laws, norms, conventions, customs, rules and expectations that hold society together and provide its very fabric. Diverse, competing interests, he argues, provide an important catalyst for institutional change and development. An institution is more likely to evolve in a socially beneficial direction, to be viewed as effective and fair, he adds, when everyone has a free and equal say in determining its structure and operation.
"My work on institutions and diversity has been informed by my philosophical commitment to pragmatism," said Knight, the Sydney W. Souers Professor of Government in Arts & Sciences. "Pragmatism dictates that we be prepared to challenge our own settled beliefs and create an environment in which our beliefs are tested in the face of alternative arguments.
"We do so not only to leave open the possibility that our beliefs are wrong, but also for the possibility that our beliefs will be reinforced through consideration of other reasonable challenges."
Knight has earned a reputation for insightful research, clear writing and innovative teaching on an amazing range of topics related to the evolution and functioning of institutions.
With broad interests in the areas of modern social and political theory, political economy, law and jurisprudence, institutions and organizations, and the philosophy of social science, he is a longtime member of the University's Center in Political Economy and its Committee on Social Thought and Analysis in Arts & Sciences.
More recently, he has worked closely with campus committees developing a new curriculum for Arts & Sciences, and with the Center for the New Institutional Social Sciences, a research initiative launched by Douglass C. North, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences and co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
"Knight and I have done a number of articles together, most recently a piece on cognitive science in the social sciences and why an understanding of how the mind works is crucial to a lot of work in political social theory," North said. "His work and mine on institutions have run on parallel tracks, but for a long time we seemed to be at odds on our view of the forces that spur the development of institutions. Eventually, after working together on a couple of editing projects, we began to realize that we we're much closer in our beliefs than we might previously have admitted."
Knight's interest in institutions extends from the workings of formal, highly structured systems, such as those for deciding elections, selecting judges and settling labor disputes, to the highly informal, such as social norms guiding relations with family and friends. His research also explores the even more complex interactions of systems that hinge on both formal and informal rules, such as those governing property rights, inheritance, dowry and brideswealth, even weights and measures. He has applied his pragmatic theories to concepts as abstract as trust, and to issues as concrete as lobster management.
"Almost all of my research has in one way or another attempted to understand the answers to two questions," Knight said. "How does the diversity in a society affect the ways in which we create and maintain institutions? And, what does this diversity imply for how we should create and maintain such institutions?"
In Knight's view, diversity's chief attribute is the creative tension it brings to the complex equations of human interaction. As people of different cultures, histories and interests come together, they bring with them diverse ideas, beliefs and values. Institutions - the rules that structure our social, political and economic life - evolve as a function of our desire to achieve the benefits of social cooperation. A diversity of interests and beliefs, he asserts, helps society guard against complacency by forcing it to constantly re-examine its rules and norms, to remain ever vigilant for more effective social systems.
His most recent book, co-authored with Lee Epstein, Ph.D., professor of law and the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Political Science in Arts & Sciences, has earned rave reviews from scholars in several disciplines. Titled "The Choices Justices Make" and published in 1997 by the CQ Press, the book won the American Political Science Association's prestigious C. Herman Pritchett Award for the year's best book on law and courts. Already considered required reading in college courses across the nation, the book is credited with helping spur a sea change in the way scholars are approaching research in judicial politics.
Based on information collected from public records and the judicial papers of Justices Brennan, Douglas, Marshall and Powell, the book offers a compelling new paradigm for understanding how decisions get made on the U.S. Supreme Court. The book also is likely to figure prominently in ongoing scholarly debates over what may have been the Supreme Court's most controversial decision, its recent ruling in the Florida presidential election vote counting debacle.
According to Knight and Epstein, the high court's justices are far from immune to public press-ures. Rather, each justice strategically weighs his or her decisions based on their individual assessments of how fellow justices are likely to vote, on how important outside players, such as Congress, might respond, and on the long-term impact of their decisions on the Supreme Court's power, prestige and influence, including its standing in the public eye.
"While the court goes to great length to clothe its decisions in legal precedent, the law of the land as generated by the Supreme Court is actually the long-term product of a series of short-term strategic decisions by individual justices," Knight said. "If justices wish to obtain their goal - typically, to establish policy for the nation - they cannot ignore the preferences and likely responses of those who can overturn their decisions (members of Congress, the president), refuse to respect them (the public), or stand in their way of generating policy in the first place (their colleagues)."
Although Knight's theories are having considerable impact on legal scholarship, law has never been a clearly defined career path for him. He started out torn between English literature and religious studies, earning a double-major bachelor's degree in those areas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974.
"I was active in politics during my college days, but I never took a course in political science," Knight said. "I always thought of politics as something you did, not something you studied."
Knight stayed at Chapel Hill to pursue graduate studies. He earned a juris doctoris degree in 1977 and then earned admission to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago, enrolling in political science. He earned a master's degree in 1980 and a doctoral degree in 1989. He was an instructor for several years at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan before joining Washington University as an assistant professor in 1988.
In addition to his teaching duties, he has served here as an associate chair and director of graduate studies for the Department of Political Science.
Knight is widely published in leading social science journals and a number of important scholarly edited volumes. His other books include "Institutions and Social Conflict," published in 1992 by Cambridge University Press, and "Explaining Social Institutions," a 1995 volume co-edited with Itai Sened, Ph.D., associate professor of political science in Arts & Sciences. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Rationality and Society and the American Journal of Political Science.
Now in his 12th year at the University, Knight finds himself in the somewhat unusual situation of putting down fairly solid roots. As the son of a phone company executive whose job forced him to relocate often, Knight grew up changing schools and cities on an almost annual basis. His ties to the campus strengthened recently when his wife, Margaret L. Brown, Ph.D., was hired as an assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.
The couple met in 1992 when Brown was a doctoral student here; they married two years later, just before Brown left the United States for two years of field work in Madagascar. Knight has accompanied Brown on some of her anthropological field excursions, including two full summers in Madagascar. But for the foreseeable future, they plan to make their home at Washington University in St. Louis.
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