Harold Lasswell

Harold Dwight Lasswell (February 13, 1902 – December 18, 1978) was an American political scientist and communications theorist.

He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

He was a professor of law at Yale University.

He served as president of the American Political Science Association, American Society of International Law, and World Academy of Art and Science.

Lasswell was born on February 13, 1902, in Donnellson, Illinois, to a clergyman and a school teacher.

An older brother died in childhood.

During high school, Lasswell served as editor of the school newspaper and gave a valedictory speech at graduation.

Some of his early influences included his uncle, a physician who introduced him to the works of Sigmund Freud; and an English teacher, who introduced him to Karl Marx and Havelock Ellis.

Excelling in his academics, particularly history and English, Lasswell was awarded a scholarship to the University of Chicago.

In 1918, at the age of 16, Lasswell began his studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics.

He also studied at the Universities of London, Geneva, Paris, and Berlin in the 1920s.

From 1922 to 1938, Lasswell served as an assistant professor and associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

During this time, Lasswell was granted a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences Research Council.

He also received a doctorate from the University of Chicago and penned his dissertation on Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927).

Lasswell spent a year teaching at the Washington School of Psychiatry from 1938 to 1939, before joining the U.S. Library of Congress as director of war communications research from 1939 to 1945.

During this time, he also taught at the New School of Social Research and Yale Law School.

As a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, Lasswell taught a graduate seminar on "Property in a Crisis Society."

He became a full-time faculty member following World War II, which underscored the need for a better understanding of law and theory about law.

To institutionalize the policy sciences he was formulating, Lasswell along with Myres McDougal and George Dession created the Policy Sciences Council in 1944 and the Policy Sciences Foundation in 1948.

Lasswell taught law and political science at Yale University from 1946 to 1970.

Lasswell served as president of the American Political Science Association in 1956 and president of the American Society of International Law from 1966 to 1968.

He was also involved in the Association for the Advancement of Science, Commission on the Freedom of the Press, Committee for Economic Development, and Rand Corporation.

During the course of his career, Lasswell received many honors, including honorary degrees from the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

The American Council of Learned Societies honored him in 1960, calling him a "master of all the social sciences and pioneer in each."

From 1970 to 1972, he served as a professor of law at the City University of New York's John Jay College.

From 1972 to 1976, he served as a distinguished professor at Temple University School of Law, where he retired from teaching.

Columbia University also named him the Albert Schewitzer professor of international affairs.

After retiring from teaching, Lasswell spent his remaining years working with the Policy Sciences Center.

He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1974.

Lasswell suffered a massive stroke on December 24, 1977.

He died of pneumonia on December 18, 1978.

Publishing between 4 million to 6 million words during his academic career, Lasswell has been described as a "one-man university" whose "competence in, and contributions to, anthropology, communications, economics, law, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and sociology are enough to make him a political scientist in the model of classical Greece."

Lasswell is considered to be a founding father of political psychology and policy sciences and an early proponent of mass communication as a field of scholarly research.

He believed universities should become focal centers for the study of communications.

His five-questions model of communication is considered one of the earliest and most influential models of communication. Many consider him the founder of content analysis, having conducted one of the most comprehensive content analysis studies of his time.

At the age of 25, Lasswell completed his doctoral dissertation on Propaganda Technique in the World War.

According to a biographical memorial written by Gabriel Almond at the time of Lasswell's death, and published by the National Academies of Sciences in 1987, Lasswell "ranked among the half dozen creative innovators in the social sciences in the twentieth century."

At the time, Almond asserted that "few would question that he was the most original and productive political scientist of his time."

Areas of research in which Lasswell worked included the importance of personality, social structure, and culture in the explanation of political phenomena.

Lasswell was associated with the disciplines of communication, political science, psychology, and sociology – however he did not adhere to the distinction between these boundaries, but instead worked to erase the lines drawn to divide these disciplines.