About Bob Manley, the Center’s founder/president:
Bob Manley (Robert H. Manley) served in the U.S. Navy from 1944-46, mostly in college-based officer training programs and with the U.S. Air Force from 1951-53 as a legal officer (judge advocate). He has the B.A. from Colgate University (1947), the J.D. from Cornell University (1950), the M.P.A from what is now the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1955) and the Ph. D. in Political Science from what is now the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York (1975), where he studied political theory with Dr. John Gunnell and international relations and comparative politics with Dr. Theodore P. Wright, Jr. He studied world history, political theory and the economics of international trade while on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship at the University of Manchester (1955-56). He studied International Law at the Harvard Law School (1953-54) as well as at the Center for Studies in International Law and International Relations at the Hague Academy of International Law (August-September 1959) in a program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
He has been fortunate to spend considerable time in various parts of the world including: a year in French Morocco (now Morocco) with the U.S. Air Force (1952-53); a year studying in England and traveling in Scotland and Europe (1955-56); two years with the humanitarian organization CARE in Hong Kong/Macau, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Ecuador (1957-59); three years in the Caribbean, with extensive travel, especially in Guyana, while with the Institute of Caribbean Studies and Department of Political Science, University of Puerto Rico (1968-71). He also spent eight months in Ghana and visiting universities in Botswana, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Zimbabwe, while teaching on a Fulbright grant in the Political Science Department and the Legon Center for International Affairs at the University of Ghana (January-August 1990).
He taught U.S. Foreign Policy as well as International Organizations (focusing on the United Nations) at the Chinese Foreign Affairs University in Beijing (September 2001-July 2002), preceded by lecturing at Wuhan University and visiting universities in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Hong Kong (May-June 1986). He made research visits to the Soviet Union in 1978, 1984 and 1988 and to all Eastern European countries (except Albania) in 1978 and 1986.
He has also spent time in Japan (1958 and 1986), Vietnam and Singapore (1958), South Korea (1998), as well as in Thailand, Burma (now Myanmar), India, Pakistan, Lebanon, the West Bank (then under Jordanian administration) and Egypt (Spring 1959). In Latin America he has been, for varying lengths of time, in Columbia. Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico and Venezuela.
In 1975, Bob Manley founded the International Public Policy Institute, a non-profit entity with 501(c)(3) status which has had a consultative relationship with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 1984. He edited an annual journal published by the Institute during the period 1976-81 titled International and Comparative Public Policy. He is the author of a book on Guyana’s transformation to independent status, Guyana Emergent: The Post Independent Struggle for Non-Dependent Development (published in 1979 by G.K Hall and Schenkman Publishing Co., new edition published in 1982 by Schenkman) and various other publications in the fields of international law, public policy and related areas.
Bob has taught political science and related subjects at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, the University of Puerto Rico, Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, the University of Ghana, the Chinese Foreign Affairs University, Seton Hall University and New York University. He served as Director of the Ford Foundation financed Non-Western Studies Program at the Atlanta University Center, and as chairperson of the Political Science Department at Seton Hall University.
He was one of the founders of the Master of Public Administration program and the Center for Public Service, as well as the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, at Seton Hall University, serving as the initial Associate Dean and then as Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Diplomacy. He is a member of the New York and New Jersey bars.
In teaching political theory, Bob has taken a comparative approach, focusing on the work of important figures from various parts of the world. In line with this approach, he offered a new course under the title “Comparative Political Thought” at Seton Hall University in 1984. When he co-taught, with Professor Mike Oquaye, a course on political thought at the University of Ghana in 1990, the approach involved focusing on both leading figures in the so-called “western” canon and important leaders who had made significant contributions in African Political Thought.
Bob’s work in the area of what he then termed “Global-level Political
Thought” (GLPT) began in 1978, and included organizing a number of panels focusing on GRPT at International Studies Association annual conferences during the 1980s as well as an eight-day conference on GLPT held at Seton Hall University in June-July 1987, the subject of an article in the New Jersey Section of the Sunday New York Times.
The global-level political thought approach became an important base for Bob’s current work on globally responsible political thought and public policy. Bob was an early figure in helping develop the concept of International Public Policy and published in 1978, a 103 page study titled “The World Policy System: An Analytical and Substantive Overview” in the journal International and Comparative Public Policy published by the International Public Policy Institute. A revised version was published (1979) in Whole Earth Papers by Global Education Associates under the title “Building the Infrastructure of World Order —A Survey of Global Level Policy Development from 1945 to 1977”. This study dealt with 48 separate global level public policy issue-areas under six categories, namely: common-usage areas, economic, environment/weather, information/knowledge, political, and social. Bob has had substantial teaching and research experience in the public policy area. He taught courses in comparative and international public policy at Seton Hall University and New York University.
Some of the people who Bob has been fortunate to interact with over the years include: Professor Elihu Lauterpacht of Trinity College, Cambridge University; Professor Clive Parry of Downing College, also Cambridge University; Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University and the University of California at Santa Barbara; Professor James Rosenau of George Washington University; Professor Charles Kindleberger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Professor Gordon K. Lewis of the University of Puerto Rico; Professor Ved Nanda of the University of Denver; Professors Kwame Ninsin and Mike Oquaye of the University of Ghana; Professor Benjamin Ferencz of Pace University; Professor Patricia Mische of Antioch College and Professor Anele Heiges, currently President of the International Public Policy Institute.
His thinking on development imperatives in the developing countries has been affected by the work of Professor Barbara Ward of Cambridge University and Dr. Mahbub ul Haq of the United Nations Development Program. He is making plans to teach at Bangladesh University after having been invited by Professor Quazi Azher Ali, the University’s founder and Vice Chancellor, a fellow Kennedy School graduate.
A Board of Advisors for the Center is in the process of formation.