DR. PAUL N. YLVISAKER
Dr. Paul N. Ylvisaker, the first Commissioner of DCA, was appointed by Governor Richard Hughes in 1967.
After receiving his Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard University in 1948, Dr. Ylvisaker served for seven years as an associate professor of politics at Swarthmore College. During that period, he also served as staff director of the Inter University Case Program (1953-54) and as executive secretary and consultant to the Mayor of Philadelphia (1954-55).
In 1955, Dr. Ylvisaker joined the Ford Foundation, becoming its director of public affairs in 1960. During his seven years at the Ford Foundation, he also served as a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University and, while on a leave of absence from the Foundation, served in the Johnson White House, where he initiated the Model Cities program. He left the Ford Foundation to accept appointment as Commissioner.
As Commissioner, and indeed throughout his career, Dr. Ylvisaker was a tireless advocate for cities and, particularly, for the urban underclass. He gained public prominence early in his service at DCA by mediating peaceful resolutions to civil disorders that erupted in several New Jersey cities following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of his colleagues at the Ford Foundation was later to recall that Dr. Ylvisaker’s central concern while at the Foundation was to find ways in which “a democratic polity possessed of such immense intellectual and scientific wealth [might] transform itself into a society more rational in governance and more equitable in the distribution of rights and resources.” He viewed academic studies unaccompanied by action as irrelevant, and early on persuaded the Ford Foundation to sponsor demonstration programs to help save endangered neighborhoods by coordinating what had been separate educational, employment, health and social welfare programs and including the low-income neighborhood residents who were the intended beneficiaries in the management of the programs.
After leaving the Department, Dr. Ylvisaker returned to academia, teaching at Yale, Princeton and Harvard, and serving as dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Commissioner Ylvisaker died in 1992.
