[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8548-8549]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              RECOGNIZING DR. MATTHEW HOLDEN, ACADEMICIAN

                                  _____
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 6, 2012

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and 
acknowledge Dr. Matthew Holden, Academician.
  Holden was born in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and subsequently grew up 
in Chicago. He is married to the former Dorothy Amanda Howard and they 
are the parents of Paul Christopher Hendricks and John Matthew 
Alexander Holden. Holden is an alumnus of Northwestern University 
(M.A., Ph.D., Political Science, Anthropology minor), of Roosevelt 
University (B. A., Political Science, History minor), and of Wendell 
Phillips High School (Chicago).
  He taught at Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of 
Pittsburgh, the University of Wisconsin--Madison, and the University of 
Virginia, where he was the Henry L. and Grace M. Doherty Professor of 
Politics. He has also been the Newman Visiting Professor of American 
Civilization, Cornell University, and has been a visiting professor at 
Jackson State University. In his writings and experience, Holden has 
emphasized the connection of political science concepts to the actual 
world that they seek to explain, and of learning from the actual world 
to refine concepts.
  Professor Holden has written extensively in many fields of the 
discipline of political science. This work has included energy politics 
and environmental policy, regulatory policy and practice, urban and 
metropolitan politics, public policy and administration, executive 
politics, law and politics, and race and ethnic politics.
  Among his works are Continuity & Disruption: Essays in Public 
Administration, a study of race and politics entitled The Divisible 
Republic, an edited volume on Varieties of Political Conservatism, and 
contributions to a joint volume on Resources and Decisions.
  He is also the author of a new volume, now in the last stage of 
writing, entitled The Practice of Power, a study of public 
administration and political power, for the University of Oklahoma 
Press. This volume is based on the Rothbaum Lecture in Representative 
Government delivered in 2001 and rewritten over the past decade. In 
1973, he published a two volume perspective on race relations and civil 
rights entitled The Politics of the Black ``Nation'' and The White 
Man's Burden. A combined trade edition was also published under the 
title The Divisible Republic.
  He has also been engaged in many activities outside the academy. He 
held full time appointive public office as Commissioner of the Public 
Service Commission of Wisconsin and as Commissioner of the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission. He has been a member of the Electricity 
Advisory Board (U.S. Department of Energy), Task Force on Electric 
System Reliability (U.S. Department of Energy), President's Air Quality 
Advisory Board, and of the Board of Directors of Atlantic Energy, Inc.
  Among his public affairs activities have been assignments in 
congressional testimony on D.C., government organization and on energy 
policy, and as a witness before the House Judiciary Committee on 
historical and constitutional standards on Presidential impeachment. He 
has also been a witness on state legislative hearings on energy.
  He has also been a member of the Delegate Assembly of the National 
Urban League, the Education and Youth Incentives Committee of the 
National Urban League, the Boards of Directors of the Madison, 
Wisconsin and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Urban Leagues, in local NAACP 
chapters, and is an active lay-person in the Episcopal Church.

[[Page 8549]]

  He has also been a strong advocate for improving the analytical basis 
of African American politics, and has spent recent years advancing the 
concept of a think tank on politics, economics, and government, 
especially in the Lower Mississippi Valley. One of his major current 
interests, as well, is historic preservation, especially in Mound Bayou 
where the vicissitudes of the contemporary economy are severe and 
adverse effects.
  He is a former President of the American Political Science 
Association, a former President of the Policy Studies Organization, a 
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Senior 
Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He holds the 
LLD. (Hon.) from Tuskegee University, the L.H.D. (Hon.) from Roosevelt 
University, and the L.H.D. (Hon.) from Virginia Theological Seminary. 
Holden has recently become a member of the Board of the Abraham Lincoln 
Association.
  Jackson State University has also created a Matthew Holden, Jr. 
Symposium Lecture in recognition of his work and of his and Mrs. 
Dorothy Holden's donation of the 4,000 volume library that is now 
called The Mrs. Dorothy Howard Holden and Dr. Matthew Holden, Jr. 
Reading Room. Holden's academic, personal, and official papers have 
mainly been donated to the University of Virginia Archives. When those 
papers are processed they will provide one of most extensive 
collections in any university of materials on regulatory policy and 
procedure as seen from a commissioner's standpoint.
  Holden served in the United States Army, with sixteen months in Korea 
in the 7th Infantry Division Artillery.
  Matthew Holden, Jr. is the Wepner Distinguished Professor in 
Political Science, University of Illinois--Springfield, a position he 
has held since August 2009. He is the convener of the Wepner Symposium 
on the Lincoln Legacy and Contemporary Scholarship.

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