Lee Brown to join Rice
Former Houston Police Chief Lee P. Brown will be stepping down as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington and accepting a position at Rice.
"We're very excited about his coming to Rice and making use of formally obtained knowledge and experience as a law-enforcement officer," Sociology Department Chair Chandler Davidson said.
"He [has] a unique combination of very broad experience in the highest level of law enforcement and a Ph.D."
Brown received a masters and a doctorate in criminology from the University of California at Berkeley, a masters in sociology from San Jose State University and a bachelors in criminology from Fresno State University.
He also taught at Portland State University from 1968 to 1972 and at Washington's Howard University between 1972 and 1975.
According to Davidson, Brown will be dividing his time here at Rice between the Sociology Department and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, where he will be a senior scholar.
Next spring, Brown will teach a course in criminology and will likely teach a joint course with Sociology Professor Bill Martin the following year.
"He's expressed interest in teaching other courses about the city and problems of the city in addition to crime per se," Davidson said.
In 1982, Brown came to Houston as former Mayor Kathy Whitmire's chief of police. Four years later, he was selected as police chief of Atlanta. He then returned to Houston.
He left Houston in 1990 to take the job of New York police commissioner and returned after two years to head Texas Southern University's Black Male Initiative program.
President Bill Clinton appointed Brown to the position of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1993, a job often called the nation's "Drug Czar," hailing him as a person who would give credibity and new visibility to the war against drugs.
During Brown's eight years as chief of police in Houston, he was responsible for improving the image of the department, easing racial tension and stressing the "neighborhood-oriented policing" program in which officers attempt to acquaint themselves with the people they serve.
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