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“Saving” the City: Harland Bartholomew and Administrative Evil in St. Louis

May 2017
Public Integrity 20(2):1-13

DOI:10.1080/10999922.2017.1306902

Authors:

University of Missouri

City planner Harland Bartholomew rose in prominence along with the popularity of scientific city-efficient planning during the early to mid-twentieth century. In the pursuit of solutions to urban problems, Bartholomew concluded that the most efficient way to revitalize St. Louis, Missouri, was through the clearing of slums. In an attempt to solve the city’s economic and demographic problems, slum clearance destroyed and displaced Black neighborhoods whose 70,000 residents were seen as detrimental to the city’s success,. Bartholomew’s planning was in line with the public administration theoretical perspective of administrative evil, which states that technical-rational specialists sometimes commit acts of cruelty without intending to. Through his attempts to revitalize and renew the city, Harland Bartholomew did a great deal of evil to Black populations in St. Louis. This article identifies the ways that Bartholomew’s administrative evil was masked and perceived as a moral good despite its displacement of Black residents.

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Introduction

In the pursuit of solutions to economic and demographic problems during the early to mid-

twentieth century, St. Louis city planner Harland Bartholomew destroyed black neighborhoods,

displaced their residents without assistance, and created racial segregation (Schindler, 2015;

Rothstein, 2014; Gordon, 2014; Bartholomew, 1922; Kanovsky, 2015; Marcuse, 1997; Heathcott,

2005b; Lai, 2014). Citing concerns of public health, unfair municipal tax contributions, and

deurbanization, he was motivated to alter the built environment to secure urban growth

(Bartholomew, 1920; Bartholomew, 1937a; Bartholomew, 1935; Bartholomew, 1914-1929;

Bartholomew, 1914-1929a; Bartholomew, 1940; Bartholomew, 1937; Cooper-McCann, 2016;

Heathcott, 2005a; Brown, 2005). His concerns were rational. Many slum residences did not have

running water, adequate sunlight, reasonable living space, and were next to polluting industries

(Bolin, Grineski, & Collins, 2005; Lopez, 2012; Fischler, 1998; Bartholomew, 1920a; Fukuo,

2009; Lopez, 2009; Heathcott, 2015; Rothstein, 2014). Slums created negative externalities by

consuming more than they paid in municipal taxes (Heathcott, 2015; Lovelace, 1993;

Bartholomew, 2003; Gordon, 2014). White populations were beginning to deurbanize from the

central city into the suburbs (Sandoval, 2004). Bartholomew’s concerns were founded, his

analyses correct; but, his solutions ignored the lives of black slum populations.

This paper will argue that in the pursuit of solutions, Harland Bartholomew committed

administrative evil. This was legal, which does not diminish its status as cruelty. It was done after

analyzing the sources of urban problems, and from those analyses it made sense. Slum clearance

was considered to be the first step in urban renewal, a process that would help the city at large.

Urban renewal proved to be a process that displaced populations under the guise of progress.

This paper is no apology for the evil of slum clearance in St. Louis. Its harm cannot be justified

by any urban problem. It will explain how the demolition and displacement of black

neighborhoods was cast as good and necessary.

Urban planning was used to alter the built environment of St. Louis to the detriment of black

residents. Bartholomew’s slum clearance did not consider the effect that the program would have

on their neighborhoods. It is one thing to see a black neighborhood as blighted, or in bad shape,

but another thing to recommend destroying it without considering displaced families. This period

was one where discrimination was common, but the effects that slum clearance had go beyond

discrimination. Entire communities were destroyed and their populations were displaced. Those

who could not afford new housing in the city had little choice but to emigrate. Neighborhoods

that had spent years building strong social ties were dispersed. The displacement of black

populations in St. Louis was a policy of exodus.

Administrative Evil

Administrative evil is defined by Guy Adams and Danny Balfour (2014) as when people “engage

in acts of evil unaware that they are in fact doing anything at all wrong,” with evil defined as

“the actions of human beings that unjustly or needlessly inflict pain and suffering and death on

other human beings.” Their definition of administrative evil is adequate, but their definition of

evil is somewhat vague in its exactness of when cruelty is just or needed, and of when unethical

behavior moves into the realm of actual evil. More contemporary descriptions of evil

characterize it as existing on a spectrum, with the inconsequential lie being far before the point

that immorality becomes evil and mass murder existing past that point (Adams & Balfour, 2015;

Jurkiewicz & Grossman, 2015). Others will point out that there is an equity component to evil,

and that deeds committed within patterns of inequity carry additional weight when considering if

a deed is evil (Fredrickson, 2015). A better definition of evil describes it as between the lie-to-

mass murder spectrum, with weight added to actions that fit in with patterns of inequity.

Not all evil is administrative. People committing evil often understand what they are doing

and why they are doing it. When evil is recognized for what it is, it can be perceived as

unavoidable or enabling a greater good (Zanetti & Adams, 2000). Sometimes people committing

evil are unaware of what they are contributing to, and this is when evil becomes administrative.

The defining characteristic that separates evil from administrative evil is that it is masked to

perpetrators.

Administrative evil is masked – administrative evil-doers do not have evil intentions.

Administrative evil may be so masked that it is impossible to recognize and is often perpetrated

by people fulfilling their professional roles in an organization (Adams & Balfour, 2007; Adams

& Balfour, 2014; Adams & Zanetti, 2000). With time and cultural distance, administrative evil

becomes easier to unmask (Barth, 2010; Adams & Balfour, 2014; Molina, 2015; Tschundi, 2008;

Adams & Zanetti, 2000). The most named mask administrative evil is technical rationality, a

phenomenon that arose from early twentieth century approaches to problem solving.

Technical rationality, an epistemology that emphasizes scientific analysis, efficiency, and

technological progress, is the most cited mask of administrative evil (Adams & Balfour, 2014;

Adams, 2011a; Adams, Balfour, & Reed, 2006). Technical-rational specialists apply their skills

in pursuit of a goal, separated from the context of its use. The specialist has little say in their

goals—there is only the expectation of science and efficiency (Dillard & Ruchala, 2005). A

specialist uses technical means to reach specified ends; in this way, it appears to professionals

that ends dictate means as being whatever is most efficient, rather than people dictating their own

means and ends (Chwastiak, 2001). Some have argued that technical rationality is not necessary

for evil to occur and that there are other explanations for evil committed by administrators

(Koven, 2011). This is true; however, technical rationality is sufficient to mask evil and has been

noted as an area of interest in public administration for decades (Adams, 2011).

Legalism has also been identified as a common mask of administrative evil. (Hoffman, Pyne,

& Gajewski, 2012). Legalism entails a perspective that the following of laws is sufficient for

fulfilling moral obligations (Shklar, 1964). Laws can justify immorality—if one knows her

auctions are legal, it is easy to see herself as doing good (Molina, 2015). In the eyes of

perpetrators, evil performed pursuant to the law becomes legitimate (Balfour, 1997). While law

often aims to be a perfect reflection of morality, that reflection can sometimes become opaque.

The law can be insufficient for defining moral action (Granfield & Koenig, 2003), immoral

governance can fall within the bounds of the law (Anechiarico, 2016), and the legal profession

has undergone moral decline (Derthick, 2015; Quill, 2014). There are times if, when the

following of a law would result in a profound evil, that the expectations of the administrator

must be to overcome immoral laws (King, 1963). Without that expectation, the legal status of an

action can mask the evil it entails.

A third mask of administrative evil is moral inversion. During moral inversion an evil, for

example the displacement and segregation of blacks, is recast as a good, for example helping the

city grow. The moral inversion is convincing and believable, it is not a rationalization that people

seek actively (Adams & Balfour, 2014; Adams & Balfour, 2008; Balf, 2016). When the

population that evil is being performed upon is defined as dangerous to a community’s economic

sustainability or physical security, evil committed to them can be recast as good for helping the

community (Bartholomew, 1922; Bartholomew, 1935; Bartholomew, 1937; Adams et al., 2006).

Believing oneself to be doing good works to mask evil. Overcoming the moral inversion may be

the most difficult aspect of avoiding administrative evil; the rejection of cruelty when faced with

victimhood can engender a sense of cynicism and misanthropy with the realization that the

cruelty of others will continue even in a society that refuses to respond in kind (Shklar, 1982).

Evil can be masked through the creation and dehumanization of surplus populations, which

are groups without substantive roles in the society they live in (Adams et al., 2006; Samier, 2008;

Dillard, Ruchala, & Yuthas, 2005; Rubenstein, 1983). In modern capitalism, surplus populations

do not contribute economically (Rubenstein, 1983). Economic surplus populations are reduced to

their quantitative attributes measured in dollars (Bauman, 1989). From the perspective of

efficiency-minded technical rationality seeking an economic end, surplus populations are

inefficient inputs. In general, economic deprivation works to define populations as less-than-

human out groups (Tschundi, 2008; Adams & Balfour, 2008). The economic problems created by

black surplus populations in St. Louis were not considered intentional, but rather a natural

characteristic of blackness (Lee, 2000; Tillotson, 2014; Stone, 2012). Slum conditions were

synonymous with black residency, they could only be alleviated by the removal of the surplus

population rather than through the improvement of their conditions—black residency was seen to

cause slums, and conditions could only be improved in their absence.

Evil can be masked using euphemisms. What is now often called slum clearance was referred

to as a step in urban renewal (Fainstein, 2005; Berry, 2005; Lipman, 2009; Kanovsky, 2015).

This euphemism shifted the actions of planners from the clearance of slum neighborhoods to the

rest of the city, which stood to benefit. Words like blight and slum were used to describe black

neighborhoods, and blacks themselves were thought to spread blight, and financial and insurance

risk (Kanovsky, 2015; Tillotson, 2014). Describing a neighborhood as risky, blighted, or slum,

was synonymous with calling it black (Lee, 2000). In St. Louis, Harland Bartholomew rarely

made references to race explicitly unless in passing, and preferred to talk about blight and slum

(Bartholomew, 2003; Riley, 1926-1964).

Evil can be masked on a spectrum. Some evil is hidden from the people committing it, some

have a vague understanding, and some people are aware of what they are doing. Evil tends to be

mostly if not entirely unmasked at executive level positions. There, evil is calculated and chosen

as supportive of a larger goal (Adams & Balfour, 2014). Organizational support roles tend to be

susceptible to masked evil (Balf, 2016; Adams et al., 2006). City planners fall within this level as

specialists—they make recommendations, to inform decision makers. Lower level practitioners

can also recognize evil around them. They may do nothing about it for fear of arousing the ire of

their bosses, or because they do not believe their personal agency appropriately extends to the

situation (Samier, 2008).

Some take issue with the descriptor of evil entirely—it has moral implications, which are

often considered to be subjective and outside of the realm of social science. Many academics

have shied away from this kind of research, opting to merely describe ethical theories or to

rename evil as something less controversial (Quill, 2014; Adams & Balfour, 2014).

Evil can be overnamed, or often used to refer to something less than evil. Overnaming

diminishes the power of the word evil, especially when it is used to describe displacement,

murder, and taking candy from a baby. Evil can also be undernamed when it is not used to refer

to something that is clearly evil. Referring to displacement as ‘bad’ could undername its severity

(Boedy, 2015). This paper takes the position that some things are accurately described as evil.

Having defined evil and administrative evil, both can be discussed in a descriptive manner.

The next section discusses Harland Bartholomew, city planner in St. Louis from 1916 to

1953. Bartholomew was an advocate for slum clearance, both in St. Louis and across the country.

First, a broad overview of Bartholomew’s work will be given. Then a more specific discussion of

Bartholomew’s planning will be presented and matched to masks of administrative evil.

Harland Bartholomew

This section relies on literature describing the life and work of Harland Bartholomew. In addition

to books and articles, it also relies on the Washington University’s Harland Bartholomew

Archives. This archive contains many of Bartholomew’s personal records. Through the idea of

slum clearance Bartholomew did a great deal of harm to the populations he displaced. Rational

city planning became popular in the early 20th century, which coincides with Bartholomew’s

entrance into the profession, and he serves as a good case study for urban planning of the period.

Bartholomew entered the city planning profession in 1912 with the firm of E.P. Goodrich as a

city planning engineer. Goodrich would later partner with the firm of George Ford to plan

Newark, New Jersey in 1913. In 1914 Ford and Goodrich left Newark to work on other projects,

leaving Bartholomew to finish the plan. The Newark plan commission hired Bartholomew as the

first full time city planner in the United States. By 1915, Bartholomew completed the United

States’ first comprehensive city plan. Later that year, at age 26, he took an offer from St. Louis to

be their director of planning. In 1947 he prepared a city plan for St. Louis highlighting

neighborhoods as slums, in danger of blight, or stable. He stayed in St. Louis until 1953 while

also managing his firm Harland Bartholomew and Associates. The firm worked across America

creating city plans. In 1953 Bartholomew sold his interests in the firm to focus on his role as the

chair of the National Planning Committee in Washington D.C., which he had participated in

since 1922. While in D.C., he became close to Dwight Eisenhower and proposed a

transportation plan that planted the seeds of the D.C. Metro train system (Heathcott, 2005;

Heathcott, 2007; Lovelace, 1993; Johnson, 1963).

Prior to the 20th century, the focus of city planning was on the beauty of the city,

monuments, public parks, and invoking a sense of awe. This planning focus was known as city

beautiful or city ascetic. This approach appeared impractical to Bartholomew; for example,

beauty is often considered subjective and the feelings that people have when viewing a city

cannot be measured well. Bartholomew’s planning prioritized function over form, entailed

formal education, focused on economic and social conditions, understood municipal finance, and

cared about automobiles. This newer style of city planning was known as city scientific

(Johnson, 1963).

Presence of Masking in Bartholomew’s Planning

As one of the first city scientific planners, Bartholomew’s planning style was steeped in technical

rationality. He considered the historical background of the city. His plans included the city’s

social and economic characteristics. He measured and analyzed demographics, land use,

transportation, and street use. He made recommendations for financing improvements. He helped

pioneer zoning, and abhorred on-the-spot zoning as the antithesis of the planned city. Within the

city scientific planning paradigm, each step of the planning process was intended to manipulate

society—transportation was to move as many people as possible as quickly as possible, parks

were to give recreation, and neighborhoods were to ensure that residents had access to civic

buildings, shopping, and workplaces. Harland Bartholomew frequently recommended slum

clearance as an efficiency-focused way of rebuilding slum neighborhoods (Lovelace, 1993;

Bartholomew, 1935; Bartholomew, 1963; Johnson, 1964; Heathcott, 2005; Fairfield, 1992).

Bartholomew’s planning divided the city into neighborhood units, based on the work of city

planner Clarence Perry. Ideal neighborhoods were city sub-units with access to schools, civic

buildings, shopping, and places of employment within walking distance. Wide streets bounded

them to direct the flow of automobile traffic past them. Internal streets were for slower traffic to

keep residents safe from cars, and to funnel them to larger streets (Bartholomew, 1951; Perry,

1951; Heathcott, 2011). Bartholomew thought so highly of the neighborhood unit concept that he

abstracted its elements to create a neighborhood quality score, which compared the degree of

conformance of real cities to cities with ideal neighborhoods. He reported that his abstraction

was good at predicting property values, but usually kept scores private to avoid publicly

offending low-scoring cities (Lovelace, 1993). Bartholomew’s planning focus was on economics

and demographics, and he tried to use his planning to secure economic and demographic ends for

the city. He worked systematically and compared reality to a pre-defined ideal. By using

technical-rational planning and focusing on quantitative outcomes, Bartholomew created

conditions to detach himself from the effects that his planning had on black neighborhoods.

Bartholomew dehumanized blacks in St. Louis as economic drains. At several points,

Bartholomew advocated for racial segregation to preserve neighborhood property values. One

source quotes him as admitting that one intent of his planning in St. Louis was to prevent the

migration into “finer residential districts…by colored people.” Another source quotes him saying

that he intended to contain blacks to prevent the spread of neighborhoods “where values have

depreciated [and] homes are either vacant or occupied by colored people or boarding houses”

and thereby prevent the migration of “our people out into the suburban districts.” In Richmond,

Virginia Bartholomew’s planning was described as having “coincided with the prevailing local

attitudes toward the proper social division in cities” and blacks “bear the brunt” of

Bartholomew’s slum clearance. In Armourdale, Kansas Bartholomew’s style was described as

“allowing for a higher degree of social segregation” (Rothstein, 2014; Gordon, 2014; Silver &

Moeser, 1995; Brown, Morris & Taylor, 2009; Heathcott, 2005a; Bartholomew, 1927).

Bartholomew was well versed in laws surrounding urban planning—he knew how planning

was legally justified, how planning could and could not be used to segregate, and for what

purposes government could use planning to acquire land (Bartholomew, 1948). He authored

Chapter 353 of the Missouri Constitution, which created urban redevelopment corporations. This

law gave corporations tax abatements when developing blighted neighborhoods as well as the

legal power to take property that had been declared blighted (Lovelace, 1963). Bartholomew

knew the laws surrounding city planning and that his was legal—as was much of the

discrimination that has taken place in the United States. The legal status of Bartholomew’s

planning does not excuse its discrimination, but it can explain one way in which it was masked.

Adams and Balfour (2014) suggest that the medical subtext of describing neighborhoods as

blighted implies the need for experts to find and remove disease and the ‘infected’ populations

causing it. Early twentieth century viewpoints saw slums and blight as an inherent problem of

blackness (Rothstein, 2014; Gordon, 2014; Lai, 2014; O’Hara, 2011; Bartholomew, 1941;

Fullilove, 2001; Stone, 2012). Furthermore, Bartholomew mostly discussed urban renewal in lieu

of slum clearance, focusing on the city at large rather than specific neighborhoods. With his

references to the need for urban renewal and his regular use of blight metaphors, masking

euphemisms were present in Bartholomew’s planning.

Despite Bartholomew’s discrimination, his legal knowledge, his use of euphemisms, and his

technical-rational methods, Bartholomew’s planning was not motivated by racial discrimination

as much as much it was motivated economics. Although discriminatory, the quantity of his

comments about race and segregation pale in comparison to his discussions of neighborhood tax

contributions (Bartholomew, 1914-1929; Bartholomew, 1914-1929a; Bartholomew, 1935:

Gordon, 2014; Lovelace, 1993; Heathcott, 2008; Heathcott, 2005). Bartholomew discussed the

bad living conditions in slums much more often than he discussed their race (Bartholomew,

1922; Bartholomew, 1920a). When Bartholomew did discuss race, it was usually in the context

of preserving neighborhoods. More than discriminating, Bartholomew tried to help St. Louis

thrive. More than trying to disadvantage blacks, Bartholomew recommended slum clearance to

gain advantage for Saint Louis. He was not motivated to fix the conditions of slums to create a

more equitable city for slum residents—he was motivated to clear slums and convert them to

more economical use to help the city at large.

As a city planner in the early to mid-twentieth century, Bartholomew’s job was to further the

social and economic needs of the city (Fairfield, 1992). He wanted the city to be financially

solvent, healthy, safe, and populated. Using technical rationality, he identified the problems of

the city as economic surplus populations. He recommended slum clearance, and convinced

others with euphemisms of urban renewal and blight. Using his legal knowledge, he devised

ways to begin slum clearance. Motivated by the moral inversion to do good, Bartholomew

created victims of slum clearance.

People committing administrative evil do not see themselves as committing evil acts—often

they see themselves as helping. Administrative evil resembles professionals doing what is

expected. By creating neighborhood maps, calculating neighborhood tax contributions, citing

public health concerns, noting population changes, and then advocating for slum clearance,

Bartholomew was doing what was expected of a city scientific planner. He concluded that the

most efficient way of improving St. Louis was destroying black neighborhoods and starting over.

The Victims of Slum Clearance

In the years following Bartholomew’s recommendations for slum clearance, St. Louis displaced

at least 70,000 mostly black residents. 16,000 of those came from the Mill Creek neighborhood;

others, from parts of the city identified as slums or deindustrialized (Gordon, 2014;

Bartholomew, 1914-1929b). The negative externalities that slum clearance policy created for

slum residents were hardly accounted for—less than a quarter received relocation assistance

(Gordon, 2014). In solving the externalities that slums created for the city, a new set of

externalities were created for slum residents that were not addressed.

After slum clearance, black communities with strong social ties disintegrated and residents

scattered (Gordon, 2014; Alkadry & Blessett, 2010). Hundreds of black businesses and religious

institutions were destroyed (Heathcott & Murphy, 2005). Bartholomew’s attitude on slums in St.

Louis stayed relevant to St. Louis urban planning into 1975. Then, planners continued the bad

treatments of slum neighborhoods by recommending that they be allowed to decline without

intervention—a policy of “benign neglect” (Cooper-McCann, 2016).

Some displaced residents were pushed into segregated communities outside of the urban core

(Rothstein, 2014; Gordon, 2014). Twelve thousand residents, because they could not afford new

housing, were forced into segregated public housing like Pruitt-Igoe (Rothstein, 2014; Aoki,

1992). That housing complex, planned for integration but segregated as a consequence of white

deurbanization, became known for crime, poverty, low quality building materials, and the death

of modernism in city planning (Grimshaw, 2011; Bristol, 1991). In 1970, the United States

Commission on Civil rights declared St. Louis’s slum clearance program nothing more than an

“evasion of responsibility” and “a race clearing program” (USCCR, 1970). Slum clearance

destroyed communities, displaced residents, and provided inadequate aid for relocation. In the

name of economy and urban renewal, black residents were made to emigrate.

Displacement seems to fall closer to evil than it does the inconsequential lie. Rubenstein

(1983) and Arendt (1963) point out that in firmly established acts of historical evil, displacement

and segregation hold places on the road to genocide. Bartholomew’s actions never amounted to

genocide nor did they aspire to, but the displacement of surplus populations certainly lends itself

to defining action as evil. Furthermore, Fredrickson’s (2015) addition of weight to equity

concerns has a place in defining Bartholomew’s actions—St. Louis’s surplus population was

black, historical victims of inequity in St. Louis and the United States. While Bartholomew’s

actions were not the greatest of all evils, it is not difficult to imagine them crossing the hazy line

that separates immorality from evil. Because Bartholomew’s recommendations were masked by

moral inversion and other factors, if his actions were evil it is not far-fetched to characterize

them as administrative evil.

Conclusion

Even today, municipalities assemble and clear private parcels to enable economic development

and a more efficient city. Some might argue that this is necessary for a city’s growth, that urban

development will not occur but for the assembly of large parcels, and that in modern times urban

development does not happen without this municipal participation. If that is the case, the evils of

the past must still be avoided.

City planning has a dark history. To their credit, many planning practitioners acknowledge

the past, and steps have been taken to transform the discipline. Today city planning takes a

broader approach than it once did and considers human resources development, mixed income

housing, mixed use neighborhoods, and equitable transportation. Moreover, if evil can be

avoided, development itself can be a good. But economic approaches to city planning cannot be

allowed to invert the morality of planners such that victimized populations are displaced without

assistance. Care must be taken to ensure that the allure of economy and urban renewal do not

overcome other moral considerations.

Several solutions to the problem of administrative evil have been suggested and could be

applied to city planning. Judith Shklar’s (1982) concept of “putting cruelty first” is an approach

that presumes that the public at large is willing to prevent the most extravagant instances of evil

if they are willing to accept a public ethic that prioritizes avoiding cruelty. H. George

Fredrickson (2002) points out that some cultures have selected administrators on the basis of

their conformance to moral virtues and ability to embody correct social roles.

Others point to the power of democratic deliberation to involve surplus groups whose views

might otherwise be ignored (Adams & Balfour, 2014; Stone, 2012), though such approaches do

not take into account that administrative evil is masked and may be so even during inclusive

deliberation. The results of inclusive democratic deliberation may be collective consensus, but

that consensus may still be aimed at a rationally argued for evil. Certainly, giving those that slum

clearance displaced a greater voice in the process could have alleviated their suffering—in 1973

St. Louis, public participation prevented a planning policy of ‘benign neglect’ from becoming

official policy (Cooper-McCann, 2016)—but on issues involving groups outside of the

community, collective consensus advocating for evil may still be reached.

This paper advocates that a solution for dealing with the problem of administrative evil is to

lionize ‘bureaucratic courage’ in public administration education. Some argue that historical

practitioners of administrative evil did not show courage in the face of evil (Arendt, 1963). This

paper defines bureaucratic courage as: when an administrator, during their day to day work,

consciously chooses to commit acts of heroic good. By lionizing bureaucratic courage, it can be

brought to the attention of future practitioners that even mundane bureaucratic action can have

moral consequences. Consider the case of Chiune Sugihara—during the Holocaust, this Japanese

diplomat signed thousands of visas for Jewish people trying to escape Europe. In defiance of his

superiors, Sugihara worked tirelessly signing visas between July 31 and August 28, 1940. His

visas allowed 6,000 people to escape Europe. It is estimated that their descendants number

between 40,000 and 100,000. Sugihara, through the simple act of signing papers, saved

thousands of lives (“Sugihara’s List,” 2013).

Sugihara disobeyed his government, but Rosemary O’Leary (2014) points out several other

examples of bureaucratic valor from which case studies may be drawn. In addition to

disobedience, O’Leary profiles several other archetypes of bureaucratic valor: the lawsuit

dissenter, the transparency dissenter, the media dissenter, the rule-skirting dissenter, the whistle-

blowing dissenter, the networking dissenter, the lobbying dissenter, and the ‘play dumb’

dissenter. Case studies of each type should be taught to students during public administration

education, when their actions were able to prevent evil in public administration. One pattern

among practitioners of bureaucratic valor, and especially the whistle-blower, is that dissent

harms careers when managers refuse to incorporate it. To teach in good faith, public

administration education must include the reality that preventing evil can be damaging to careers

and is still worthwhile.

Prudent solutions to administrative evil will combine these approaches. The consequences of

administrative evil can be so great that multiple approaches seem most productive. The

cultivation of a liberal society that abhors cruelty will help lessen administrative evil, as will

bureaucrats chosen for their virtue, as will inclusive and earnest democratic deliberation, as will

a focus on the study of practitioners of bureaucratic courage. Public administration must consider

many approaches to alleviate the harsh consequences of administrative evil.

Today’s administrative evil is also masked. What appears to be a professional doing his job

may only be understood as evil when divorced from time and culture. Technical rationality

cannot be put back to bed, and some aspects of it can be desirable when applied properly. The

evils that it allows must be abated. Ethics must be reinforced as a priority in public

administration education, and arguments in favor of ethical public administration must be

stronger if they can ever hope to overcome administrative evil. Arguments from morality will at

times have to overcome arguments motivated from technical rationality.

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