Alfred de Grazia

American political scientist

Alfred de Grazia (December 29, 1919 – July 13, 2014), born in Chicago, Illinois, was a political scientist and author. He developed techniques of computer based social network analysis in the 1950s, developed new ideas about personal digital archives in the 1970s, and defended the catastrophism thesis of Immanuel Velikovsky.

His father, Joseph Alfred de Grazia, was born in Licodia, province of Catania, in Sicily and was politically active in a troubled period in the history of the island. He emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty, after having hit the mayor of Licodia with his clarinet during a political scuffle. He became a bandmaster, music teacher, in and out of the WPA and a musical union leader in Chicago. In 1916, he married Chicago born Katherine Lupo Cardinale whose parents had emigrated from Sicily. Her brother was the boxer Charles Kid Lucca, Canadian champion welter weight champion from 1910 to 1914. They had three more sons, Sebastian de Grazia, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Edward de Grazia, a prominent first amendment lawyer and co founder of Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, and Victor de Grazia who was Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois from 1973 to 1977.

De Grazia attended the University of Chicago, receiving an A. B. there in 1939, attended law school at Columbia University from 1940 to 1941, and in 1948 earned a Ph. D. in political science from the University of Chicago. and August Heckscher in the New York Herald Tribune said it was "A sober scholarly volume, authoritative in its field." Charles E. Merriam, founder of the behavioristic approach in political science, wrote: "All scholars in the field of political science and particularly those in the area of representation are under lasting obligation to the writer of this volume for a learned and helpful treatment of one of the major problems of our times. The book will enrich the literature on this very important subject."

In World War II, de Grazia served in the United States Army, rising from private to captain. He specialized in mechanized warfare, intelligence and psychological warfare. He received training in this then new field in Washington D. C. and the newly established Camp Ritchie in Maryland. He served with the 3rd, 5th and 7th Armies and as a liaison officer with the British 8th Army. He took part in six campaigns, from North Africa to Italy (Battle of Monte Cassino) to France and Germany. De Grazia co authored a report on psychological warfare for the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. By the end of the war, he was Commanding Officer of the Psychological Warfare Propaganda Team attached to the headquarters of the 7th Army. Scott Turow cites the letters as being among the sources for his 2005 novel Ordinary Heroes

De Grazia wrote manuals of psychological warfare for the CIA for the Korean War and organized and investigated psychological operations for the United States Department of Defense during the Vietnam War. His reports on psychological operations, now largely declassified, include Target Analysis and Media in Propaganda to Audiences Abroad (1952), Elites Analysis (1955), as well as Psychological Operations in Vietnam (1968). On October 31, 2014, he was posthumously designated a Distinguished Member of the Regiment of Psychological Operations of the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is also a posthumous recipient of the Robert A. McClure Medal for Exemplary Service in Psychological Operations.