Minnowbrook Conference

Using funds supplied as part of a "SUPER-professorship" paid for by New York state, Dwight Waldo facilitated a 1968 meeting at Minnowbrook, Syracuse University's conference center in the Adirondack Mountains. Limiting participation to people under age 35, Waldo was principally interested in redefining the focuses of public administration theory in the context of social upheaval--a timely topic in 1968.

Minnowbrook marked the beginning of the "New Public Administration". The need for administration that was relevant to the public good was the general theme of conference papers, but no one idea dominated the proceedings which can be found in the compilation Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook Perspective, published in 1971.

Later, a second conference, called "Minnowbrook II" was held at the same facility. That conference was not as successful as establishing itself as a defining intellectual event in the field of public administration as the first.