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David Braybrooke was a political philosopher and professor emeritus at both Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and the University of Texas at Austin.
Braybrooke was born in Hackettstown, New Jersey, the eldest son of British expatriates, Walter Leonard, a civil engineer and WWII veteran, and Netta Rose Foyle. Braybrooke was predeceased by his younger brothers Christopher and Timothy. Braybrooke graduated Boonton High School in 1942. He postponed his undergraduate studies at Hobart College to volunteer for the US Army in 1943, and served until 1946. Even during his time in the army, Braybrooke continued to study at Downing College, Cambridge in the UK. After serving his country in uniform, he returned to the US, and in 1948, Braybrooke received a BA in Economics from Harvard. As a graduate student at Cornell University, Braybrooke taught history and literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Braybrooke completed his Ph.D. at Cornell, where he wrote a dissertation on welfare and happiness; his first journal article, “Farewell to the New Welfare Economics,†was published in June 1955 in Review of Economic Studies. Braybrooke began his career as an instructor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and Bowdoin College, and assistant professor at Yale University, where he taught in an interdisciplinary economics and politics honors program and began collaborating with Charles Lindblom. In 1962, Braybrooke was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1963 he began teaching at Dalhousie. Braybooke remained there until his retirement in 1990, after which he was made McCulloch Professor of Philosophy and Politics Emeritus. Not ready to give up teaching, however, he accepted an appointment to the University of Texas at Austin. He was offered the Centennial Commission Chair in the Liberal Arts as a Professor of Government and Philosophy, a position he held until his second retirement in 2005. Concurrently with his appointment at Dalhousie, Braybrooke was visiting professor at a number of Canadian and US universities, including visiting research professor of philosophy at Pittsburgh University; the University of Toronto; the University of Minnesota; the University of California at Irvine; the University of Chicago; Tulane University. He was also a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge; Cecil H. & Ida Green Visiting Professor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia; John Milton Scott Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Queen's University. He also continued post-graduate studies at New College, Oxford and at Balliol College, Oxford.
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