Historian and academic administrator
Sir Kenneth Wheare
Born 26 March 1907 Died 7 September 1979(1979-09-07) (aged 72) Nationality Australian Discipline
Political science Sub-discipline Institutions
Sir Kenneth Clinton Wheare ,
CMG ,
FBA (26 March 1907 – 7 September 1979)
[1] was an Australian academic, who spent most of his career at
Oxford University in England.
[2] He was an expert on the constitutions of the
British Commonwealth .
[3] He advised constitutional assemblies in former British colonies.
[4]
Early life and family
Wheare was educated at
Scotch College, Melbourne
[1] and was later a student at
Ormond College ,
Melbourne University and
Oriel College, Oxford , gaining a
first class degree in
Philosophy, Politics and Economics and also undertaking postgraduate study. He met his wife Joan (1915–2013) when he was her tutor.
[5] One of their sons is
Tom Wheare . Another son is
Henry Wheare , the champion British rower who later became a leading intellectual property lawyer in Hong Kong.
Career
In 1934, Wheare was made a university lecturer in colonial history at the University of Oxford, and joined
Christ Church, Oxford with a research lectureship. During his four years at Christ Church, he concentrated his research on the effects of the
Statute of Westminster 1931 and the first edition of his The Statute of Westminster and Dominion Status was published in 1938. In 1939, he was elected
fellow of
University College, Oxford to fill the post of
tutor in politics that had been vacated by
John Maud .
[6]
In 1944, Wheare was elected the first
Gladstone Professor of Government at
All Souls College, Oxford .
[6] He was Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Children and the Cinema from 1947 to 1950 and chaired a committee to examine
film censorship in the United Kingdom .
[1]
[7] The Wheare committee's findings published in 1950 led to the introduction of a compulsory certificate,
X (Explicit Content) , allowing only those aged 16 and older to enter.
[7] Another outcome of the Wheare report was the creation of the
Children's Film Foundation .
[8]
In 1956, he became
Rector of
Exeter College, Oxford . A
gargoyle of his likeness is carved on the Bodleian Library, visible from the Exeter College Fellows' Garden.
[1]
Wheare was Chairman of the
Rhodes Trust (1962–69), President of the
British Academy (1967–71), Chancellor of the
University of Liverpool from 1972. He was also a
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1964 to 1966.
[9]
In 1948 he had contributed Abraham Lincoln and the United States to the "Teach Yourself History" series.
In June 1973, Wheare was shortlisted for appointment as
Governor-General of Australia ,
[10] but was overlooked by then-prime minister
Gough Whitlam in favour of Sir
John Kerr .
Honours
Kenneth Wheare was appointed
Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1953 and was
knighted in 1966.[
citation needed ]
[1] In 1952, he was elected a
Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's
national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
[6] He gave the British Academy's 1974 Master-Mind Lecture.
[11]
[12]
In 2017,
Oxford Brookes University named a newly rebuilt lecture hall after Wheare.
[13]
References
^
a
b
c
d
e Poynter, J. R.
"Wheare, Sir Kenneth Clinton (1907–1979)" .
Australian Dictionary of Biography . Canberra: National Centre of Biography,
Australian National University .
ISBN
978-0-522-84459-7 .
ISSN
1833-7538 .
OCLC
70677943 . Retrieved 14 July 2011 .
^ Beloff, Max (2004).
"Wheare, Sir Kenneth Clinton (1907–1979) (subscription required)" .
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi :
10.1093/ref:odnb/31822 . Retrieved 9 January 2020 . (Subscription or
UK public library membership required.)
^
Markwell, Donald (2016). Constitutional Conventions and the Headship of State: Australian Experience . Connor Court.
ISBN
978-1925501155 . Appendix 3: Two Constitutional Scholars: Sir Kenneth Wheare and Dr
Eugene Forsey .
^ Getachew, Adom (2019).
Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination . Princeton University Press. p. 122.
doi :
10.2307/j.ctv3znwvg .
ISBN
978-0-691-17915-5 .
JSTOR
j.ctv3znwvg .
^
"Joan Wheare: Rebel with many causes" .
Oxford Mail . 7 November 2013. Retrieved 22 March 2015 .
^
a
b
c
Marshall, Geoffrey (1982).
"Kenneth Clinton Wheare, 1907-1979" (PDF) . Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy (67). The British Academy: 490–507. Retrieved 26 May 2024 .
^
a
b
"Wheare Report, The (1950)" . Screenonline . Retrieved 12 November 2022 .
^ Roberts, Andrew (9 September 2010).
"How the Children's Film Foundation once dominated Saturday morning cinema" .
The Guardian .
^
"Previous Vice-Chancellors" . UK:
University of Oxford . Retrieved 14 July 2011 .
^ Kelly, Paul (2015). The Dismissal: A Groundbreaking New History . Melbourne: Penguin Random House Australia. p. 69.
ISBN
9781760142032 .
^
"Master-Mind Lectures" . The British Academy .
^ Wheare, K. C. (1975).
"Walter Bagehot" (PDF) . Proceedings of the British Academy . 60 : 173–197.
^
"New hall named in honour of Sir Kenneth Wheare" . UK:
Oxford Brookes University . 23 June 2017. Retrieved 9 January 2019 .
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