Professor Gary C. Bryner passed away on March 10, 2010, at age 58. Gary courageously faced the challenge of pancreatic cancer with more concern about his wife, family, and friends than for himself. Gary personified the ideal colleague. He was unfailing in his willingness to assist others with their research and was a devoted teacher. He was always first to volunteer when help was needed. Although the cancer progressed quickly, he was grateful for the time he could spend after the diagnosis with his wife, his three children and their spouses, and his three grandchildren.
Gary grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, graduating from the University of Utah with a BA and MA in Economics. He taught high school in Salt Lake City before pursuing further graduate study in political science at Cornell University. His thinking and writing about politics was especially influenced by Professor Ted Lowi, whom Gary considered a mentor. He was a Brookings Institution Fellow in Governmental Studies in 1981–82. He completed his Ph.D. in 1982, the same year he accepted a faculty position at Brigham Young University. At BYU, Professor Bryner directed the public policy program and taught courses in public policy and American government.
Professor Bryner was a committed scholar. He remained current in his specializations and pushed himself to acquire new knowledge. A Ph.D. was not enough for him. While teaching a full load, he completed a law degree at the BYU Law School. He then used this additional advanced training in his teaching and research.
Bryner authored or edited 15 books, scores of articles and book chapters, and many academic papers. His commitment to scholarship was remarkable. His first book was Bureaucratic Discretion: Law and Policy in Federal Regulatory Agencies, which reviewer W. P. Browne described as a “skillfully written and analytical look at bureaucratic regulation” (Browne Reference Browne1988, 964). His later work focused on environmental and public land policy, welfare reform, and the Constitution. His most consequential publications were his books, but his articles appeared in the Political Science Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, Review of Policy Research, and several law reviews.
His work in the area of public lands and environmental policy is perhaps best known. In 1995 he published Blue Skies, Green Politics: The Clean Air Act of 1990 with Congressional Quarterly Press. In his review of the book, R. M. Rakoff credits Bryner with moving beyond a legislative history to examine “the difficulties inherent in environmental policy generally” (Rakoff Reference Rakoff1995). Two years later, he published From Promises to Performance: Achieving Global Environmental Goals (W.W. Norton, 1997). Christian Hunold, in his review of the book's examination of market-based approaches to solving environmental problems, compliments Bryner for his focus “on the ethical and political contexts in which markets actually operate” (Hunold Reference Hunold1999). In this same vein, he published, with Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions (St. Martin's Press, 1998); also in 1998, he published a handbook on natural resource policy. In 2001, he published his book examining the sustainability of environmental movements. Among his edited books on the environment is his book with Neil E. Harrison, Science and Politics in the International Environment (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). He completed and submitted his last book shortly before his death. It is forthcoming from MIT Press, with Robert Duffy as coauthor, and will be titled Integrating Energy, Climate Change, and Air Pollution Policy.
Though his primary focus was the environment, Bryner also had a keen interest in understanding U.S. welfare policy. In the area of welfare reform, Bryner published Politics and Public Morality: The Great American Welfare Reform Debate (W. W. Norton, 1998). In this book, as was typical of Professor Bryner, he involved several BYU students as research assistants, including undergraduate students.
Bryner was an active citizen of the discipline. He served as president of the Science, Technology and Environmental Research section of APSA (1993–94). He often helped organize working groups of scholars interested in working collaboratively on particular topics. Since 2001, he was a research associate at the Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado School of Law. He also was the director of this center from 1999 to 2001. In 2008, Professor Bryner was appointed to the APSA Ethics Committee. Professor Bryner sought professional interaction throughout his career. He was a Brookings Institution Guest Scholar in 1986 and 1991–92. In two consecutive years, he was a project director on two National Academy of Public Administration projects. The first focused on the Office of Management and Budget, and the second more generally on congressional oversight.
A theme of Bryner's professional career was to draw on his professional and civic service to produce ideas for scholarship. His publications on environmental policy, for instance, were motivated by his personal passions as a committed environmentalist. In a related vein, his publications on the Constitution sprang from his taking the lead in organizing forums and other events at BYU around the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. In 1987, Professor Bryner published an edited book with colleague Noel Reynolds, Constitutionalism and Rights (SUNY Press). A year later, he and another BYU colleague, Dennis Thompson, published their edited volume, The Constitution and the Regulation of Society (SUNY Press, 1988). Of this volume, Don Kettl praised the quality and originality of the essays, saying, “these papers return to important basic questions” (Kettl Reference Kettl1989, 872). A third edited book with a BYU colleague, Don Sorensen, focused on rights and was entitled The Bill of Rights: A Bicentennial Assessment (SUNY Press, 1994). In 1995, he coauthored a book with Richard Vetterli on the founding of the American republic. These publications reveal not only Bryner's rich intellect, but also his ability to interact constructively with a diverse set of scholars.
Professor Bryner was a beloved and dedicated teacher. A teacher of ethics, Bryner's teaching was centered in humanitarian service. Whether the classroom was on campus in Washington, D.C., for BYU's Washington Seminar; in a village in Northern Mexico on an international development project; on the Navajo Indian reservation consulting with tribal leaders; or on the streets of a local low-income housing development, students benefited from Professor Bryner's concern for them and witnessed his passionate concern for other human beings. Before Bryner's death, one student commented that “what he teaches in the classroom extends to every aspect of his life. And what is more, he inspires his students to live with the same authenticity.” Another said, “He is genuinely enthusiastic about civic participation, and by virtue of his example, he reinforces the notion among his students that community involvement is a privilege rather than an inconvenience.”
Not surprisingly, Bryner was frequently recognized for teaching excellence by the department of political science (Pi Sigma Alpha Distinguished Faculty Award 1985, 1986, 1993, 2004), and the University awarded him the Karl G. Maeser Teaching Award in 1994. In 2006, he received the Martin B. Hickman Award in the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences for his accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, and citizenship.
Brigham Young University offers rigorous training in public policy analysis through the auspices of a Master in Public Policy degree (MPP)—a program that benefited greatly from the efforts of Gary Bryner. Bryner was the director of the graduate program from 1992–99 and led the committee that fashioned a major redesign of the program as a two-year multidisciplinary degree in the late 1990s. Bryner's scholarly expertise and wisdom in crafting the new program, as well as his skills in working with many people across the university, led to a relatively seamless transition to a new and more rigorous program.
Bryner taught a variety of graduate courses, including normative theories, environmental regulation, and policy process. Although he published critiques on the limits of economic and quantitative methods in policy analysis, he was a strong supporter of students obtaining rigorous training in all modes of policy analysis. Given his professional training and expertise in politics, ethics, economics, and policy analysis, his intellectual leadership in the MPP program had immeasurably benefits for the program and its students.
As a professor of public policy, Professor Bryner emphasized that individuals can make a difference. He modeled this attitude himself on a range of issues and in his service on the boards of the Inter-American Foundation and the Mali Rising Foundation. In 1994, he was a visiting fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and he served on the board of the National Clean Air Network from 1996 to 2001.
As important as all of these accomplishments are, it is his example of kindness and gentleness that constitutes the most profound impression he left with those who knew and worked with him. He is greatly missed.
