Mordecai Lee, Ph.D.

Mordecai Lee is professor emeritus at UWM and continues to be actively involved in public affairs and good government reform. He is a 3rd generation Milwaukeean. Mordecai graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UW-Madison and received a PhD in public administration from Syracuse University. Returning home in 1976, he was elected from Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood to the first of three terms in the State Assembly. In 1982 he was elected to the State Senate from the northwest side and reelected in 1986. After voluntarily leaving politics, from 1990 to 1997, he headed a faith-based nonprofit, Milwaukee’s Jewish Community Relations Council, advocating for social justice. In 1997, Mordecai joined the faculty of UWM, where he taught public administration, nonprofit management and urban planning. During that time he wrote eleven books on American history and about 70 articles in scholarly peer-review journals. In 2018, when he turned 70, he shifted to emeritus status. He continues to be actively engaged in historical research and serves as a nonpartisan analyst of political developments for the local media.