Daniel Patrick Moynihan (/ˈmɔɪnɪhæn/; March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and social scientist.^[1] A member of theDemocratic Party, he representedNew York in theUnited States Senate from 1977 until 2001 after serving as an adviser to PresidentRichard Nixon, and as the United States' ambassador to India and to theUnited Nations.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Moynihan around 1967
United States Senator fromNew York
In office January 3, 1977 – January 3, 2001
Preceded by	James Buckley
Succeeded by	Hillary Clinton
Chair of theSenate Finance Committee
In office January 3, 1993 – January 3, 1995
Preceded by	Lloyd Bentsen
Succeeded by	Bob Packwood
Chair of theSenate Environment Committee
In office September 8, 1992 – January 3, 1993
Preceded by	Quentin Burdick
Succeeded by	Max Baucus
12thUnited States Ambassador to the United Nations
In office June 30, 1975 – February 2, 1976
President	Gerald Ford
Preceded by	John Scali
Succeeded by	Bill Scranton
10thUnited States Ambassador to India
In office February 28, 1973 – January 7, 1975
President	Richard Nixon Gerald Ford
Preceded by	Kenneth Keating
Succeeded by	Bill Saxbe
Counselor to the President
In office November 5, 1969 – December 31, 1970
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Arthur F. Burns
Succeeded by	Donald Rumsfeld
White House Urban Affairs Advisor
In office January 23, 1969 – November 4, 1969
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Joe Califano (Domestic Affairs)
Succeeded by	John Ehrlichman (Domestic Affairs)
Personal details
Born	(1927-03-16)March 16, 1927 Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
Died	March 26, 2003(2003-03-26) (aged 76) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting place	Arlington National Cemetery
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Elizabeth Brennan ​ (m. 1955)​
Children	3
Relatives	Michael Avedon (grandson)
Education	City College of New York Tufts University (BS,BA,MA,PhD) London School of Economics
Military service
Branch/service	United States Navy
Years of service	1944–1947
Rank	Lieutenant (junior grade)
Unit	USSQuirinus (ARL-39)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's voice Moynihan speaks on the discontinuation of public sales ofBlack Talon ammunition Recorded November 22, 1993

Born inTulsa, Oklahoma, Moynihan moved at a young age to New York City. Following a stint in the navy, he earned a Ph.D. in history fromTufts University. He worked on the staff of New York GovernorW. Averell Harriman before joining PresidentJohn F. Kennedy's administration in 1961. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and PresidentLyndon B. Johnson, devoting much of his time to theWar on Poverty. In 1965, he published the controversialMoynihan Report on black poverty. Moynihan left the Johnson administration in 1965 and became a professor atHarvard University.

In 1969, he accepted Nixon's offer to serve as an Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and he was elevated to the position ofCounselor to the President later that year. He left the administration at the end of 1970, and accepted appointment asUnited States Ambassador to India in 1973. He accepted PresidentGerald Ford's appointment to the position ofUnited States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1975, holding that position until early 1976; later that year he won election to the Senate.

Moynihan served as Chairman of theSenate Environment Committee from 1992 to 1993 and as Chairman of theSenate Finance Committee from 1993 to 1995. He also led theMoynihan Secrecy Commission, which studied the regulation of classified information. He emerged as a strong critic of PresidentRonald Reagan's foreign policy and opposed PresidentBill Clinton'shealth care plan. He frequently broke withliberal positions, but opposed welfare reform in the 1990s. He also voted against theDefense of Marriage Act, theNorth American Free Trade Agreement, and the Congressional authorization for theGulf War. He was tied withJacob K. Javits as the longest-serving Senator from the state of New York until they were both surpassed byChuck Schumer in 2023.

Moynihan was born inTulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Margaret Ann (née Phipps), a homemaker, and John Henry Moynihan, a reporter for a daily newspaper in Tulsa but originally from Indiana.^[2][3] He moved at the age of six with his Irish Catholic family to New York City. Brought up in the working-class neighborhood ofHell's Kitchen,^[4] he shined shoes and attended variouspublic, private, and parochial schools, ultimately graduating fromBenjamin Franklin High School inEast Harlem. He was a parishioner ofSt. Raphael's Church, where he also cast his first vote.^[5] He and his brother, Michael Willard Moynihan, spent most of their childhood summers at their grandfather's farm inBluffton, Indiana. Moynihan briefly worked as alongshoreman before entering theCity College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education to city residents.

He also had a half-brother, Thomas Joseph Stapelfeld, born on June 28, 1941, to their mother and Henry Charles Stapelfeld.

Following a year at CCNY, Moynihan joined theUnited States Navy in 1944. He was assigned to theV-12 Navy College Training Program atMiddlebury College from 1944 to 1945 and then enrolled as aNaval Reserve Officers Training Corps student atTufts University, where he received an undergraduate degree in naval science in 1946. He completed active service as Gunnery officer of theUSSQuirinus at the rank oflieutenant (junior grade) in 1947. Moynihan then returned to Tufts, where he completed a second undergraduate degree in sociology^[6]cum laude in 1948 and earned an MA from theFletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1949.

After failing theForeign Service Officer exam, he continued his doctoral studies at the Fletcher School as aFulbright fellow at theLondon School of Economics from 1950 to 1953. During this period, Moynihan struggled with writer's block and began to fashion himself as a "dandy", cultivating "a taste forSavile Row suits, rococo conversational riffs and Churchillian oratory" even as he maintained that "nothing and no one at LSE ever disposed me to be anything but a New York Democrat who had some friends who worked on the docks and drank beer after work." He also worked for two years as a civilian employee atRAF South Ruislip.^[7]

He ultimately received a PhD in history fromTufts (with a dissertation on the relationship between the United States and theInternational Labour Organization) from the Fletcher School in 1961 while serving as an assistant professor ofpolitical science and director of a government research project centered aroundAverell Harriman's papers atSyracuse University'sMaxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.^[8][9]

Moynihan's political career started in the 1950s, when he served as a member ofNew York GovernorAverell Harriman's staff in a variety of positions (including speechwriter and acting secretary to the governor). He met his future wife, Elizabeth (Liz) Brennan, who also worked on Harriman's staff.^[10]

This period ended following Harriman's loss toNelson Rockefeller in the 1958 general election. Moynihan returned to academia, serving as a lecturer for brief periods atRussell Sage College (1957–1958) and theCornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (1959) before taking a tenure-track position at Syracuse University (1959–1961). During this period, Moynihan was a delegate to the1960 Democratic National Convention as part ofJohn F. Kennedy's delegate pool.

Moynihan first served in the Kennedy administration as special (1961–1962) and executive (1962–1963) assistant toLabor SecretariesArthur J. Goldberg andW. Willard Wirtz. In 1962, he authored the directive "Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture", which discouraged use of an official style forfederal buildings, and has been credited with enabling "a wide ranging set of innovative public building projects" in subsequent decades, including theSan Francisco Federal Building and theUnited States Courthouse in Austin, Texas.^[11]

He was then appointed asAssistant Secretary of Labor for Policy, Planning and Research, serving from 1963 to 1965 under Kennedy andLyndon B. Johnson. In this capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities. He devoted his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become theWar on Poverty. His small staff includedRalph Nader.

They took inspiration from historianStanley Elkins'sSlavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959). Elkins essentially contended thatslavery had made black Americans dependent on the dominant society, and that such dependence still existed a century later after the American Civil War. Moynihan and his staff believed that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority groups have the same rights as the majority and must also "act affirmatively" in order to counter the problem of historic discrimination.

Moynihan's research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining thewelfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States.

Moynihan issued his research in 1965 under the titleThe Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known asThe Moynihan Report. Moynihan's report^[12] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as "blaming the victim",^[13] a slogan coined by psychologistWilliam Ryan.^[14] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists^[15] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan's warnings, theAid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if no "Man [was] in the house."^[16][17] Critics of the program's structure, including Moynihan, said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house.

After the 1994Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: "The Republicans are saying we have a hell of a problem, and we do."^[18]

By the1964 presidential election, Moynihan was recognized as a political ally ofRobert F. Kennedy. For this reason he was not favored by then-President Johnson, and he left the Johnson Administration in 1965.^{[citation needed]} He ran for office in the Democratic Party primary for the presidency of theNew York City Council, a position now known as theNew York City Public Advocate. However, he was defeated by Queens District AttorneyFrank D. O'Connor.^{[citation needed]}

Throughout this transitional period, Moynihan maintained an academic affiliation as a fellow atWesleyan University's Center for Advanced Studies from 1964 to 1967. In 1966, he was appointed to the faculties ofHarvard University'sGraduate School of Education andGraduate School of Public Administration as a full professor of education and urban politics. After commencing a second extended leave because of his public service in 1973, his faculty line was transferred to the university's Department of Government, where he remained until 1977. From 1966 to 1969, he also held a secondary administrative appointment as director of theHarvard–MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies.^[9] With turmoil andriots in the United States, Moynihan, "a national board member ofADA incensed at the radicalism of the currentanti-war andBlack Power movements", decided to "call for a formal alliance between liberals and conservatives",^[19] and wrote that the next administration would have to be able to unite the nation again.

Connecting withPresident-electRichard Nixon in 1968, Moynihan joined theExecutive Office of the President in January 1969 as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and executive secretary of the Council of Urban Affairs (later the Urban Affairs Council), a forerunner of theDomestic Policy Council envisaged as an analog to theUnited States National Security Council. As one of the few people in Nixon's inner circle who had done academic research related to social policies, he was very influential in the early months of the administration. However, his disdain for "traditional budget-conscious positions" (including his proposedFamily Assistance Plan, a "negative income tax orguaranteed minimum income" for families that met work requirements or demonstrated that they were seeking work which ultimately stalled in the Senate despite prefiguring the laterSupplemental Security Income program) led to frequent clashes (belying their unwavering mutual respect) with Nixon's principal domestic policy advisor, conservative economist andCabinet-rankCounselor to the PresidentArthur F. Burns.^[20]

While formulating the Family Assistance Plan proposal, Moynihan conducted significant discussions concerning aBasic Income Guarantee withRussell B. Long andLouis O. Kelso.

Although Moynihan was promoted to Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs with Cabinet rank shortly after Burns was nominated by Nixon to serve asChair of the Federal Reserve in October 1969, it was concurrently announced that Moynihan would be returning to Harvard (a stipulation of his leave from the university) at the end of 1970. Operational oversight of the Urban Affairs Council was given to Moynihan's nominal successor as Domestic Policy Assistant, formerWhite House CounselJohn Ehrlichman. This decision was instigated byWhite House Chief of StaffH. R. Haldeman,^[21] a close friend of Ehrlichman since college and his main patron in the administration. Haldeman's maneuvering situated Moynihan in a more peripheral context as the administration's "resident thinker" on domestic affairs for the duration of his service.^[22]

In 1969, on Nixon's initiative,NATO tried to establish a third civil column, establishing a hub of research and initiatives in the civil area, dealing as well with environmental topics.^[23] Moynihan^[23] namedacid rain and thegreenhouse effect as suitable international challenges to be dealt by NATO. NATO was chosen, since the organization had suitable expertise in the field, as well as experience with international research coordination. The German government was skeptical and saw the initiative as an attempt by the US to regain international terrain after the lostVietnam War. The topics gained momentum in civil conferences and institutions.^[23]

In 1970, Moynihan wrote a memo to President Nixon saying, "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect'. The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in whichNegro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."^[24] Moynihan regretted that, as he saw it, critics misinterpreted his memo as advocating that the government should neglect minorities.^[25]

Following the October 1969 reorganization of the White House domestic policy staff, Moynihan was offered the position ofUnited States Ambassador to the United Nations (then held by career Foreign Service OfficerCharles Woodruff Yost) by Nixon on November 17, 1969; after initially accepting the president's offer, he decided to remain in Washington when the Family Assistance Plan stalled in theSenate Finance Committee.^[26] On November 24, 1970, he refused a second offer from Nixon due to potential familial strain and ongoing financial problems; depression stemming from the repudiation of the Family Assistance Plan by liberal Democrats; and the inability to effect change due to static policy directives in the position, which he considered to be a tertiary role behindAssistant to the President for National Security AffairsHenry Kissinger andUnited States Secretary of StateWilliam P. Rogers.^[26] Instead, he commuted from Harvard as a part-time member of the United States delegation during the ambassadorship ofGeorge H. W. Bush.^[26]

In 1973, Moynihan (who was circumspect toward the administration's "tilt" to Pakistan) accepted Nixon's offer to serve asUnited States Ambassador to India, where he would remain until 1975. The relationship between the two countries was at a low point following theIndo-Pakistani War of 1971. Ambassador Moynihan was alarmed that two great democracies were cast as antagonists, and set out to fix things. He proposed that part of the burdensome debt be written off, part used to pay for U.S. embassy expenses in India, and the remaining converted into Indianrupees to fund an Indo-US cultural and educational exchange program that lasted for a quarter century. On February 18, 1974, he presented to the Government of India a check for 16,640,000,000 rupees, then equivalent to $2,046,700,000, which was the greatest amount paid by a single check in the history of banking.^[27] The "Rupee Deal" is logged in theGuinness Book of World Records for the world's largest check,^[28] presented to India's Secretary of Economic Affairs.^[29]

In June 1975, Moynihan accepted his third offer to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a position (including a rotation as President of theUnited Nations Security Council) that he would only hold until February 1976. Under PresidentGerald Ford, Ambassador Moynihan took a hardlineanti-communist stance, in line with the agenda of the White House at the time. He was also a strong supporter of Israel,^[30] condemningUN Resolution 3379, which declaredZionism to be a form of racism.^[31] Moynihan's wife Liz later recalled being approached in the UN galleries byPalestine Liberation Organization Permanent ObserverZuhdi Labib Terzi during the controversy. He made a remark of which she later did not remember the exact phrasing, but rendered it approximately as 'you must have mixed feelings about remembering events in New Delhi', which she and biographer Gil Troy interpreted as a threatening reference to a failed assassination plan against her husband two years earlier.^[32] But the American public responded enthusiastically to his moral outrage over the resolution; his condemnation of the "Zionism is Racism" resolution brought him celebrity status and helped him win aUS Senate seat a year later.^[33] Moynihan opposed the resolution because he thought it was completely false and perverse. Also, his years in New York sensitized him on a pragmatic issue: "resolution against Zionism not only affected Israel but every Zionist people, which included the majority of American Jews", which became clear when that community promoted a touristic boycott against Mexico as a consequence of its vote for the approval of the Resolution.^[34] In his book,Moynihan's Moment,Gil Troy posits that Moynihan's 1975 UN speech opposing the resolution was the key moment of his political career.^[35]

Perhaps the most controversial action of Moynihan's career was his response, as Ambassador to the UN, to theIndonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975.Gerald Ford considered Indonesia, then under a military dictatorship, a key ally againstCommunism, which was influential in East Timor. Moynihan ensured that theUN Security Council took no action against the larger nation's annexation of a small country. The Indonesian invasion caused the deaths of 100,000–200,000 Timorese through violence, illness, and hunger.^[36][37] In his memoir, Moynihan wrote:

The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.^[38]

Later, he said he had defended a "shameless"Cold War policy toward East Timor.^[39]

Moynihan's thinking began to change during his tenure at the UN. In his 1993 book on nationalism,Pandaemonium, he wrote that as time progressed, he began to view theSoviet Union in less ideological terms. He regarded it less as an expansionist,imperialistMarxist state, and more as a weakrealist state in decline. He believed it was most motivated by self-preservation. This view would influence his thinking in subsequent years, when he became an outspoken proponent of the then-unpopular view that the Soviet Union was afailed state headed for implosion.

Nevertheless, Moynihan's tenure at the UN marked the beginnings of a more bellicose,neoconservative American foreign policy that turned away from Kissinger's unabashedly covert,détente-drivenrealpolitik.^[40] Although it was never substantiated, Moynihan initially believed that Kissinger directedIvor Richard, Baron Richard (thenBritish Ambassador to the United Nations) to publicly denounce his actions as "Wyatt Earp" diplomacy. Demoralized, Moynihan resigned from what he would subsequently characterize as an "abbreviated posting" in February 1976. InPandaemonium, Moynihan expounded upon this decision, maintaining that he was "something of an embarrassment to my own government, and fairly soon left before I was fired."

In November 1976, Moynihanwas elected to theU.S. Senate from the State of New York, defeating U.S. RepresentativeBella Abzug, former U.S. Attorney GeneralRamsey Clark, New York City Council PresidentPaul O'Dwyer and businessmanAbraham Hirschfeld in the Democratic primary, andConservative Party incumbentJames L. Buckley in the general election. He also was nominated by theLiberal Party of New York.^[41] Shortly after election, Moynihan analyzed the State of New York's budget to determine whether it was paying out more infederal taxes than it received in spending. Finding that it was, he produced a yearly report known as theFisc (from the French^[42]). Moynihan's strong support for Israel while UN Ambassador inspired support for him among the state's large Jewish population.^[43]

In an August 7, 1978 speech to the Senate, following the jailing ofM. A. Farber, Moynihan stated the possibility of Congress having to become involved with securing press freedom and that the Senate should be aware of the issue's seriousness.^[44]

Moynihan's strong advocacy for New York's interests in the Senate, buttressed by theFisc reports and recalling his strong advocacy for US positions in the UN, did at least on one occasion allow his advocacy to escalate into a physical attack. SenatorKit Bond, nearing retirement in 2010, recalled with some embarrassment in a conversation oncivility in political discourse that Moynihan had once "slugged [Bond] on the Senate floor after Bond denounced anearmark Moynihan had slipped into a highway appropriations bill. Some months later Moynihan apologized, and the two occasionally would relax in Moynihan's office after a long day to discuss their shared interest inurban renewal over a glass of port."^[45]

Moynihan continued to be interested in foreign policy as a Senator, sitting on theSelect Committee on Intelligence. His strongly anti-Soviet views became far more moderate when he emerged as a critic of theReagan administration's hawkish tilt in the lateCold War, as exemplified by its support for theContras in Nicaragua. Moynihan argued there was no active Soviet-backed conspiracy in Latin America, or anywhere. He suggested the Soviets were suffering from massive internal problems, such as risingethnicnationalism and a collapsing economy. In a December 21, 1986 editorial inThe New York Times, Moynihan predicted the replacement on the world stage of Communist expansion with ethnic conflicts. He criticized the administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism – which is not in fact going on." In a September 8, 1990 letter toErwin Griswold, Moynihan wrote: "I have one purpose left in life; or at least in the Senate. It is to try to sort out what would be involved in reconstituting the American government in the aftermath of the [C]old [W]ar. Huge changes took place, some of which we hardly notice."^[46] In 1981 he and fellow Irish-American politicians SenatorTed Kennedy andSpeaker of the HouseTip O'Neill co-founded theFriends of Ireland, a bipartisan organization of Senators and Representatives who opposed theongoing sectarian violence and aimed to promote peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.^{[citation needed]}

Moynihan introduced Section 1706 of theTax Reform Act of 1986, which cost certain professionals (like computer programmers, engineers, draftspersons, and designers) who depended on intermediary agencies (consulting firms) a self-employed tax status option, but other professionals (like accountants and lawyers) continued to enjoy Section 530 exemptions from payroll taxes. This change in the tax code was expected to offset the tax revenue losses of other legislation that Moynihan proposed to change the law of foreign taxes of Americans working abroad.^[47]Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices on February 18, 2010, posted a suicide note that, among many factors, mentioned the Section 1706 change to the Internal Revenue Code.^[48][49]

As a key Environment and Public Works Committee member, Moynihan gave vital support and guidance toWilliam K. Reilly, who served under PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush asAdministrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.^[50]

In the mid-1990s, Moynihan was one of the Democrats to support the ban on the procedure known aspartial-birth abortion. He said of the procedure: "I think this is just too close toinfanticide. A child has been born and it has exited theuterus. What on Earth is this procedure?" Earlier in his career in the Senate, Moynihan had expressed his annoyance with the adamantly pro-choice interest groups petitioning him and others on the issue. He challenged them saying, "you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence onabortion."^[51][52]

Moynihan broke with orthodox liberal positions of his party on numerous occasions. As chairman of theSenate Finance Committee in the 1990s, he strongly opposed PresidentBill Clinton'sproposal to expand health care coverage to all Americans. Seeking to focus the debate over health insurance on the financing of health care, Moynihan garnered controversy by stating that "there is no health care crisis in this country."^[53]

On other issues though, he was much more progressive. He voted against the death penalty; theflag desecration amendment;^[54] thebalanced budget amendment, thePrivate Securities Litigation Reform Act; theDefense of Marriage Act; theCommunications Decency Act; and theNorth American Free Trade Agreement. He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with aflat tax.^{[citation needed]} Moynihan also voted against authorization of theGulf War.^[55] Despite his earlier writings on the negative effects of the welfare state, he voted againstwelfare reform in 1996, a bill that set time limits on benefits and imposed work requirements. He was sharply critical of the bill and certainDemocrats who crossed party lines to support it.^[56]

Moynihan was a popular public speaker with a distinctlypatrician style. He spoke with a slight stutter, which led him to draw out vowels. LinguistGeoffrey Nunberg compared his speaking style to that ofWilliam F. Buckley, Jr.^[57]

In the post-Cold War era, the 103rd Congress enacted legislation directing an inquiry into the uses of government secrecy. Moynihan chaired the commission, which studied and made recommendations on the "culture of secrecy" that pervaded the United States government and its intelligence community for 80 years, beginning with theEspionage Act of 1917, and made recommendations on the statutory regulation of classified information.

The commission's findings and recommendations were presented to the President in 1997. As part of the effort, Moynihan secured release from theFederal Bureau of Investigation of its classifiedVenona file. This file documents the FBI's jointcounterintelligence investigation, with the United StatesSignals Intelligence Service, into Soviet espionage within the United States. Much of the information had been collected and classified as secret information for over 50 years.

After release of the information, Moynihan authoredSecrecy: The American Experience^[58] where he discussed the impact government secrecy has had on the domestic politics of America for the past half century, and how myths and suspicion created an unnecessary partisan chasm.

Moynihan married Elizabeth Brennan in 1955. The couple had three children, Tim, Maura, and John, and were married until his death.

Moynihan was criticized after reportedly making offensive comments towards a woman of Jamaican descent atVassar College in early 1990.^[59] During a question-and-answer session, Moynihan told Folami Grey, an official at the Dutchess County Youth Bureau, "If you don't like it in this country, why don't you pack your bags and go back where you came from?" This incident caused a protest in which 100 students took over the college's main administration building in response to his comments.

Moynihan died atWashington Hospital Center on March 26, 2003, from complications of aruptured appendix,^[60] 10 days after his 76th birthday.^[61]

As apublic intellectual, Moynihan published articles on urban ethnic politics and on the problems of the poor in cities of theNortheast in numerous publications, includingCommentary andThe Public Interest.

Moynihan coined the term "professionalization of reform", by which the government bureaucracy thinks up problems for government to solve rather than simply responding to problems identified elsewhere.^[62]

In 1983, he was awarded theHubert H. Humphrey Award given by theAmerican Political Science Association "in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist."^[63] He wrote 19 books, leading his personal friend, columnist and former professorGeorge F. Will, to remark that Moynihan "wrote more books than most senators have read." After retiring from the Senate, he rejoined the faculty of theMaxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs atSyracuse University, where he began his academic career in 1959.^[64]

Moynihan's scholarly accomplishments ledMichael Barone, writing inThe Almanac of American Politics to describe the senator as "the nation's best thinker among politicians sinceLincoln and its best politician among thinkers sinceJefferson."^[65] Moynihan's 1993 article, "Defining Deviancy Down",^[66] was notably controversial.^[67][68] Writer and historian Kenneth Weisbrode describes Moynihan's bookPandaemonium as uncommonly prescient.^[69]

• Beyond the Melting Pot, an influential study ofAmerican ethnicity, which he co-authored withNathan Glazer (1963)
• The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, known as theMoynihan Report (1965)
• Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (1969)ISBN 0-02-922000-9
• Violent Crimes (1970)ISBN 0-8076-6053-1
• Coping: Essays on the Practice of Government (1973)ISBN 0-394-48324-3
• The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan (1973)ISBN 0-394-46354-4.
• Business and Society in Change (1975)OCLC 1440432
• A Dangerous Place coauthorSuzanne Garment, (1978)ISBN 0-316-58699-4
• Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1980 (1980)ISBN 1-56554-516-8
• Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures (1986)ISBN 0-15-630140-7
• Came the Revolution (1988)
• On the Law of Nations (1990)ISBN 0-674-63576-0
• Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (1994)ISBN 0-19-827946-9
• Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy (1996)ISBN 0-674-57441-9
• Secrecy: The American Experience (1998)ISBN 0-300-08079-4
• Future of the Family (2003)ISBN 0-87154-628-0

• In 1966, Moynihan was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences^[70]
• In 1968, Moynihan was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society^[71]
• The 5th AnnualHeinz Award in Public Policy (1999)^[72]
• HonoraryDoctor of Laws degree from Tufts, his alma mater.
• 1989Honor Award from theNational Building Museum^[73]
• In 1989, Moynihan received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.^[74]
• On August 9, 2000, he was presented with thePresidential Medal of Freedom by PresidentClinton.^[75]
• In 1992, he was awarded theLaetare Medal by theUniversity of Notre Dame, considered the most prestigious award forAmerican Catholics.^[76]
• In 1994 the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation awarded Moynihan its Lone Sailor Award for his naval service and subsequent government service.

• TheMoynihan Train Hall, which opened in January 2021, is named for him. It expandedNew York Penn Station with a new concourse forLong Island Rail Road andAmtrak passengers in the adjacent, renovatedJames Farley Post Office building.^[77] Moynihan had long championed the project, which is modeled afterthe original Penn Station; he had shined shoes in the original station as a boy during the Great Depression. During his latter years in the Senate, Moynihan had to secure federal approvals and financing for the project.^[78]
• In 2005, theMaxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs ofSyracuse University renamed its Global Affairs Institute as the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.^[79]
• Thefederal district courthouse in Manhattan's Foley Square was named in his honor.

• "I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually. I guess that we thought we had a little more time."
  – Reacting to the assassination ofJohn F. Kennedy, November 1963^[80]
• "No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty."
  –The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, 1973^[81]
• "Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is."
  –Secrecy: The American Experience, 1998^[82]

The quote also adds, "The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular, and singularly American, advantage."

• "The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect."
  – Memo to PresidentRichard Nixon^[83]
• "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
  – Column on January 18, 1983The Washington Post. Based on an earlier quote byJames R. Schlesinger.^[84]
• (In response to the question: "Why should I work if I am going to just end up emptying slop jars?") "That's a complaint you hear mostly from people who don't empty slop jars. This country has a lot of people who do exactly that for a living. And they do it well. It's not pleasant work, but it's a living. And it has to be done. Somebody has to go around and empty all those bed pans. And it's perfectly honorable work. There's nothing the matter with doing it. Indeed, there is a lot that is right about doing it, as any hospital patient will tell you."^[85]
• "Food growing is the first thing you do when you come down out of the trees. The question is, how come the United States can grow food and you can't?"
  – speaking to Third World countries about global famine^[86]
• "The centralconservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The centralliberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."^[87][88]
• "Truman left the Presidency thinking thatWhittaker Chambers,Elizabeth Bentley were nuts, crackpots, scoundrels, and I think you could say that a fissure began in American political life that's never really closed. It reverberates, and I can say more about it. But in the main, American liberalism—Arthur Schlesinger, one of the conspicuous examples—got it wrong. We were on the side of the people who denied this, and a president who could have changed his rhetoric, explained it, told the American people, didn't know the facts, they were secret, and they were kept from him."
  –Secrecy: The American Experience, October 1998^[89]

• List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines
• Benign neglect
• The Public Interest

• Aksamit, Daniel. "How the pathology became tangled: Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the liberal explanation of poverty since the 1960s."PS: Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 374–378.
• Andelic, Patrick. “Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the 1976 New York Senate Race, and the Struggle to Define American Liberalism.”Historical Journal 57#4 (2014), Pp. 1111–33.online.
• Fromer, Yoav. "Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Politics of Tragedy."Review of Politics 84.1 (2022): 80-105online.
• Geary, Daniel.Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy (University of Pennsylvania Press; 2015)
• Heath, Karen Patricia. "Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his 'Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture' (1962)."PS: Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 384–387.online
• Hess, Stephen.The Professor and the President: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House (2014)excerpt
• Hodgson, Godfrey.The Gentleman From New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan – A Biography (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2000) 480 pages.
• Hower, Joseph E. "'The Sparrows and the Horses': Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Family Assistance Plan, and the Liberal Critique of Government Workers, 1955–1977".Journal of Policy History 28.2 (2016): 256–289.online
• Rowe, Daniel. "The Politics of Protest: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Great Society Liberalism and the Vocal Minority, 1965-1968".PS, Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 388+.
• Sánchez, Marta E. "One 'in bed' with la Malinche: stories of 'family' á la Octavio Paz, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Oscar Lewis." inShakin'Up" Race and Gender (University of Texas Press, 2021) pp. 23–38.
• Weiner, Greg.American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (University Press of Kansas; 2015) 189 pages;
• Wilson, William Julius. "The Moynihan Report and research on the black community".The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621.1 (2009): 34–46.

• Robert A. Katzmann, ed.Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life (Johns Hopkins; 2004)
• Steven R. Weisman, ed.Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (PublicAffairs; 2010) 705 pages; primary sources
• Moynihan, Daniel Patrick.The Negro family: The case for national action(US Government Printing Office, 1965)online.
• Rainwater, Lee, William L. Yancey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.Moynihan report and the politics of controversy; a Trans-action social science and public policy report (1967).
• About the Daniel P. Moynihan Papers (Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress)

• United States Congress."Daniel Patrick Moynihan (id: M001054)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• A film clip"The Open Mind – Taking a Stand for American Beliefs (September 27, 2007)" is available for viewing at theInternet Archive
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Ambassador Moynihan's 1975 Address to the United Nations General Assembly
• Works by or about Daniel Patrick Moynihan at theInternet Archive
• American Masters:Moynihan Season 38, episode 2