James Elliott Moore II (born September 15, 1958) is an American academic and professor emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering known for his work in economic impact analysis, transportation engineering, infrastructure systems, and public policy. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Southern California (USC) in the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is a Senior Fellow at the Reason Foundation since 2024. He served as national board president of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers from 2015-2016 and president of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences' Transportation Science and Logistics Society during 2009. Moore received the Kapitsa Gold Medal of Honor from the United States Section of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in 2004.
Early life and education Moore was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and raised in New Bremen, Ohio along with two younger sisters. His youngest sister, Elizabeth Moore, is executive vice president of Breitbart News. He earned a diploma from New Bremen High School in 1976. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Planning, both with distinction, from Northwestern University in 1981. He later earned a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University (1982), a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from Northwestern (1983), and a PhD in Civil Engineering with a specialization in Infrastructure Planning and Management from Stanford (1986).
Career
Academic career Before joining the University of Southern California, he was a faculty member at Northwestern University's Technological Institute, now the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Moore joined USC in 1988 and received tenure in 1993 at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, now the Sol Price School of Public Policy. Concerned by an ongoing loss of scientific rigor and economic thinking in the urban planning literature, he began to focus more on his secondary appointment in USC's School of Engineering. In 1998, he changed his primary appointment to the Viterbi School of Engineering's Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, where he received tenure while retaining a secondary appointment in the School of Urban Planning and Development. In 2003, Moore applied for and received tenure at the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, retaining secondary appointments in public policy and civil engineering. He was appointed chair of the Epstein Department in 2004, serving until 2010. He was appointed Viterbi School of Engineering vice Dean for academic programs in 2011, serving until removed by the Dean in 2017. In 1998, Moore took a sabbatical to work with the California Research Bureau and USC's external affairs office in Sacramento, collaborating with former Santa Clara County supervisor Rod Diridon to draft a budget trailer bill for the California legislature that required federally funded university transportation research centers to automatically receive any and all required matching funds from the state, which was signed into law by Governor Pete Wilson in 1999 and played a key role in establishing METRANS as a transportation research institute in Los Angeles. He founded and directed the transportation engineering program at USC, an interdisciplinary initiative that spanned across multiple departments. He served in several administrative capacities, including 26 years as faculty in residence at the USC Honors House, department chair, vice dean for academic programs, and four terms as president of the engineering faculty at USC. Moore's tenure at USC was marked by his libertarian views, which often led him to critique progressive political agendas within academia. He believed that certain progressive policies conflicted with his libertarian principles. His opposition to specific administrative decisions, such as the suspension of employer contributions to faculty retirement accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to a more contentious relationship with USC leadership. Moore was removed from the Viterbi School dean's office in 2017 over his opposition to the university's changes to Title IX rules and the engineering school's growing embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which Moore contended were being implemented in ways that violated Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The dean of the Viterbi School broke with standard procedure and forbade a departmental faculty vote on whether Moore should return to the role of Epstein Department chair. In 2018, during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Moore's public support for due process in response to allegations of sexual misconduct resulted in student protests calling for Moore's removal from the faculty. Near the end of his faculty career, Moore concluded that public policy making was driven almost entirely by political motives, and mostly unaffected by analyses intended to inform decision makers. His proposals for government research funding could only lead to work products that would have little or no impact, and overhead payment that the institution would dedicate to the growth of an administration that was becoming increasingly misguided and parasitic. In 2022, after 36 years of full-time service, Moore retired from USC and was designated professor emeritus. He later revealed that, as a result of Moore's political views, the prospect of withholding this emeritus designation had been the subject of high-level meetings at USC involving the president, provost, his deans, and the general counsel. He remains critical of the direction that USC and other educational institutions have taken regarding issues of social justice and systemic racism and encouraged by the reforms initiated by the second Trump administration.
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