He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy (1947), Princeton University (A.B., Politics, 1955; International Politics; Chinese and Russian languages), Harvard University (A.M., East Asian regional studies, 1957; Korean Studies, Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages) and Northwestern University (PhD political science, 1959; interdisciplinary behavioral science curriculum).
Subsequent comparative study of divided Korea's divergent development since 1945 led to discovery of the creative potential of political leadership for social change and a call to make this a special field for research, teaching, and service in the academic discipline of political science.