In 1938 following the
Munich Agreement allowing German troops to enter the
Sudetenland, he and his wife did not return from a trip to the United States. In 1939 Deutsch obtained a scholarship to carry out advanced studies at Harvard University where he received a second PhD in political science in 1951. His dissertation,
Nationalism and Social Communication, was awarded Harvard’s Sumner Prize in 1951. and participated in the
San Francisco conference that resulted in the creation of the United Nations in 1945. Deutsch taught at several universities; first at
MIT from 1943 to 1956 (he became a professor of history and political science at MIT in 1952); then at Yale University (initially as a visiting professor in 1957 before becoming a permanent professor in 1958) until 1967; and again at Harvard until 1982. Deutsch worked extensively on
cybernetics, on the application of
simulation and system dynamics models to the study of social, political, and economic problems, known as
wicked problems. He built upon earlier efforts at world modeling such as those advanced and advocated by authors of the
Club of Rome such as
Limits to Growth by
Donella Meadows, et al. (1972). He worked with an interdisciplinary team to build new concepts such as
security community to the literature. He held several other prestigious positions; he was a member of the board of World Society Foundation in
Zürich,
Switzerland from 1984 onwards. He was also elected President of the
American Political Science Association in 1969, of the
International Political Science Association in 1976, and of the
Society for General Systems Research in 1983. From 1977 to 1987, he was Director of the
Social Science Research Center Berlin (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, WZB) in Berlin. In his 1963 book
The Nerves of Government, Deutsch proposed the concept of information elites: groups controlling the means of
mass communication and thereby exercising significant political power. He argued that modern political systems function as communication networks where decision-making and social control depend on the flow and management of information. In his formulation, information elites act as
gatekeepers who influence political outcomes by shaping which messages are transmitted and enforced. Deutsch’s
cybernetic model emphasizes the role of communication channels in promoting or restricting the autonomy and responsiveness of political communities, highlighting the centrality of information control in governance. ==Personal life==