himself in his youth—one of those tough little guys who play the cornerback position like heat-seeking missiles,” wrote Peter Collier, the best-selling author and former publisher of Encounter Books, in his remembrance of Joyce. Injuries kept Joyce sidelined, and eventually he transferred to Cleveland State and graduated with a degree in history and philosophy. He taught history and coached football at St. Edward High School in Cleveland, and then took a job at the Education Research Council of America, which was producing textbooks. In 1975, he moved to Baltimore to run the Morris Goldseker Foundation.

Joyce’s experience in Baltimore taught him to be skeptical of governmental efforts to address urban problems. “I could see how well-intended programs set out to achieve impossible ends, and what kind of wreckage theystudent publications at colleges nationwide; and the New Criterion, a journal of arts and intellectual life. In 1985, Joyce left New York for Milwaukee, where the Bradley Foundation had just received an infusion of nearly $300 million. The suddenly enriched philanthropy had asked Joyce to turn it into what one board member called “Olin West”—in other words, a foundation that would seek to sway public policy by supporting scholars and institutions committed to individual liberty and limited government.

Joyce’s real genius was on full view in Milwaukee, where he took big ideas that the foundation supported, such as welfare reform, and applied them to the state, county, and city levels. This mix of ideas and politics seemed to suit him, because Joyce was always an intellectual among activists and