 In 1966-67, he was on leave from Syracuse as a Visiting Lecturer in Sociology at the Harvard Medical School in its Department of Psychiatry as part of the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry.He was chairman of the Department of Sociology  and was vice president of student affairs 1972-1974 at Syracuse  at the time he left Syracuse to accept a tenured position as professor of education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education in 1974.In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Willie and nineteen others (from among over 1,000 candidates)  to the President's Commission on Mental Health.