Based on this work, in 1941 he took a leave of absence from Amherst at the invitation of the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., to become his special assistant advising on the projected campaign for defense bonds.
[3] He was the main strategist for the program until 1942, when he left because he viewed high-pressure bond "drives" as ultimately damaging to public support for the government and the war effort.
[6] The Peter H. Odegard Memorial Award in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley was established in his honor upon his retirement.
"[15] He was a Democrat and in December 1957 announced that he would seek the party's nomination in the 1958 election to fill a seat in the Senate,[16] but he also worked on bipartisan good government initiatives.
[1][7] He was opposed to the House Un-American Activities Committee;[7] as a director of the Pacifica Foundation, which operated three non-profit FM radio stations in California and New York, he was subpoenaed in 1963 by the anti-Communist Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in connection with their broadcasts,[17] and he was prominent in the protests by a group of Berkeley faculty against the anti-Communist loyalty oath.