John J. DiIulio, Jr.

John J. DiIulio, Jr. has served as the Founding Faculty Director of Penn’s Robert A. Fox Leadership Program (1999-2018), and as Faculty Director of its Fox Leadership International (FLI) Program (2014-present), Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (2000-present), and Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership (2018-present). He also serves as Faculty Director for Penn’s all-online Leadership and Communications Certificate Program. The first person in his family to attend college, DiIulio worked while attending Penn as a commuting student, received a B.A. in economics and an M.A. in political science in four years. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University while serving as a head resident tutor.

He has won each of Penn’s two most prestigious teaching awards, the Lindback and the Abrams. Prior to joining Penn’s faculty in 1999, he was for more than a dozen years on the faculty of Princeton University, where he received tenure after three years and served as Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, director of the Center for Domestic and Comparative Policy Studies, and director of the domestic policy MPA program in Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been affiliated with the Brookings Institution for three decades, including past service as the Clarence Dillon Senior Fellow and founding director of the Brookings Center for Public Management, and present service as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the successor to that center. He has also directed programs at several other leading think tanks and nonprofit research organizations, and has won several major academic awards including the David N. Kershaw Award of the American Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management.

DiIulio has been a contributing editor or written regularly for numerous national magazines and newspapers; served on the boards of many national and local nonprofit organizations including universities; and developed national programs to expand educational opportunities for low-income children, mentor the children of prisoners, and support public-private partnerships that benefit low-income communities. He has advised presidential candidates in both major parties. He was the first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives during the G.W. Bush administration, and he assisted the Obama administration in reconstituting and expanding that office.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books including a leading textbook, American Government, 16th edition (with Meena Bose; Matthew Levendusky, Penny and Robert A. Fox Director of the Fels Institute of Government; and James Q. Wilson); Bring Back the Bureaucrats; and Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s Faith-Based Future. In 2016, he launched a five-year research and service initiative on elder care in China with Tsinghua University, and in 2018 he developed Penn’s first-ever international MPA program. He is a Roman Catholic in the Jesuit tradition.