John J. DiIulio, Jr. is the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as founding faculty director of Penn's Robert A. Fox Leadership Program; Fox Leadership International (FLI); Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS); and Partnership for Innovation, Cross-Sector Collaboration, Leadership, and Organization (PICCLO). He founded three Penn School of Arts and Sciences (SAS)-College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) degree-granting programs: International MPA; Global MPA; and Leadership & Communication. He has won Penn’s two top teaching awards, the Lindback and the Abrams, as well as the Political Science Department’s Henry Teune teaching award.
The first person in his family to graduate from college, Dr. DiIulio was a full-time commuting student at Penn when he earned both a bachelor’s degree (economics and political science) and a master’s degree (political science-public policy) in four years. Three years after receiving his PhD in political science from Harvard University, where he also taught and served as a Head Resident Tutor, he received tenure at Princeton University. He led Princeton’s domestic policy MPA program and founded its Center for Domestic and Comparative Policy Studies. He was the C. Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and founded and directed research centers at Brookings and several other leading think tanks. He has been a contributing editor or written regularly for several dozen journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Dr. DiIulio has won several major academic awards, among them the David N.Kershaw Award of the Association of Public Policy and Management (APPAM), which is given every three years to a scholar under the age of 40 who has “made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management.” He has chaired the American Political Science Association (APSA) standing committee on professional ethics and served on the boards of many national and local nonprofit organizations including universities. He has co-founded and co-led 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 was among the first inductees of The National Mentoring Partnership’s “Legends of Mentoring” initiative recognizing “vital leaders who have made tremendous contributions to the mentoring movement.”
Dr. DiIulio has advised presidents and presidential candidates and state and local government leaders in both political parties. He served as first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the G.W. Bush administration and 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, 18th edition (Cengage, 2024); Bring Back the Bureaucrats (Templeton, 2014); and Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America's Faith-Based Future (University of California Press, 2007).
In 2016, Dr. DiIulio launched a decade-long research and curricular initiative on eldercare in China. In 2024, in conjunction with Penn’s Common Ground for Common Good project, he initiated “Spirited Debate,” a teaching, research, and public events program dedicated to promoting serious and civil discourse on difficult public issues while exploring how religious leaders and institutions might help to de-polarize American politics. He is a Roman Catholic in the Jesuit tradition.