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; Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS); and Partnership for Innovation, Cross-Sector Collaboration, Leadership, and Organization (PICCLO). He founded and co-directed 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 each of Penn’s two top teaching awards (the Lindback and the Abrams).
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, he received tenure at Princeton University. He led Princeton’s domestic policy MPA program and founded its Center of Domestic and Comparative Policy Studies (CDCPS). 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, including, early in his academic career the David N. Kershaw Award of the Association of Public Policy and Management (APPAM), which is given every three years to a scholar who has “made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management,” and, recently, a lifetime achievement award from the Community and Grassroots Associations section of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). He has served on the boards of many national and local nonprofit organizations including universities. He has 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 presidents and presidential candidates, as well as state and local elected officials, in both political parties.
Dr. DiIulio 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 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 is the author, co-author, or editor of many 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, he launched a decade-long research and curricular initiative on eldercare in China. He is a Roman Catholic in the Jesuit tradition.