John J. Dilulio Jr. (born 1958) is an American political scientist. He currently serves as the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society and Professor of Political Science at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
Career
In 1980, DiIulio received a B.A. in Economics and Political Science and an M.A. in Political Science-Public Policy from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. In 1982, he received an M.A. in Political Science from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, followed by a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1986. After a stint teaching at Harvard, DiIulio then spent thirteen years at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
as a professor of politics and public policy. Since 1999, he has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. DiIulio has also been a fellow at the
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...
(1992–2006) and the
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Anto ...
(1995–2000).
During an academic leave in 2001, DiIulio served as the first director of the
White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
. He was the first senior Bush advisor to resign and was succeeded by
Jim Towey
Harry James Towey II (; born October 1, 1956) is an American former government official and academic administrator. Towey was appointed secretary of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services by Governor Lawton Chiles in 1993, ...
. In a letter written a little over a year after resigning (that later was printed in ''
Esquire''), he wrote that while "President Bush is a highly admirable person of enormous personal decency", his governing style allowed certain staffers, referred to as "
Mayberry Machiavellis", to "
teerlegislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible." In late 2008 and early 2009, DiIulio consulted with the transition team of President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
regarding the restructuring of the White House faith-based initiative.
DiIulio has authored numerous studies on crime, government, and the relationship between religion and public policy. He is also the co-author with
James Q. Wilson
James Quinn Wilson (May 27, 1931 – March 2, 2012) was an American political scientist and an authority on public administration. Most of his career was spent as a professor at UCLA and Harvard University. He was the chairman of the Council of A ...
of the widely used textbook ''
American Government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
'', which was reviewed by the publisher and the
College Board after the discovery of factual inaccuracies and allegations of conservative bias regarding issues such as
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
,
school prayer, and
gay rights.
Among those who criticized the textbook was
James E. Hansen, the director of
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center affiliated with the Columbia University Earth Institute.
The institute is located at Columbia University in N ...
, who wrote to the publisher that the book contained "a large number of clearly erroneous statements" which cause "the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain."
He is also responsible for coining, or at least popularizing, the term (and concept of) ''
superpredators'' in reference to juvenile violent crime in the early 1990s. Under this concept DiIulio and his co-authors, William J. Bennett and John P. Walters, referred to America's youth as, "radically impulsive,
ndbrutally remorseless youngsters..."
Under this ideology DiIulio predicted that juvenile crime would triple by 2010.
This rapidly created a culture of fear of young people. The next few years resulted in a change of juvenile sentencing, which led to many juvenile cases being treated by adult sentencing standards. According to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Office, from 1994 to 2011, murders committed by juveniles had declined by two-thirds. DiIulio and other researchers had argued that juvenile crime was out of control; however, research showed that juvenile crime began to decline in the early to mid-1990s.
DiIulio later said that "once it was out there, there was no reeling it in."
He was recognized in 2010 with two awards, the Ira Abrams Memorial Award and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, for excellence in academics and teaching.
Selected bibliography
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Preview.
See also
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References
External links
University of Pennsylvania Faculty Website*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dilulio, John
1958 births
American political scientists
George W. Bush administration personnel
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Haverford School alumni
Living people
Princeton University faculty
The Weekly Standard people
University of Pennsylvania alumni