Biography

Amy Gutmann, Ph.D.
President and the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science

Dr. Amy Gutmann became the eighth president of the University of Pennsylvania on July 1, 2004.  In her inaugural address, Gutmann launched the Penn Compact, her vision for making Penn a global leader in teaching, research, and professional practice, as well as a dynamic agent of social, economic, and civic progress.  The Compact focuses on increasing access for the most talented students regardless of socioeconomic background, recruiting and retaining eminent faculty who integrate knowledge across multiple disciplines, and making Penn a more powerful transformational force locally, nationally, and around the globe.  In October 2007, Gutmann officially launched “Making History: The Campaign for Penn,” a five-year, $3.5 billion fundraising effort to support the University’s priorities of expanding undergraduate, graduate, and financial aid, strengthening faculty endowment, and creating the optimal environment for teaching, research, and student living.  “Making History” is by far the largest fundraising effort in Penn’s history. 

As Penn's President, Gutmann has championed equity in higher education, encompassing access for students from middle-income as well as low-income families.  During her presidency, Penn first replaced loans with grants for students from families with incomes less than $60,000.  In December 2007, Gutmann announced that, beginning in September 2009, Penn will replace loans with grants for all financially eligible undergraduate students.

Gutmann serves on the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Corporation and the Vanguard Corporation, and on the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center. She is a member of the Asia Society’s Task Force on U.S. policy toward India and the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), which convenes at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She also is among the leaders of a select group of presidents of research universities throughout the world who advise the U.N. Secretary General on a range of global issues, including academic freedom, mass migration, international development, and the social responsibilities of universities. From 2005 to 2009, Gutmann also served on the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, a committee that advises the FBI on national security issues relating to academia.

As CEO of Philadelphia's largest private employer, Gutmann is a leader in civic and business affairs.  She is overseeing the implementation of Penn’s new campus development and expansion plan, called “Penn Connects,” which is converting 24 industrial acres previously owned by the U.S. Postal Service into a mixed-use neighborhood of recreational green spaces overlooking the Schuylkill River, housing, shops and restaurants, and a state-of-the-art complex for medical care and research, including the Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, which opened in October 2008.

Gutmann serves on the Executive Committee of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber's CEO Council for Growth, and on the Board of Directors of the Schuylkill River Development Corporation.  In 2007, Gutmann co-chaired the transition team for current Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

An eminent political scientist and philosopher, Gutmann is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn, with secondary faculty appointments in the Philosophy Department in Arts and Sciences, at the Annenberg School for Communication, and at the Graduate School of Education. As Penn’s President, Gutmann continues to teach, lecture, and write extensively on practical ethics, deliberative democracy, and democratic education. In 2006, she delivered lectures at Brown and Stanford universities and at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Scholars on the lure of extremist rhetoric. She delivered the 2005 keynote address, “Educating for Citizenship: Locally and Globally,” to the Association for the Study of Higher Education.  In 2008, she delivered the 30th annual Pullias Lecture at the University of Southern California, “Great Expectations for Higher Education in the 21st Century.”

Gutmann has authored and edited 15 books and has published more than 100 articles, essays, and book chapters. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous national and international publications, including The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Daedalus.

Gutmann's most recent books include Why Deliberative Democracy? (2004, with Dennis Thompson), Identity in Democracy (2003), Democratic Education (1999, revised edition), Democracy and Disagreement (1996, with Dennis Thompson and selected by Choice as one of “the outstanding political science books for 1997”), and Color Conscious (1996, with K. Anthony Appiah).  Color Conscious won the Ralph J. Bunche Award "for the best scholarly work in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism," the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights Award for the "outstanding book on the subject of human rights in North America."

Gutmann has served as president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and is a founding member of the executive committee of the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics.  She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Education, and a W.E.B. DuBois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Prior to her appointment as Penn's President, Gutmann served as Provost at Princeton University, where she also was the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics. She was the founding Director of the University Center for Human Values, a multi-disciplinary center that sponsors teaching, scholarship and public discussion of ethics and human values. She served as Princeton's Dean of the Faculty from 1995-97 and as Academic Advisor to the President from 1997-98. In 1998, Gutmann received the Bertram Mott Award from the American Association of University Professors "in recognition of outstanding achievement towards advancing the goals of higher education.”  In 2000, she was awarded the President's Distinguished Teaching Award by Princeton University.

Gutmann graduated magna cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She earned her master's degree in Political Science from the London School of Economics and her doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University.

In 2003, Harvard University awarded Gutmann the Centennial Medal, which recognizes "graduate alumni who have made exceptional contributions to society.” In 2005, she received honorary doctorates from the University of Rochester and Wesleyan University, where she delivered the commencement address.  In 2006, she received the Alumnae Recognition Award from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard for her outstanding contributions to liberal arts education. In 2009 she received the prestigious  Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award in recognition of her success in achieving the goals set forth under the Penn Compact.

Gutmann is married to Michael W. Doyle, the Harold Brown Professor of Law and International Affairs at Columbia University. Their daughter, Abigail Gutmann Doyle, is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Their son-in-law, Jakub Jurek, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University.

Revised September 2009