Speaker > Biography

Biography of Dr. Amy Gutmann

Dr. Amy Gutmann took the helm as the eighth president of the University of Pennsylvania on July 1, 2004. In her inaugural address, Dr. Gutmann launched the Penn Compact, her vision for making Penn both a global leader in teaching, research, and professional practice, and a dynamic agent of social, economic, and civic progress. The Compact's focus is on increasing access for the very best students, recruiting and retaining the very best faculty who will integrate knowledge across multiple disciplines, and making Penn a more powerful transformational force throughout the Philadelphia region and the nation and around the globe.

As Penn's President, Dr. Gutmann has assumed a national and international leadership role. She has become a prominent advocate at the Association of American Universities for equity in higher education. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Board of Governors of the Partnership for Public Service. In 2005, Gutmann was appointed to the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, a committee that advises the FBI on national security issues relating to academia. She also is among the leaders of a select group of presidents of research universities from around 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.

As the CEO of Philadelphia's largest private employer, Dr. Gutmann is a leader in civic and business affairs. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, as well as on the Chamber's CEO Council for Growth. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Vanguard Corporation and the Schuylkill River Development Corporation.

An eminent political scientist and philosopher, Dr. Gutmann currently is 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, Dr. Gutmann continues to teach, lecture, and write extensively on ethics, justice theory, deliberative democracy, and democratic education. In 2006, she delivered lectures on the lure of extremist rhetoric at Brown and Stanford universities, and at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. She delivered the 2005 keynote address, “Educating for Citizenship: Locally and Globally,” to the Association for the Study of Higher Education.

Dr. Gutmann is the award-winning author of seven books and has published more than 100 articles, essays, and book chapters. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other national publications. She also is the editor of nine other books.

Dr. Gutmann's most recent books include Why Deliberative Democracy? (2004 with Dennis Thompson), Identity in Democracy (2003), Democratic Education (revised edition, 1999), 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."

Dr. 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 and 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, Dr. Gutmann served as Provost at Princeton University, where she was also 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 in 1995-97 and as Academic Advisor to the President in 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.

Amy Gutmann was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1971. She earned her master's degree in Political Science from the London School of Economics in 1972, and her doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University in 1976.

In 2003, Gutmann was awarded the Centennial Medal by Harvard University for "graduate alumni who have made exceptional contributions to society.” In 2005, she was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Rochester and by 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.

Gutmann is married to Michael W. Doyle, Harold Brown Professor of Law and International Affairs at Columbia University. Their daughter, Abigail, is a Ph.D. student in chemistry at Harvard University. Their son-in-law Jakub is a Ph.D. student in Business Economics at Harvard.