Amy Gutmann
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| Amy Gutmann | |
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| 10th President of the University of Pennsylvania | |
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| Term | 2004 – present |
| Predecessor | Judith Rodin |
| Born | November 19, 1949 Brooklyn, New York |
| Alma mater | Radcliffe College |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Spouse | Michael Doyle |
| Children | Abigail |
Amy Gutmann (1949 - ), Ph.D., is the 10th President of the University of Pennsylvania[1]. She is also a political theorist who taught at Princeton University from 1976 to 2004 and served as its Provost.
Upon succeeding former University of Pennsylvania president Judith Rodin, Gutmann became the first female president to succeed a female president of an Ivy League university. In her inaugural address, she 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 articulates three central strategic goals: increasing access for the very best students of all backgrounds, regardless of economic means; recruiting and retaining the very best faculty who will integrate knowledge across multiple disciplines; and magnifying Penn’s intellectual and institutional impact throughout the Philadelphia region, the United States, and the world.
She serves on the board of directors of the Vanguard Group and the Carnegie Corporation. She also serves on the board of the Schuylkill River Development Corporation. 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.
Since arriving at Penn, she has spearheaded a major campus development plan, Penn Connects, that includes 24 acres that Penn is buying from the U.S. Postal Service along the Schuylkill River. Penn Connects is designed to boost the economic, educational and social capacity of Philadelphia and to create seamless gateways between West Philadelphia and Center City across the Schuylkill River.
She has also become a leading national advocate for financial aid based on need to promote socioeconomic diversity in higher education. Gutmann made Penn one of the handful of universities in the country that substitute grants for loans for students from economically disadvantaged families earning less than $50,000 a year.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents Kurt and Beatrice Gutmann, Amy Gutmann was raised in Monroe, New York. Her father had fled Nazi Germany in 1934 as a college student and brought his entire family – including four siblings -- to join him first in Bombay, India, and in the United States after World War II. She is married to Michael Doyle, a Professor of Law and International Affairs at Columbia University. They have one daughter, Abigail, who is a Ph.D. student in chemistry at Harvard.
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[edit] Education
Gutmann graduated as class valedictorian from Monroe-Woodbury High School, before entering Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1967 with sophomore standing on a scholarship. She received a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Radcliffe College in 1971, a Masters in Political Science from the London School of Economics in 1972, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard in 1976. [2]
[edit] Scholarship
Through her writings, Gutmann has consistently sought to bridge theory and policy to advance the core values of a civil democratic society: liberty, opportunity and mutual respect. Her first major contribution to political philosophy was her book Democratic Education (1987; revised 1999). The book addresses the central questions in the political theory of education: How should a democratic society make decisions about education? What should children be taught? How should citizens be educated?
The book also takes on some contemporary scholarly debates: What is the appropriate response of democratic education to the challenge of multiculturalism? Should schools try to cultivate patriotic or cosmopolitan sentiments among students?
Gutmann’s second major contribution to political philosophy is a theory of deliberative democracy that she developed in collaboration with Harvard political scientist Dennis Thompson. Democracy and Disagreement (1996) calls for more reasoned argument in everyday politics. Deliberation can inform decision making through reasoned argument, and develop society’s collective capacity to pursue justice while finding mutually acceptable terms of social cooperation – even when disagreements persist.
Democracy and Disagreement has been both praised as an effective remedy for polarized politics and criticized as impractical. A collection of pro and con essays was published in Deliberative Politics, edited by Stephen Macedo.
Gutmann’s third major contribution to political philosophy is her analysis of group identity and its intersection with justice. In Identity in Democracy (2003), Gutmann argues that identity groups as such are neither friends nor enemies of democratic justice. She analyzes the legitimate but also problematic parts played by group identity in democratic politics and draws distinctions among the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity group politics.
[edit] References
- Smallwood, Scott & Birchard, Karen (July 20, 2001). "Women at the Top" (in English). Chronicle of Higher Education 47 (45). Retrieved on 2006-10-26.
[edit] External links
- Office of the Penn President
- Biography
- The Penn Compact
- Penn Connects - A Vision for the Future
- [3] Democracy-Project.com
| Academic Offices | ||
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| Preceded by Judith Rodin |
President of the University of Pennsylvania 2004–present |
Incumbent |
