Robert D. Putnam

Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and public policy. He is the founder of The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a program that has brought together leading practitioners and thinkers for a multi-year discussion to develop broad-scale, actionable ideas to fortify our nation's civic connectedness. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, Putnam taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council.

Raised in a small town in the Midwest, he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1963, attended Balliol College, Oxford, and received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1970. He is the recipient of honorary degrees from Swarthmore, Ohio State University, Stockholm University, and the University of Antwerp. Putnam has authored or co-authored ten books and more than thirty scholarly works, including Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), published in twelve languages and praised by the Economist as "a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber." His other works include Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (1993); Hanging Together: The Seven-Power Summits (1984); Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (1981); Comparative Study of Political Elites (1976); and Beliefs of Politicians (1973). In June 2000 his study of civic engagement in the United States was published as Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster).

A former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, he has also served as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Director of the Center for International Affairs, and Chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard. He sits on the Advisory Council on Environmentally Sustainable Development at the World Bank and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Putnam is currently the President of the American Political Science Association for 2001 - 2002. Earlier this year he was nominated into the National Academy of Science.