Amy Gutmann

Amy Gutmann is the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. From 2004 to 2022, she served the President of the University of Pennsylvania, the longest serving in Penn’s history. She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her 17th book, Everyone Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die (with Jonathan Moreno), will be published by W.W. Norton in 2019. Among her books are Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It (with Dennis Thompson of Harvard), Why Deliberative Democracy? (with Thompson), Identity in Democracy, Democratic Education, Liberal Equality, Democracy and Disagreement (with Thompson) and Color Conscious (with Kwame Anthony Appiah),which received the American Political Science Association’s Ralph J. Bunche Award, North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights Award. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and W.E.B. DuBois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Gutmann received her BA from Radcliffe College, MSc from the London School of Economics, and PhD from Harvard University. In 2003, Gutmann was awarded the Centennial Medal by Harvard University for “graduate alumni who have made exceptional contributions to society.” In 2006, she received the Alumnae Recognition Award from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has served as Chair of President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues since 2009, was named to the National Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2011, and has served on the board of the National Constitution Center since 2007.