James Q Wilson

James Q. Wilson is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.  Prior to joining the faculty of Pepperdine, Wilson was the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at UCLA and the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard. Wilson has had a long career in government and policymaking. He was the former Chairman of the White House Task Force on Crime in 1966 and served on the Attorney General’s Task Force on Violent Crime in 1981. He served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the President’s Council on Bioethics from 1985-1990. From 1991-1992 Wilson was president of the American Political Science Association. Wilson has also served on a number of boards including RAND and State Farm Mutual Insurance. He is Chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute. For his distinguished career, the American Political Science Association awarded Wilson the James Madison Award in 1990. Wilson was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2003. He earned his B.A. from the University of Redlands and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.