Rate My Professor Amy Gutmann

Amy Gutmann is 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, with secondary faculty appointments in the Graduate School of Education and Philosophy. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1971, an M.Sc. in Political Science from the London School of Economics in 1972, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University in 1976. The first in her family to graduate college, Gutmann began her academic career at Princeton University in 1976 as Assistant Professor of Politics, advancing to Associate Professor (1981-1987), Professor (1987-2004), Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor (emerita), founding director of the University Center for Human Values, Dean of the Faculty, and Provost. She received Princeton’s President’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Gutmann served as the eighth President of the University of Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2022, its longest-serving president, raising over $10 billion through campaigns like Making History ($4.3 billion) and Power of Penn ($5.4 billion), quintupling the endowment from $4 billion to $20 billion, and launching the Penn Compact for inclusion, innovation, and impact; all-grant financial aid enabling loan-free graduation for eligible students; Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professorships; Perry World House; and Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. She chaired the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (2009-2016), producing 10 reports on topics including vaccine testing, genomic privacy, and public health crises like Ebola and Zika. From 2022 to 2024, she was U.S. Ambassador to Germany, the first woman in the role, strengthening post-WWII U.S.-Germany ties amid support for Ukraine and resistance to extremism. Her research addresses democracy and education; deliberation, compromise, and diplomacy; bioethics and healthcare access; identity politics; and ethics in public affairs. An award-winning author and editor of 17 books and over 100 articles, key works include Democratic Education (1987, revised 1999), Democracy and Disagreement (1996), Identity in Democracy (2003), The Spirit of Compromise (2012), and Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die (2019). Honors include Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders (2018), William Penn Award (2019), Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal (2019), Yale Legend in Leadership Award (2025), Leo Baeck Medal (2023), and honorary degrees from Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and others. She has served on boards including Vanguard (2006-2022), Association of American Universities (chair 2014-2015), and National Constitution Center.