Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D.

Tom Lindsay joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation in September. He is Director of TPPF’s Center for Higher Education. He has more than two decades’ experience in education management and instruction, including serving as the 13th president of Shimer College, “the Great Books College of Chicago.” He was named deputy chairman and COO of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2007. He joined the NEH staff in 2006, as director of the agency’s signature initiative, We the People. When he became Deputy Chairman, he remained director of We the People, providing national leadership and support for the program’s efforts to increase understanding of our country’s history and founding principles. In the preceding year, he sat on the National Council for the Humanities, a presidentially appointed board that oversees the NEH.

Prior to that, he served as the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs of the University of Dallas, where, as the chief academic officer of the university, he was responsible for the administration, direction, integrity and quality of its programs, for the recruitment and development of all faculty, and for the allocation of instructional and academic support resources. He supervised the deans of the University’s three Texas-campus colleges (the College of Liberal Arts, the Graduate School of Liberal Arts, and the College of Business, which includes a graduate school of management) as well as the University’s Rome, Italy, campus. Before becoming Vice President for Academic Affairs, Lindsay served as the University’s Dean of its Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts and Director of its Institute of Philosophic Studies.

Lindsay received his B.A., summa cum laude, in political science, and went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. His doctoral dissertation compared ancient and modern conceptions of democracy. He has published numerous articles on the subject of democratic education, many of which have appeared in the world’s most prestigious academic journals, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and the American Journal of Political Science. In recognition of his scholarship, he was made the Lynde and Harry Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., for 1992-93. This was followed by his being awarded a Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2002, he received his graduate certificate from the Institute for Educational Management Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

Lindsay’s efforts as a teacher and scholar were honored in 1997, when the state Board of Regents presented him the Faculty Excellence Award. In 1999, the leading national organization of political scientists, the American Political Science Association (in conjunction with Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society) presented Lindsay its Award for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science.

Lindsay recently completed a book, titled Investigating American Democracy: A Core Questions Approach. The book is expected to be out in the summer of 2012.