Former U.S. faith-based initiative director will deliver Krieger Lecture

John J. DiIulio Jr., former director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, will deliver the Krieger Lecture in American Studies on Thursday, April 7, at 4:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall. DiIulio's lecture, "Faithful Consensus: The Right and Wrong Ways to Provide Government Assistance to Faith Based Charities," is free and open to the public.

DiIulio is the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2001 President George W. Bush appointed him to head the new Faith-based and Community Initiatives office. Seven months later, DiIulio became the first top Bush adviser to quit the administration, saying the Bush White House was more interested in the politics of the faith-based initiative than the policy itself. DiIulio continues to support a program of government assistance to faith-based charities.

He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, senior counsel to Public/Private Ventures and founding director of the Center for Public Management at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

His scholarly research focuses on public management, U.S. politics, faith-based social programs, criminal justice and government reform. He is the author, co-author or editor of 12 books, including Body Count: Moral Poverty ... and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs; Improving Government Performance: An Owner's Manual; American Government: Institutions and Policies; and Medicaid and Devolution: A View from the States. He also has written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other major newspapers, along with articles for popular magazines including The New Republic and The National Review. He is contributing editor at The Weekly Standard.

DiIulio also has chaired the American Political Science Association's standing committee on professional ethics. He is the winner of the David N. Kershaw Award of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management and the Leonard D. White Award of the American Political Science Association.

An alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences, DiIulio has a bachelor's degree in political science and in economics and a master's degree in political science-public policy from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his doctorate from Harvard University.