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Dennis F. Thompson is the Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy and a Professor of Government and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. He is also a Professor of Public Policy in the Kennedy School, and the founding director of the university-wide Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. He has served as Associate Provost and Senior Adviser to the President of the University.

Thompson's most recent books are: Restoring Responsibility: Ethics in Government, Business, and Healthcare; Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States; and Why Deliberative Democracy? (with Amy Gutmann). His other books include: The Democratic Citizen: Social Science and Democratic Theory in the 20th Century, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government, Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, and Political Ethics and Public Office, which won the American Political Science Association's Gladys M. Kammerer award.  He has edited and contributed to: Truth versus Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (with Robert Rotberg); Redeeming American Political Thought: Collected Essays of Judith Shklar  (with Stanley Hoffman); and Ethics and Politics (with Amy Gutmann). His articles have appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Political Theory, and Ethics.

Thompson’s first book on deliberative democracy, Democracy and Disagreement, co-authored with Amy Gutmann, and published in 1996, is the subject of many commentaries, including another entire book of critics and defenders. Thompson has worked to apply the ideas of deliberative democracy to such institutions as the U.S. electoral process, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, and the healthcare bodies in the United Kingdom.

Thompson has served as a consultant to the Joint Ethics Committee of the South African Parliament, the American Medical Association, the U. S. Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Robert Bennett, then the Special Counsel for the Senate Ethics Committee, in the investigation of the so-called “Keating Five.” Thompson also served for ten years as a member of Board of Trustees of Smith College, the last five as vice-chair.

Thompson was graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1962, and took a first-class honors degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford University. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1968.  He taught at Princeton University for 18 years before returning to Harvard in 1986.