James Q. Wilson (born May 27, 1931) is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University in California, and a professor emeritus at UCLA. From 1961 to 1987 he was a professor of government at Harvard University. He has a Ph.D. (1959) and masters degree (1957) from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from the University of Redlands (1952). He is a former Chairman of the White House Task Force on Crime (1966), of the National Advisor Commission on Drug Abuse Prevention (1972-73) and a member of the Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime (1981), the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985-90), and the President's Council on Bioethics. He is a former president of the American Political Science Association. He has served on the board of directors for the New England Electric System, Protection One, RAND, and State Farm Mutual Insurance. He is the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute. Wilson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2003.

Writings by James Q. Wilson

• American Government
• Bureaucracy (1989)
• City Politics (1963, with Edward Banfield)
• Crime and Human Nature (1985, with Richard Herrnstein)
• The Moral Sense (1993)
• Political Organizations (1995)
• Moral Judgment (1997)
• Thinking About Crime (1983)
• The Amateur Democrat (1966)
• Negro Politics (1960)
• The Investigators (1978)
• On Character (1991)
• Varieties of Police Behavior (1968)
• The Marriage Problem (2002)

External links

• Wilson's page at Pepperdine's website
• Reason Interview with Wilson

Public administration | American non-fiction writers | Harvard University faculty | Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients | 1931 births | Living people