President Doug Bennett's Biography

Douglas Bennett has been President and Professor of Politics at Earlham since July, 1997.

From 1994 to 1997 he was Vice President and chief operating officer of the American Council of Learned Societies in New York City. ACLS is a confederation of learned societies in the humanities and social sciences which serves purposes of scholarship and teaching in higher education.

From 1989 to 1993 he was the Vice President and Provost at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. Growing out of his work at Reed, he helped create the Portland Area Library System (Portals), a consortium of scholarly libraries collectively making use of digital network technology to extend and enhance their services. During 1993-94 he served as the first Executive Director of Portals.

He has a B.A. from Haverford College, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. From 1973 to 1989 he was a member of the Political Science Department at Temple University in Philadelphia. His scholarly publications include Transnational Corporations Versus the State: the Political Economy of the Mexican Automobile Industry, co-authored with Kenneth Sharpe (Princeton University Press, 1985), and many articles on topics in public policy and in higher education.

He is a member of the board of the National Association of Independent Colleges & Universities (NAICU), the American Council on Education's Commission on Government and Public Affairs, and the National Advisory Board of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). He has also served on the board of the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago and the editorial board for Liberal Education. From 1988 to 2000 he served on the Board of Managers of Haverford College.

He is married to Ellen Trout Bennett, and has two sons, Tommy, born in 1984 and Robert, born in 2003.

He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).