Dean Jack H. Knott

Jack H. Knott is the Dean and the C. Erwin and Ione L. Piper Chair and Professor of the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He has led the school in this role since 2005.

Dean Knott is a leading scholar in the fields of political institutions and public policy, and is a past president of NASPAA, the international association of schools of public affairs. He has published three books, including Reforming Bureaucracy: The Politics of Institutional Choice, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. In addition, he earned fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, the International Institute of Management in Berlin, and he served as a consultant to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

In 2007, Dean Knott was elected as a fellow to the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), a non-partisan organization chartered by the U.S. Congress to assist federal, state, and local governments to improve their effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability.

Under Dean Knott’s leadership, the Price School has experienced significant growth and has strengthened its position as leader in public affairs research and education. In addition to several major gifts, he was instrumental in securing the school’s $50 million endowment and naming gift from the Price Philanthropies in 2011. Dean Knott has also shepherded the Price School’s steady rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, moving up from No. 7 in 2008, to No. 6 in 2012, to No. 4 in 2016, and now No. 2 in 2018 among public affairs schools nationwide.

Before joining USC, he directed the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and chaired the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University.

Dean Knott received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. in comparative political economy from the School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, and his undergraduate degree in history from Calvin College.