DiIulio in the job and on the spot

Christian Century, Feb 7, 2001

John J. DiIulio Jr., a University of Pennsylvania public policy professor, has an independent approach to issues--perhaps just the kind of person to head the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives that needs the support of moderates as well as conservatives.

Identifying himself as a "new Democrat," DiIulio wrote major articles in the summer of 1999 for the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication, and the New Democrat, a moderate one, according to the New York Times. He is a fellow at both the Manhattan Institute and the Brookings Institute--think tanks to the right and left respectively.

After the November election, he wrote an article in the Weekly Standard that criticized the U.S. Supreme Court ruling which gave the election to Bush. "The arguments that ended the battle and `gave' Bush the presidency are constitutionally disingenuous at best," DiIulio wrote. "They will come back to haunt conservatives and confuse, if they do not cripple, the principled conservative case for limited government."

DiIulio holds master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He taught at Princeton before going to Pennsylvania. As a social scientist, he is best known for his work in the criminal-justice field.

He advocated increased prison construction in the early 1990s. He coauthored Body Count with John P. Walters and William J. Bennett, a 1996 book about the war against crime. Of the other dozen books to his credit as editor, author or coauthor, one was on the role of faith-based organizations. DiIulio helped create and run a program in Boston that was credited with helping reduce youth homicide in the 1990s.

"John is a social scientist who believes in empirical evidence," one Bush adviser told the New York Times while stressing DiIulio's pragmatic emphasis.