Amy Gutmann, Ph.D.

Amy Gutmann is a prize-winning scholar who has published and lectured widely on democracy and education; deliberation, compromise, diplomacy, and their critics; bioethics and access to health care; human rights, “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of identity politics; and ethics in public affairs.

Gutmann served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany (2022-24). During her tenure, the German relationship with the U.S. became stronger than ever in the post-WWII period, on multiple measures including support for Ukraine’s defense against Putin, increased trade and investment, and resistance to rising extremism.

Gutmann was the eighth and longest serving president of Penn, serving from 2004 to 2022.  Named by Fortune in 2018 as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Gutmann is renowned for championing affordable access to education and health care, innovative discoveries that save lives and propel economies forward, global engagement, and public-private partnerships.

First in her family to graduate college, Gutmann made affordable educational access a top priority, more than doubling the number of students from low-income and first-generation college families. Gutmann led the city’s most powerful economic growth engine and its preeminent academic health care system, Penn Medicine. Gutmann created a robust innovation ecosystem with Pennovation Works and the Pennovation Center business incubator and laboratory.

Global engagement was also a centerpiece of Gutmann’s presidency, which included the creation of Perry World House on campus and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.

Gutmann raised over $10 billion for Penn and Penn’s endowment quintupled from $4 to $20 billion. These resources underwrote massive expansions of student financial aid, innovative collaborative research, and patient-centered clinical care—in addition to the single largest private contribution to the city’s public schools.

Appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, Gutmann chaired the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues for seven years, publishing 10 reports on major issues including preventing and responding to public health crises. Gutmann also is an award-winning author and editor of 17 books, including Democratic Education, The Spirit of Compromise (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America (Liveright, 2019) with an Afterword on Pandemic Ethics for the paperback edition.

Gutmann served on the Board of Vanguard (2006-2022) and the Berggruen Institute (2014-2021). She served as Chair of the Association of American Universities (2014-2015); Executive Committee member of the National Constitution Center [2007-2019] and Chair of its Liberty Medal Committee; and member of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy (2017-2019).

Gutmann received many honors for her academic achievement and her leadership. Among them, she was honored in 2019 with both the William Penn Award and the Pennsylvania Society’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement. She has received honorary degrees from many universities, including Johns Hopkins, Kalamazoo, Penn, Princeton, Rochester, and Wesleyan. As U.S. Ambassador to Germany, she was honored with the 2023 Leo Baeck Medal, the Institute’s highest honor to preserve the spirit of German Jewry in the realms of culture, academia, politics and philanthropy.

Before Gutmann’s appointment at Penn, she was Provost and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor [now emerita] at Princeton University, founding director of the University Center for Human Values, and recipient of the President’s Teaching Award.