Formerly a professor of government at Harvard University, Hugh Heclo is a recognized expert on American democratic institutions as well as the international development of modern welfare states. He has received national awards for his books including Comparative Public Policy, A Government of Strangers, and Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden. Professor Heclo is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he has served as a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.  He chaired the Ford Foundation research advisory committee, which published The Common Good: Social Welfare and the American Future, and is co-author of the 1998 Urban Institute volume, The Government We Deserve. Hugh Heclo is senior editor and contributor to the 2003 volume, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America and a member of the Scholar’s Council advising the Librarian of Congress.  Also in 2003, he wrote "Ronald Reagan and the American Public Philosophy," chapter one in The Reagan Presidency and the chapter, "The Political Ethos of George W. Bush," in The George W. Bush Presidency; An Early Assessment.  In 2002 he received the American Political Science Association's John Gaus lifetime achievement award honoring exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.  Prof. Heclo teaches courses on the Philosophy of History, Religion and Politics in America, and Faith and Reason in the Making of the Modern Mind.  His most recent book is Christianity and American Democracy, published by Harvard University Press. With his wife Beverley, he operates a tree farm in the Shenandoah Valley.

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