Jack H. Knott is the C. Erwin and Ione L. Piper Dean and Professor of the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California.  Before joining USC, Dean Knott served from 1997 until 2005 as professor of political science and director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chicago.  From 1987 to 1997, Dean Knott was a professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University, where he served as departmental chair and director of Michigan State’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

He is a leading scholar in the fields of political institutions and public policy, public management, and health policy.  He has published three books, including Reforming Bureaucracy: The Politics of Institutional Choice, and numerous journal articles and book chapters.  He has held fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City and the International Institute of Management in Berlin.  He has also conducted large-scale evaluation studies of private foundation projects and government programs.  In addition, he has served as a consultant on public policy to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

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

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 John Hopkins University, and his undergraduate degree in history from Calvin College.