The following bio is that of an event speaker or guest author. This person is not directly affiliated with the John Locke Foundation.

Tom K. Lindsay, Ph.D., is a distinguished senior fellow of higher education and constitutional studies at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has more than two decades’ experience in education management and instruction, including service as a dean, provost, and college president.

Tom served as a member of The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which issued its report in January 2021.

In 2006, Lindsay joined the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) staff as director of the agency’s signature initiative, We the People, which supports teaching and scholarship in American history and culture. He was named Deputy Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of the NEH in 2007.

Lindsay received his B.A., summa cum laude, in Political Science, and went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Oxford University Press recently published Lindsay’s American Government college textbook, Investigating American Democracy (with Gary Glenn). He has published numerous articles on the subject of democratic education, many of which have appeared in the world’s most prestigious academic journals, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and the American Journal of Political Science. 

Lindsay has published articles on higher-education reform in Real Clear Policy, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Inside Higher Ed, Washington Examiner, Knight-Ridder Syndicate, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, American Spectator, and Austin American-Statesman, among others. He has just accepted an offer to become a contributor to Forbes.

In recognition of his scholarship on democratic education, Lindsay was made the 1992-93 Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.