JOHN J. DeGIOIA became the 48th president of Georgetown University on July 1, 2001. He has served the university both as a senior administrator and a faculty member since 1979. Georgetown University is a distinctive educational institution, rooted in the Catholic faith and Jesuit tradition, and therefore committed to spiritual inquiry, engaged in the public sphere, and invigorated by religious and cultural pluralism.
As the first lay president of a Jesuit university, Dr. DeGioia places special emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Dr. DeGioia has been a strong advocate for interreligious dialogue.
To prepare young people for leadership roles in the global community, Dr. DeGioia has expanded opportunities for both interreligious and intercultural dialogue, welcomed world leaders to campus, and convened international conferences to address challenging issues. He is a member of the U.S. National Commission of UNESCO and Chair of its Education Committee, and he represents Georgetown at the World Economic Forum and on the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. DeGioia remains a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, and recently taught “Ethics and Global Development.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Georgetown University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University in 1995.
