Thomas Patterson is Benjamin Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was previously Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University. Raised in a small Minnesota town near the Iowa and South Dakota borders, he was educated at South Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in 1971.

He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles, which focus primarily on the media and elections. His most recent book, The Vanishing Voter (2002), describes and explains the long-term decline in American’s electoral participation. An earlier book, Out of Order (1994), received national attention when President Clinton said every politician and journalist should be required to read it. Another of Patterson’s books, The Mass Media Election (1980), received a Choice Award as Outstanding Academic Book, 1980-1981. Patterson’s first book, The Unseeing Eye (1976) was selected by the American Association for Public Opinion research as one of the fifty most influential books of the past century in the field of public opinion.

His research has been funded by major grants from the National Science Foundation, the Markle Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

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