Nancy Thomas

Nancy Thomas is executive director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, which transitioned to AAC&U Tufts University in 2023, and the senior advisor to the president for democracy initiatives. IDHE is an applied research center that studies campus climates for political learning; dialogue and discussion teaching on campus; speech, inclusion and academic freedom; and higher education’s role in a democracy in question. While at Tufts (2012–2023), she also designed and directed the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, the nation’s largest study of college student voting rates and patterns, reaching 1,250 campuses and serving 11.5 million students nationwide. Previously, Thomas co-founded and directed the Democracy Imperative, a national network of educators and dialogue practitioners dedicated to advancing deliberative democracy on college campuses and in local communities (2006–2013). She also designed and directed democracy initiatives for the Society for Values in Higher Education, focusing multiple dialogue models and on the role of religion on campus and in public life and resulting in the Wingspread Declaration on Religion and Public Life: Engaging Higher Education (2000–2006). Before switching to academics, Dr. Thomas served as legal counsel for several universities, specializing in academic and student affairs and First Amendment freedoms on campus.

Dr. Thomas has authored and edited many articles, book chapters, special issues of journals, discussion guides, and a guide for training facilitators to manage politically charged discussions, as well as the monograph, Educating for Deliberative Democracy, part of Jossey-Bass New Directions for Higher Education series. From 2015–2020, she served as an associate editor for the Journal of Public Deliberation. She currently serves on several advisory boards and committees, including the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, the Andrew Goodman Foundation, the Conflict Transformation Collaborative at Middlebury College, and the Faculty Engagement Network at the Scholars Strategy Network.

Dr. Thomas attended St. Lawrence University (BA), Case Western Reserve University School of Law (JD), and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (EdD). In 2023, she received the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Alumni Council Award for Innovation in Education.

Areas of Expertise

• Educating for a more aspirational democracy
• Campus climates for political learning and engagement in democracy
• Facilitating politically charged discussions and discussion-teaching
• Academic freedom
• Freedom of expression and inclusion
• Higher education’s neutrality challenge
• Conflict management and transformation
• College student voting