William Arthur Galston ; born January 17, 1946 holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies & is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; he joined the think tank on January 1, 2006. Formerly the Saul Stern Professor as well as Dean at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a professor of political science at the University of Texas, Austin, Galston specializes in issues of U.S. public philosophy and political institutions.
He was deputy assistant for domestic policy to U.S. President Al Gore 1988, 2000, Walter Mondale, and John B. Anderson. Since 1995, Galston has served as a founding detail of the Board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and as chair of the Campaign's Task Force on Religion and Public Values.
Galston was in the United States Marine Corps, serving as a sergeant. He was educated at Cornell, where he was a portion of the Telluride House, and the University of Chicago, where he got his Ph.D. He then taught for most a decade in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. From 1998 until 2005 he was professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. Later he was executive director for the National Commission on Civic Renewal. Galston founded, with assist from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. He was also director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, both located at the University of Maryland.
He has calculation on questions of political and moral philosophy, U.S. politics and public policy, having portrayed eight books and more than one hundred articles. His almost recent book is Public Matters: Politics, Policy, and Religion in the 21st Century Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Galston is also a co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation and What We Can draw About It, published by the Brookings Press.
Galston became an op-ed columnist for the Wall Street Journal in 2013. In 2014, he continued public commentary on partisan politics.