John Graham (policy analyst)

John D. Graham
Dean John D. Graham of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Born	1956 (age 60–61) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Residence	Bloomington, Indiana
Education	Wake Forest University MPP from Duke University PhD from Carnegie Mellon University
Occupation	Professor, dean
Employer	Indiana University
Known for	Age-discounting controversy
Spouse(s)	Susan W. Graham
Website	https://spea.indiana.edu/faculty-research/directory/profiles/faculty/full-time/graham-john.html

John D. Graham, Ph.D., is a former senior official in the George W. Bush administration and is dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA).

John D. Graham was born in 1956 as the son of an accomplished steel industry executive, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts in politics and economics at Wake Forest University in 1978, where he also won national awards as an intercollegiate debater. He earned his Master of Arts in public policy at Duke University in 1980 before serving as staff associate to Chairman Howard Raiffa’s Committee on Risk and Decision Making of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, D.C.). He earned his Ph.D. in public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and his doctoral dissertation on automobile safety, written at the Brookings Institution, was cited in pro-airbag decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 and by Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole in 1985.

Graham joined the Harvard School of Public Health as a post-doctoral fellow in 1983 and as an assistant professor in 1985. He taught methods of decision analysis and cost-benefit analysis to physicians, nurses, and other graduate students in public health. His prolific writings addressed both the analytic and institutional aspects of lifesaving policies. In 1991, at age 34, Graham earned tenure at Harvard.

From 1990 to 2001, Graham founded and led the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA). By raising over $10 million in project grants and philanthropic contributions, Graham helped support eight new faculty positions and dozens of post-doctoral and doctoral students. By 2001, HCRA became internationally recognized for analytic contributions to environmental protection, injury prevention, and medical technology innovation.

In 1995, Graham was elected president of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), an international membership organization of 2,400 scientists and engineers. Graham reached out to risk analysts in Europe, China, Japan, and Australia as he helped organize the first World Congress on Risk Analysis in Brussels in 2000. In 2009, Graham received the SRA’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, the society’s highest award for excellence.