Professor James Alan Fox Bio

James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University. He has been a member of the Northeastern University faculty since 1977, and served as the Dean of the College of Criminal Justice from 1991 through 1999.

Fox has written 18 books, including Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder, Violence, Security on Campus: From Preschool through College, and several widely-used statistics textbooks. He has published dozens of journal and magazine articles, primarily in the areas of serial murder, mass shootings, intimate partner homicide, youth crime, school and campus violence, workplace violence, and capital punishment, and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. He has also published nearly 300 op-ed columns in newspapers around the country, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and USA Today. As a member of its Board of Contributors, his opinion columns appear frequently in USA Today. Prior to this role, he wrote a bi-weekly column in the Boston Herald and the “Crime and Punishment” blog for the Boston Globe.

As an authority on homicide, Fox frequently appears on national television programs and newscasts, and is regularly interviewed by the press. He was profiled in a two-part cover story in USA Today, in feature stories in the New York Times and the Scientific American, in feature segments on CBS and CNN, as well as in other media outlets. He has also served as an on-air crime news analyst/consultant for NBC/MSNBC.

Professor Fox often gives lectures and expert testimony, including over 100 keynote or campus-wide addresses around the country, 16 appearances before the U.S. Congress, White House meetings with President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Gore on youth violence, private briefings to Attorney General Reno on trends in violence, and presentations for Attorney General Eric Holder and for Princess Anne of Great Britain.

Fox served on President Clinton’s advisory committee on school shootings, and a Department of Education Expert Panel on Safe, Disciplined and Drug-Free Schools. He chaired a blue-ribbon panel for the city of Seattle investigating the March 2006 Capitol Hill massacre and has been a visiting fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics focusing on the measurement of homicide trends.

Finally, Fox was honored in 2007 by the Massachusetts Committee against the Death Penalty with the Hugo Adam Bedau Award for excellence in capital punishment scholarship and by Northeastern University with the 2008 Klein Lectureship.

James Alan Fox's Resume PDF file | James Alan Fox's Hi-Res Photo