Jerome T. Murphy

Jerry Murphy is the Howe Professor of Education Emeritus and Dean Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His current teaching and writing focus on the inner lives of education leaders and how to find meaning and vitality in the midst of stress and strain.

A graduate of Columbia College and Teachers College, Murphy started out as a math teacher and then a federal employee, helping to develop the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Later, he was the Associate Director of the White House Fellows Program, and then earned a doctorate at the Harvard Ed School, where he has been ever since.

For almost 20 years, Murphy was the associate dean and then dean at the Harvard Ed School. As dean, he led the development of new initiatives in learning technologies, arts education, neuroscience, and school leadership. For his work at Harvard, he was honored with an endowed chair named after him.

Drawing on his years in public schooling, government, and university administration, Murphy has written widely about federal and state initiatives, schools of education, the unheroic side of leadership, and the changing roles of superintendents and chief state school officers. He has examined education in the US, and also in Australia, China, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Along the way, he has spotlighted various dimensions of education leadership: top-down, bottom-up, and now in his new book, inside-out leadership.