David C. Paris is the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Government at Hamilton College, a senior fellow at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and a senior advisor to the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). His scholarly areas are in public policy, with emphasis on education policy and higher education policy, in particular, and in political theory. He was vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty from 1999–2005 at Hamilton, and oversaw a five-year grant on assessment from the Mellon Foundation.
He is the author of a number of articles, including most recently, "The Academics' Lament," (LiberalArtsOnline, 2007) and "Higher Education at Risk?" (Inside Higher Ed, 2006). He is also the author of two books, one of which is Ideology and Education Reform: Themes and Theories in Public Education (Westview Press, 1995).