James Q. Wilson is the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

He is the author or co-author of fourteen books including The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families, Moral Judgment, Thinking About Crime, Varieties of Police Behavior, and Crime and Human Nature, co-authored with Richard J. Herrnstein.

He has previously taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago.