Thomas L. Benson

Thomas L. Benson

Alum 1999

Dr. Thomas L. Benson, PhD, Is the chair of the board of directors of the Council for American Culture and Education (CACE). He is the founder and Executive Director of the World Leadership Corps, an international service organization that was launched at Oxford University in 2005. Dr. Benson is the President Emeritus of Green Mountain College, a liberal arts college in Poultney, Vermont. The college adopted an innovative mission as an environmental liberal arts college during his tenure, and it was named America’s number #1 environmental college by the Sierra Club in 2010.

Thomas served for fifteen years as a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he established and served as the first director of the Honors Program (now the Honors College).

He is the co-founder of the ASIANetwork, a national consortium of 200 liberal arts institutions, and he served as its first chair of the board of directors. From 2004 to 2009, he served as the founding chair of the board of directors of the Africa Network. Currently, Thomas is a trustee and the chair of the board of the Japan ICU Foundation and chair of the board of directors of the Myanmar Foundation.

He publishes and speaks often on issues in philosophy and public policy, international education, and trends in higher education. He has graduate degrees from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. He was twice a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University, and from 2005-2007, a visiting fellow at Oxford University, where he served as the founder and co-director of the World Education Institute in the James Martin School for the 21st Century.