Professor James Alan Fox Bio

James Alan Fox is Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University. He has written 18 books, including Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder, and Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College. 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 of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. He has published over 300 opinion columns in newspapers around the country, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and most often in USA Today. He also manages the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.

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 served as an on-air crime news analyst for NBC, and co-hosted a social issue talk show on WBUR, a Boston NPR affiliate.

Professor Fox often gives lectures and expert testimony, including over 100 keynote or campus-wide addresses, 16 appearances before the U.S. Congress, White House meetings with President 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. He 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 2006 Capitol Hill massacre and has been a visiting fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics focusing on the measurement of homicide trends.

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. In 2022, he was a co-recipient (along with USA TODAY and the Associated Press) of an EPPY award for digital journalism in recognition of our mass killing database Finally, he is ranked #12 in the list of most influential criminologists in the U.S. by academicinfluence.com.

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