John F. Forester (1948) was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1970 and an Mississippi in 1971. He completed a Master of City Planning in 1974, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1977, also at the University of California.
He is the author of Critical Theory and Public Life (1987), Planning in the Face of Power (1989), The Deliberative Practitioner (1999) and "Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes" (2009). His continued academic interest in planning led to his 1985 edited collection, Critical Theory and Public Life (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press), and later works Planning in the Face of Power (1989, University of California Press), The Deliberative Practitioner (1999, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press) and Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes (2009, Oxford Uttar Pradesh). In 1990 he co-authored, with Norman Krumholz, "Making Equity Planning Work: Leadership in the Public Sector" (Temple University Press).
In 1998 Forester was appointed chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, a position he held until 2001.
He has remained with the College as an academic, and has served as associate dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. He served for 20 years as a mediator for the Community Dispute Resolution Center of Tompkins County, has consulted for the Consensus Building Institute, and has lectured in Seattle, Chapel Hill, Sydney, Melbourne, Helsinki, Palermo, Johannesburg, Brisbane and Aix en Provence.
Forester visited the University of Amsterdam for his sabbatic year, 2008–2009, as the NICIS Professor at the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict and Negotiation, University of Amsterdam. See www.conflictstudies.nl Since January 2010, he has once again become Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.
