Tom Allen

Tom Allen is the President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, the public policy advocacy organization for the book publishing industry. In that capacity, he speaks for the major priorities of book publishers, including copyright protection, education funding and free expression. His book on competing world views and the division of American political parties is due out in 2012.

Allen served the First District of Maine in Congress for 12 years, from 1997 through 2008. For his first 6 years, Allen served on the House Armed Services Committee and on the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He later moved to the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Budget Committee. Allen gave up his House seat in 2008 to pursue what was ultimately an unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate.

Allen graduated from Bowdoin College in 1967, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He was a captain of the football and track teams, and led the Bowdoin chapter of his fraternity out of its national association because of its racially discriminatory membership practices. He received a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University and graduated in 1970 with a B.Phil. in Politics.

Allen worked on the political campaign and Senate staff of Senator Edmund S. Muskie in 1970-71. He then attended Harvard Law School, and he received a J.D. in 1974. As an attorney at the Portland law firm of Drummond Woodsum Plimpton & MacMahon from 1974 to 1993, Allen was active in civic affairs. He was elected to the Portland City Council in 1989, and served as the City’s Mayor from 1991-92. He lives in Portland, Maine. To find out more about the AAP, visit www.publishers.org