John Willingham is a writer and editor known for his collections of reviews about honors programs at public universities in the United States, for his essays about history, politics, and religion, and for The Edge of Freedom: A Fact-Based Novel of the Texas Revolution. In 2011, he founded and became editor of Public University Honors, a website that evaluates more than 50 college honors programs and provides information about honors programs in general. He is opposed to numerical rankings of colleges or honors programs, asserting in the 2018 edition that "Rankings presume a perfection that they cannot meet." His reviews place programs in groups, with the top group of 10 or so receiving the highest rating. In 2020, he founded and became editor of The Times of Texas, a website that views the changes in Texas that will re-shape the nation. The site publishes news updates and original and guest pieces on Texas history, literature, and politics. Willingham has been a contributor to the History News Network, which has published about two dozen of his essays and opinion pieces. During the same period, his work appeared in a variety of publications including The Texas Observer online, Religion Dispatches, and the San Antonio Express-News. Born in Waco, Willingham graduated from Richfield High School and holds a bachelor's degree with honors and a master's degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He served as McLennan County, Texas, elections administrator from 1984 through 1992, and Williamson County, Texas, Elections Administrator from 1993 through 2009. In September 1998, he served as an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe election coordinator for the general election in the district of Brcko, under the dual sovereignty of Bosnia and Serbia. During 2001–05, he was a member of the National Task Force on Election Reform. Assisted by funding related to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the task force worked to improve the security and integrity of U.S. elections.
Publications
Non-fiction books
A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs, Public University Press, 2014
Inside Honors: Ratings and Reviews of Sixty Public University Honors Programs, Public University Press, 2016
Inside Honors 2018-2019: Ratings and Reviews of 50 Public University Honors Programs, Public University Press, 2018
Novel
The Edge of Freedom, A Fact-Based Novel of the Texas Revolution, Inkwater Press, 2011
Selected Op-Eds
"Another Election Year, Another Catastrophe in Florida", HNN, 2012
"Gail Collins Almost Remembers the Alamo", HNN, 2012.
"Glenn Beck’s Christianity and Abraham Lincoln’s Religion, HNN, 2010
"Historical Fiction and the 'Gaps' in Academic History", HNN, 2011
"J.H. Plumb Would Be Aghast at Today's Distorted History, HNN, 2011
"Rick Perry's War on Higher Ed in Texas, HNN, 2011
"Paul Ryan's Hijacking of Natural Rights", HNN, 2012
"Sarah Palin and the Static God", Religion Dispatches, 2010
"Waco: The City Where the Waco Siege Didn't Actually Happen", HNN, 2013
"White College Grads Preferred Donald Trump; This Raises the Question, What Happened to Critical Thinking?", HNN, 2016
"Do a Majority of Republicans Really Distrust Higher Education?", HNN, 2017
Southwest Review, SMU Press
"Summertime Passing", Southwest Review, short story, 1975
"John Graves, Larry McMurtry, and the Nature of Goodbyes", essay, Southwest Review, essay, 2015
