Thomas Homer-Dixon (born 1956) is a Canadian political scientist and author who researches threats to global security. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.^[1][2] He is the author of seven books, the most recent being Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril.

Homer-Dixon was born and raised in a rural area outside Victoria, British Columbia.^[3] In his late teens and early twenties, he worked on oil rigs and in forestry.^[4]

In 1980, he received a B.A. in political science from Carleton University in Ottawa.^[5] He then established the Canadian Student Pugwash organization, a forum for discussion of the relationships between science, ethics, and public policy.^[6][7] He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989, specializing in international relations and conflict theory under the supervision of Hayward Alker.^[8]

Homer-Dixon began his academic career at the University of Toronto in 1990 where he led several research projects examining links between environmental stress and violence in poor countries.^[9] In 1993, he joined the faculty of University College and the Department of Political Science, progressing to full professor status in 2006. Meanwhile, he was director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University College, before he moved on to be the Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies until 2007.^[10][11]

In 2008, Homer-Dixon moved to the University of Waterloo, Ontario, to assume the role as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the newly created Balsillie School of International Affairs.^[12][13]

He was the founding director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo between 2009 and 2014.^[14][3]

In 2019, Homer-Dixon was appointed a University Research Chair at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.^[15] In 2020^[16] he became the executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University.^[17]

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times in April 2013, Homer-Dixon stated that Alberta's oil sands industry "is undermining Canadian democracy" and that "tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal cabinet." Homer-Dixon also said that "Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state" and that the oil sands industry "is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don't like."^[33][34][35]

In 2022, Homer-Dixon expressed the belief that the United States could be ruled by a right-wing dictator before 2030.^[36]

• Environmental Scarcity and Global Security. New York: Foreign Policy Association. 1993. ISBN 0-87124-152-8.
• Population and Conflict. Liège: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. 1994. ISBN 2-87108-032-1.
• Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1999. ISBN 0-691-02794-3.
• The Ingenuity Gap. New York: Knopf. 2000. ISBN 0-375-40186-5.
• The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization. Toronto: Knopf. 2006. ISBN 0-676-97722-7.
• Carbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada (and Our Lives). Toronto: Vintage Canada. 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-35719-9.
• Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. Toronto: Knopf Canada. 2020. ISBN 978-0307363169.

• List of University of Waterloo people