[3] Thompson's proposal to establish an independent body to regulate congressional ethics has been widely endorsed, though not by many members of the United States Congress.
It is still stimulating discussion and controversy, and has led to the publication of an entire book devoted to its criticism and defense (Deliberative Politics, edited by Stephen Macedo).
[6] About his most recent book, The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It (also co-authored with Amy Gutmann), Judy Woodruff of the PBS NewsHour commented: "a clear-eyed examination of the forces that bring warring political leaders together or keep them apart.
"[7] Thompson graduated summa cum laude from the College of William and Mary in 1962 and won a Fulbright Fellowship to Oxford University, where he took a “first” in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Conflict-of-interest rules [...] regulate the disclosure and avoidance of these conditions.Thompson has served as a consultant to the Joint Ethics Committee of the South African Parliament, the American Medical Association, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's national committee that published the influential report on "Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice" in 2009.
In these roles, he chaired groups that formulated the original plans for the development of the new campus in Allston,[15] created a new policy on intellectual property to deal with digital works,[16] wrote the first policy to regulate the university’s relationships with outside commercial enterprises,[17] and revised rules that govern the outside activities of faculty members, including their participation in online educational ventures.