David J. Depew is Emeritus Professor of Communication Studies and POROI (Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry) at the University of Iowa. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton.

Much of his work is in the philosophy, history, and rhetoric of evolutionary biology, writing often with Bruce H. Weber. He also writes on ancient biology and its relation to modern; and on how rhetoric, philosophy, and science have interacted since antiquity.