He also serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the board of Friends of the World Food Program . Glickman is a Freemason.

Glickman was born in Wichita, Kansas to a Jewish family. The Glickman family operated Glickman Inc., a full-service scrap metal operation, since 1915 and Kansas Metal, an automobile and appliance shredder, since 1994. Glickman Inc. was founded by Jacob Glickman and later continued and expanded by Milton and Bill Glickman. With the death of Milton Glickman, Dan's father, in December 1999, Dan and his siblings Norman and Sharon Glickman carried on the family business until it was sold in 2002.

Glickman graduated from Wichita Southeast High School in 1962. He graduated from University of Michigan with a B.A. in History in 1966, where he was a classmate with one of Al Gore's Chiefs of Staff, Charles Burson, and received his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School in 1969.

In 1969 and 1970, Glickman worked as a trial attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, then was a partner in a law firm, Sargent, Klenda and Glickman. Between 1973 and 1976 he served as president of the Wichita School Board.

In 1976, he was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat from Kansas, defeating an eight-term Republican incumbent. Glickman was a leading congressional expert on general aviation policy and wrote landmark legislation providing product liability protection for small airplane manufacturers. In his final term, he was the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He held open hearings to bring the intelligence community's post–Cold War activities to light and began a committee investigation into the Aldrich Ames espionage case. He was defeated for reelection, by Todd Tiahrt, in the 1994 congressional elections, one of 34 Democrats to lose their seats. Part of Glickman's loss was attributed to the fact Kansas lost one House seat following the 1990 Census, shifting the city of Hutchinson out of the 4th District and into the more conservative First District (the "Big First"), and moving rural areas east of Wichita into the 4th.[citation needed]Tiahrt continues to hold the seat as of 2010.

Following his defeat, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be the Secretary of Agriculture, where he served from 1995 to 2001. After Clinton's term ended, Glickman became the director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

In 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced that Glickman would replace Jack Valenti as its chief lobbyist. Glickman served as Chairman and CEO of the MPAA,.

In a MPAA press release, May 31, 2006, entitled "Swedish Authorities Sink Pirate Bay", Dan Glickman states

“The actions today taken in Sweden serve as a reminder to pirates all over the world that there are no safe harbours for Internet copyright thieves”

In the 2007 documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy" Glickman is interviewed in connection with the 2006 raid on The Pirate Bay by the Swedish police, conceding that piracy will never be stopped, but stating that they will try to make it as difficult and tedious as possible.