Andrew J. Nathan
Class of 1919 Professor and Former Chair, Department of Political Science
Chinese foreign policy; sources of political legitimacy in Asia; human rights
Andrew J. Nathan's teaching and research interests include Chinese politics and foreign policy, the comparative study of political participation and political culture, and human rights. He is engaged in longterm research and writing on Chinese foreign policy and on sources of political legitimacy in Asia, the latter research based on data from the Asian Barometer Survey, a multi-national collaborative survey research project active in eighteen countries in Asia.
Nathan is chair of the steering committee of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and chair of the Morningside Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Columbia. He served as chair of the Department of Political Science, 2003-2006, chair of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 2002-2003, and director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 1991-1995. Off campus, he is co-chair of the board, Human Rights in China, a member of the boards of Freedom House and of the National Endowment for Democracy, and a member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch, Asia, which he chaired from 1995-2000 . He is the regular Asia book reviewer for Foreign Affairs magazine and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Democracy, The China Quarterly, The Journal of Contemporary China, China Information and others. He is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Association for Asian Studies, and the American Political Science Association. He does frequent interviews for the print and electronic media, has advised on several film documentaries on China, has consulted for business and government.
Professor Nathan's books include How East Asians View Democracy, coedited with Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond, and Doh Chull Shin (Columbia University Press, 2008); Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization, coedited with Mahmood Monshipouri, Neil Englehart, and Kavita Philip (M. E. Sharpe, 2003); China's New Rulers: The Secret Files, coauthored with Bruce Gilley (New York Review Books, 2002, 2nd ed., 2003); Negotiating Culture and Human Rights: Beyond Universalism and Relativism, coedited with Lynda S. Bell and Ilan Peleg (Columbia University Press, 2001); China's Transition (Columbia University Press, 1997); The Tiananmen Papers, coedited with Perry Link (Public Affairs, 2001); The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security, with Robert S. Ross (W. W. Norton, 1997); China's Crisis (Columbia University Press, 1990); Human Rights in Contemporary China, with R. Randle Edwards and Louis Henkin (Columbia University Press, 1986); Chinese Democracy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, coedited with David Johnson and Evelyn S. Rawski (University of California Press, 1985); and Peking Politics, 1918–1923 (University of California Press, 1976). He is working on the second edition of The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, coauthored with Andrew Scobell (Columbia University Press).
Nathan's articles have appeared in World Politics, Daedalus, The China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Asian Survey , The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Asian Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. His research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation and others. He has directed five National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars.
Born on April 3, 1943, in New York City, Dr. Nathan received his degrees from Harvard University: the B.A. in history, summa cum laude, in 1963; the M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies in 1965; and the Ph.D. in Political Science in 1971. He taught at the University of Michigan in 1970-71 and has been at Columbia University since 1971.
Email: ajn1@columbia.edu
