James Ron

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About James Ron

James Ron, PhD, is an author and social scientist who has worked as a journalist, human rights investigator, academic, and program evaluator. James taught at leading universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico and is known for his work on political violence, human rights, foreign aid, and public opinion.

James published widely in academic journals and the media and has consulted for international agencies and governments. He is now writing a memoir about his transition from soldiering to human rights work and on related experiences of belonging, personal transformation, and exile.

You can read his social science blog here and his writings on personal themes here.

Early Career

Born in the United States and raised in Israel, James served in the military from 1985 to 1988. He then worked in Jerusalem for the Associated Press, covering local politics and the first Palestinian uprising. While doing so, he studied at Israeli universities and then completed his BA at Stanford.

In the 1990s, James joined Human Rights Watch as a consultant, where he conducted research and authored reports on violations of international law in the West Bank, Gaza, Turkey, Nigeria, Kosovo, and Chechnya.

In 1999, James earned a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley, where he wrote his dissertation on political violence in the former Yugoslavia and Israel/Palestine, which was published by the University of California Press in 2003 as Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel.

Academic Appointments

James held research fellowships at the Brookings Institution and Brown University before joining Johns Hopkins University as a tenure-track professor of sociology and political science. While there, he secured funding from the United States Institute of Peace to study natural resources and civil war.

In 2001, James was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights at McGill University, where he pioneered a statistical analysis of international human rights reporting, using data from Amnesty International, Newsweek, and The Economist. That research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Canada Research Chairs program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

From 2006 to 2011, James taught at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University’s premier training program for aspiring civil servants and diplomats. He also consulted for the Canadian government on the links between human rights abuses, conflict onset, transitional justice, and public health research in war zones.

From 2011 to 2020, James worked as the Stassen Chair of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he co-led public opinion surveys on human rights attitudes in Colombia, India, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, and the United States. This research led to his second academic book, Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South (Oxford University Press), which focused on cross-national attitudes towards human rights organizations, principles, and policies.

In 2020, James retired from institutional academia.

Publications

James’s research has appeared in a variety of journals, including International Organization, International Security, Human Rights Quarterly, World Development, Comparative Politics, Journal of Peace Research, and others.

James also published op-eds and essays in The New York Times, Le Monde, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Toronto Star, and many other outlets. These pieces focused on foreign policy and foreign aid, international NGO politics, political violence, human rights, and public opinion.

In 2013, James Ron co-founded Open Global Rights, a multilingual website for global human rights commentary.

To browse James’s research and citations, visit:

Consulting

In parallel to his academic and Human Rights Watch work, James consulted for organizations such as CARE, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Canadian and Swiss governments, conducting program evaluations in the DR Congo, Mexico, the Balkans, and Israel/Palestine.

He also volunteered with Life for a Child, a Type 1 diabetes charity affiliated with the International Diabetes Federation.

To learn more about James Ron's consulting and program evaluation work, please visit his profile on LinkedIn.

Current Writing

James is now writing a memoir about his transition from soldiering to investigating human rights conditions in the Palestinian territories. This work reflects on the experiences of identity formation, nationalism, personal transformation, and alienation.

Latest Commentary

A Sad Prediction Born Out by Events - Reflections on events in Gaza, published by the University of California Press Authors’ Blog.
Faith Tradition and Support for Deportation in the US - Statistical analysis for the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.