James Ron

James Ron is an internationally oriented senior research professional who taught for 22 years in Canadian, US, and Mexican universities. James has studied public opinion, human rights, armed conflict, civil society, and the dynamics of foreign aid, and has evaluated international programs all over the world. He has been a prolific contributor to both academic and public publishing venues.

James earned a doctorate in political sociology from UC Berkeley, and a BA in political science from Stanford University. His articles in popular venues have been published in leading publications, including the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, the Globe and Mail, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Toronto Star, Washington Post, and more. James Ron’s latest book, co-authored with colleagues, is Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South, published by Oxford University Press.

James began his professional career working for the Jerusalem bureaus of the Financial Times and the Associated Press. Soon thereafter, he began working for Human Rights Watch, publishing three book-length reports on suspected war crimes and human rights violations in the Israeli-held West Bank and Gaza and in Turkey. James went on to work with the US-based human rights NGO in other countries, studying violations of international law in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Nigeria.

James began his academic career with a fellowship at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, where he completed his dissertation on political violence, human rights, and geographic location in the former Yugoslavia and the Israeli/Palestinian/Lebanese space. He completed that project while on another fellowship with the Watson Institute at Brown University and published an updated version of the thesis with California University Press under the title, Frontiers, and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel.

James began teaching in the sociology department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. While at Hopkins, he worked with a co-author on a study of civil war in the Republic of Congo, funded by the United States Institute of Peace. In a second co-authored article, he studied the dynamics of international aid, publishing an article entitled “NGO Scramble” in a leading scholarly journal, International Security.

This piece on international aid, co-authored with Barnard professor Alexander Cooley, shaped a generation of scholarship by encouraging researchers to examine the organizational dynamics of international NGOs and to focus on the contractual nature of their financial support from bilateral and multilateral funders including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), and UN agencies, such as the World Food Program (WFP) or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

After several years at Johns Hopkins University, James accepted a Canada Research Chair (tier 2) in Conflict and Human Rights with the sociology department of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There, he began a statistical study of the correlates of international human rights reporting in the Economist and Newsweek and by Amnesty International. That project resulted in multiple co-authored publications, including one appearing in the International Studies Association’s flagship journal, International Studies Quarterly. That article, “NGO Information Politics,” has also shaped a generation of scholarship by researchers interested in using statistical data to explore the effects of the “naming and shaming” approach to human rights work.

James Ron later accepted a tenured position with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, a well-known training program for aspiring diplomats. There, he taught and worked chiefly on applied research projects funded by Global Affairs Canada, the country’s ministry of foreign affairs. These studies included analyses of the statistical link between human rights violations and the onset of violent conflict; the use of public health statistical methods to estimate the civilian toll of armed conflict; and transitional justice efforts in post-conflict countries.

After five years with Carleton University in Ottawa, James spent a year teaching at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City. He remained affiliated with this public research institute for several years thereafter. He moved to Minneapolis after being awarded an endowed research chair at the University of Minnesota, where James taught in its departments of political science and public affairs.

While in Minnesota, James built an original international survey project involving interviews with over 11,000 respondents in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This unique project developed a population-based approach to the study of international law, asking representative samples of the public for their views toward human principles, policies, and organizations. This work resulted in an Oxford University Press book, Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South, co-authored by James Ron with Shannon Golden, David Crow, and Archana Pandya.

Over the years, James’ research has taken him to over 16 countries, where he has conducted interviews in multiple languages, often with the help of translators. He now uses his academic experience and past consulting work for the Canadian and Swiss governments, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, CARE, and others to provide advisory services to organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

One effort James is particularly proud of is his volunteer work for Life for a Child, an Australian charity that supplies insulin and other vital medical items to tens of thousands of children and youth with Type 1 diabetes, mostly in low-income countries. As part of this work, James has done program evaluation and organizational coaching for diabetes-focused clinics, hospitals, and independent health providers in India, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Morocco, and Uzbekistan.

You can read more about James on his website, www.jamesron.com; his blogs, at www.jamesron.org and www.jamesron.net; and on his academic pages,

including Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dgnLVLEAAAAJ&hl=en)

Academia.edu (https://independent.academia.edu/JamesRon5)

ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Ron?ev=hdr_xprf&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InByb2ZpbGUiLCJwYWdlIjoiaG9tZSIsInBvc2l0aW9uIjoiZ2xvYmFsSGVhZGVyIn19).

ORCHID (https://orcid.org/0009-0007-0987-060X)

PhilPeople (https://philpeople.org/profiles/james-ron-1)