James Ron: Author & Retired Social Scientist
James Ron is an author and retired social scientist. He designed and oversaw opinion polls worldwide, including face-to-face and online surveys in Colombia, India, Mexico, Morocco, and the United States. He also oversaw a wide variety of qualitative research projects worldwide.
James began his career as a journalist and war crimes investigator. Later, he worked as an academic, teaching political science, international relations, sociology, and public affairs. He consulted for international organizations and governments, and published widely in scholarly and popular venues.
James now focuses on personal writing projects and is no longer affiliated with institutional academia or consulting firms.
About James Ron
James was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the US, France, and Israel. He earned a BA in political science from Stanford University and a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley. While living in Israel, he worked for the Associated Press, volunteered for B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, and consulted for Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights & War Crimes Investigations
James consulted for Human Rights Watch for 28 years, conducting hundreds of interviews with victims of abuse, refugees, humanitarian staff, military personnel, and officials.
His fieldwork for the global rights group took him to the Albanian border with Kosovo, Israel/Palestine, the Ingush-Chechen border, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, and Turkey. James wrote three book-length reports for Human Rights Watch, two on human rights conditions in the Palestinian territories, and a third on war crimes in southeastern Turkey.
Consulting & Evaluation
Over the years, James consulted and evaluated programs for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bosnia and Mexico; for CARE, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; for the Swiss government in the Middle East; and for Canadian governments on various topics.
James Ron et. al. “Taking Root,” Oxford University Press, 2017
Academia
James was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and Brown University. He then held tenure-track and tenured positions at Johns Hopkins University, McGill University, Carleton University, and the University of Minnesota. James was an affiliated professor with CIDE, a Mexican public research institute, for several years.
At McGill, James was awarded a (Tier 2) Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights, and at the University of Minnesota, he held the Stassen Chair of International Studies.
Over the years, James’s research was funded by private foundations and government agencies, including the Ford Foundation, the International Development Research Center, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Social Science & Humanities Research Council, the Social Science Research Council, and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Media & Publishing
James published widely in popular venues, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Open Democracy, and many others. In 2013, he co-founded Open Global Rights, a website for human rights measurement, strategy, and evaluation.
His scholarly articles appeared in professional journals such as Comparative Politics, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and many more. His academic books were published by the University of California Press and Oxford University Press.
The Gaza War
James’s first book, Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel, is highly relevant to the 2023-2025 Gaza war. For details, see his post on the University of California Press’s author’s blog, “A Sad Prediction Born Out By Events,” and his article in the European journal, E-International Relations, “International Recognition of Palestine and the Risk of a West Bank ‘Frontier.”
Volunteer Work
Beginning in 2010, when his two-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (an auto-immune disease), James began volunteering for Life for a Child, a medical charity supporting tens of thousands of children and youth with Type 1 with free insulin and blood testing equipment, primarily in low-income countries. James has traveled to India, Mexico, Morocco, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan for the group, evaluating their programs through interviews with children, families, medical providers, and government personnel.
Learn More
Personal Website: www.jamesron.com
Academia: Google Scholar | SemanticsScholar | ResearchGate | Academia.edu | PhilPeople | ORCID
Consulting: LinkedIn
Writing: www.jamesron.net | www.jamesron.org | Medium
Follow at @james_ron01.
James Ron 