James Ron

James Ron is an author, social scientist, and former academic whose experience as a researcher, journalist, public opinion analyst, program evaluator, and human rights/war crimes investigator has taken him to most regions of the world.

James was recruited into the Israeli military at the age of 18 and volunteered for service in a selective parachute regiment, where he remained for three years. Thereafter, he worked as a journalist with the Associated Press in Jerusalem, reporting on Israeli politics and policy, including towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

After earning a BA in political science from Stanford University, he transitioned to working as a consultant for Human Rights Watch, first on human rights violations in the Palestinian territories and then on violations of human rights law and the laws of war in Nigeria, Turkey, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Kyrgyzstan.

During this time, he also consulted for CARE, an international aid agency, on their operations in Congo, and for the International Committee of the Red Cross, on their civilian protection work in the former Yugoslavia.

After earning a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley, James Ron published two scholarly books. The first, Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel (University of California Press), focused on political violence in the Balkans and the Middle East. The second, a co-authored volume entitled Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South (Oxford University Press), relied on thousands of interviews with representative samples in India, Nigeria, Morocco, and Mexico.

James has also published numerous scholarly articles. One series of publications was based on his data on the statistical correlates of human rights reporting worldwide, relying on large datasets he created from output by Amnesty International, The Economist, and Newsweek.

A second series of articles relied on a global database of state regulations of foreign aid to civil society.

A third series was based on the opinion polls he conducted on public attitudes toward human rights organizations, principles, and policies in Colombia, India, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, and the United States.

Other articles were based on case studies of political violence and humanitarian aid.

These publications appeared in leading disciplinary journals, including Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy, Human Rights Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Peace Research, Political Studies Quarterly, Social Problems, Theory and Society, World Development, and others.

James taught at Johns Hopkins University, where he held appointments in the sociology and political science departments; at McGill University in Montreal, where he held a Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights; at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he taught at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canada's leading training ground for aspiring diplomats; at CIDE, Mexico's premier public university for social science research; and at the University of Minnesota, where he held an endowed chair in international affairs.

James retired from academia in 2020 and moved into consulting. He was a research consultant for the Fetzer Institute, a religiously-inclined foundation, and a rare disease marketing company. He then did program evaluation work for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland's official development agency, for the International Committee of the Red Cross, and for a Bedouin rights group in Israel's Negev desert.

James has now retired from active consulting and is focused on personal writing projects, including a memoir, Azimuth, about his transition from soldiering to human rights work.

James has long volunteered for various entities. In the early 1990s, he volunteered with B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, where he helped edit reports. Then, after working as a paid consultant for Human Rights Watch, he volunteered his time on a wide variety of projects. Beginning in 2010, he began doing pro-bono program evaluation for Life for a Child, a charity that provides insulin and vital medical supplies to clinics treating children with Type 1 diabetes in low and middle-income countries. That cause is particularly close to his heart, as his son was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition at the age of two.

His work for Life for a Child has taken him to diabetes clinics in India, Mexico, Morocco, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In Mexico, he helped jump-start a Life for a Child program with the Mexican Diabetes Federation, which now supports over 1,200 children.

Please visit www.jamesron.com for more details. His research blog is available at www.jamesron.org, and his personal blog is at www.jamesron.net.

Visit www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Ron or Jamesron.academia.edu for more details.

Please follow James Ron on Twitter at @james_ron01.