Larry Diamond appointed as FSI Senior Fellow

Larry Diamond has been appointed as a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a renowned scholar of democratization, and prolific in both editorial and policy work, Diamond is an active member of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He coordinates the Program on Democracy - Completed, which examines the comparative dynamics of democratic functioning and change in the contemporary world, with a particular focus on the countries of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the post-communist world. He has also established the offshoot program, The Taiwan Democracy Project, in 2006, and is a central participant in the The Taiwan Democracy Project.

Primarily an Africanist, Diamond received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 1980. He currently serves as the co-director for the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies in Washington DC, as a member of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, and as adviser and lecturer at the World Bank, the United Nations, and the U.S. Department of State. Previously he was senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and consultant to USAID.

He is also founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, the premier journal in the field, and a co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has an impressive record of public service, which includes numerous board memberships and government appointments, and he has published widely. In his prolific portfolio of books and papers, he has advanced the knowledge on the conceptualization, determinants, and importance of democracy by examining the relationship between development and democracy, the multidimensional nature of the democratization process, and the significance of democratic consolidation.

Diamond’s commitment and contributions to teaching are also reflected in his receipt of Stanford’s 2007 Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education, a strong testament to the breadth and depth of his engagement at the University.