James Gibson, Washington University, St. Louis
Council 2004-06

James L. Gibson earned his B.A. in political science from Emory University in 1972 (with highest honors, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa), and his Ph.D. in 1975, from the University of Iowa. After teaching at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the University of Houston, Gibson became the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis in 1999.

Gibson became president of the Midwest Political Science Association in 1998 1999, has served on various APSA committees, and has been active in the Association's Centennial Campaign. He is also the recipient of several research awards, including the APSA’s Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award and the Eulau Award, and awards from three Organized Sections: Political Organizations/Parties, Comparative Politics, and Law and Politics. The International Society of Political Psychology recently recognized his Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa (with Amanda Gouws) with the Alexander L. George Award for the best book published in political psychology. Gibson spent 2001 2002 as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Gibson has long been actively involved in the affairs of the National Science Foundation. He was a member of the first formal committee to call for a separate social sciences directorate, and then served on the Advisory Committee for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences from 1992 until 1998.

Gibson has published approximately 100 refereed articles. About one-third of these have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, or the Journal of Politics. He has also published five books, with his Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion (with Amanda Gouws) published in 2003 (Cambridge University Press), and his Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? published in 2004 (Russell Sage Foundation).

Gibson has eclectic research interests, but his recent work focuses on mass psychology and behavior and democratization in the United States, Europe, and Africa. He is interested in understanding how and why ordinary people think the way they do about political issues (especially political tolerance and issues of justice) and how such thinking translates into public policy and democratic reform. In addition to his continuing research on democratization in Russia and truth, justice, and reconciliation in South Africa, Gibson is working on a new study of the problem of historical injustices and "land reconciliation" in South Africa, and is beginning a new project on public reactions to the Greensboro (North Carolina) Truth and Reconciliation Commission.