Lisa Anderson, Columbia University
Council 2004-06

Lisa Anderson is professor of political science and, since 1997, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She has taught at Columbia since 1986, serving as director of the Middle East Institute (1990-1993) and chair of the Political Science department (1993--1997). Before coming to Columbia, she taught in the Government and Social Studies Departments at Harvard University. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and both a certificate in Middle East studies and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia.

In addition to managing a school of over 1,000 public policy masters' and doctoral students from over 100 different countries, Anderson retains an active research portfolio. Her research interests lie at the convergence of international relations and comparative politics, particularly as they illuminate politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and at the intersection of scholarship and public policy around the world. She is working on a book on the fortunes of liberalism in the Middle East as well as developing several projects reflecting on both the rapid globalization of social science and the changing audiences for social science research at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Her most recent book is Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (2003). Her other publications include the edited volume, Transitions to Democracy (1999); the co-edited volume, Origins of Arab Nationalism (with Rashid Khalidi and others, 1991); The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830--1980 (1986), and numerous articles, many book chapters and much newspaper commentary.

She has served on the selection committee of APSA's Gabriel Almond Award in Comparative Politics, on the editorial committees of Comparative Politics and Ethics and International Affairs, and as a member of the Committee on Studies, Council on Foreign Relations. In 2001 she was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and served her term in 2003. She is currently chair of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council and member of the boards of directors of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and of Human Rights Watch. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Monmouth University.