RIJS People

Director

Directors of the Reischauer Institute are selected from its Executive Committee of senior faculty and generally serve for three years. There have been nine Institute Directors:

EDWIN O. REISCHAUER, 1974-1981
DONALD H. SHIVELY, 1981-1983
ALBERT M. CRAIG, 1983-1985
HOWARD S. HIBBETT, 1985-1988
HAROLD BOLITHO, 1988-1991
AKIRA IRIYE, 1991-1995
HELEN HARDACRE, 1995-1998
ANDREW GORDON, 1998-2004
SUSAN J. PHARR, 2002-2003; 2004-present

 

Susan J. Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government, currently serves as Institute Director. She is also director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Program on U.S.-Japan Relations. Having joined the Harvard faculty in 1987, she chaired the Government Department, 1992-95, and was FAS Associate Dean, 1996-98. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia (1975) in Political Science and until 1986 she taught in the Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1985-87, on leave from Wisconsin, she held the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has been a visiting scholar or fellow in the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo, at Keio, and at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Her research interests include Japanese politics, civil society in Asia, the comparative politics of advanced industrial societies, environmental politics, Japan’s international relations, and gender and politics. She served as the Institute's Acting Director in 2002-03 and has served as Director since 2004. In spring 2008, the Japanese Government decorated Professor Pharr with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, for her "distinguished contributions to the study of Japan, intellectual exchange between our two countries and the nurturing of scholars of Japan."