Jonathan S. Paris is a London-based specialist on regional political, security, and development issues. A long-time Middle East analyst, he has been traveling to the region for 50 years and was a Middle East Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York from 1994-2000. Paris moved to London in 2001 and began writing year-long studies of the future of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Europe, and Africa. His current study, which brought him to Beijing and Shanghai in June 2016, is “The Future of China in Africa 2035.”
Paris received his B.A. from Yale University in comparative political and economic systems (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He did his graduate work at Stanford Law School from 1975-1978, where he studied Chinese law and society (including the barefoot doctor campaign) under Victor Hao Li, the first ethnic Chinese law professor in America. He practiced international law in Singapore from 1980-1983, focusing on Indonesia, which lead to the later co-authorship of his first book, The Politics of Post-Suharto Indonesia (CFR/Brookings, 1998).
A former Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford and lecturer at Yale University Department of Political Science, Paris is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Diplomatic Forum in London, Associate Fellow of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London, and Senior Advisor to the Chertoff Group in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the IISS and Chatham House in London and the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S.
