Jack Goldstone

Jack A. Goldstone (Ph.D. Harvard) is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Jr. Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University, and a Senior Fellow of the Mercatus Center.  Previously, Goldstone was on the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of California, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, Stanford University, and the California Institute of Technology. He has received the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship award from the American Sociological Association, the Arnoldo Momigliano Prize, the Barrington Moore Jr. Award, the Myron Weiner Award, and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Mellon Foundation.  He recently served as the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Visitor to the American Academy in Berlin.

Recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on revolutions and social change, he contributed to the Bertelsmann Foundation’s “Global Megatrends” project and the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Task Force.  He has worked with the World Bank, and the U.S. State and Defense departments on developing their operations in fragile states and forecasting political crises. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he is also on the Advisory Board of the Council’s Center for Preventive Action.  He is an Academic Fellow of the European Policy Council, and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Gaidar Institute (Moscow).

Goldstone’s research focuses on the conditions for building political stability and economic growth in developing nations.  He is currently studying the impact of global population changes on social and economic development.  His 2010 essay in Foreign Affairs, “The New Population Bomb,” analyzed the impact of aging and youth bulges on the global economy and international security, and was one of the most downloaded and viewed essays in recent years.  Goldstone is a popular lecturer on global megatrends. He has been a keynote speaker at events in Oslo, Moscow, Antalya, Delhi, Beijing, Berlin, Aspen, and New York, and appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, and Fox News.

His latest book is Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Oxford UP, 2012). Goldstone also is the author of Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2014).  You can follow his insights on global politics and economic trends on his blog.