James Peck

James Peck

Adjunct Professor of History

Education

DePauw University, BA

Harvard University, MA in East Asian Studies 1968

New York University, PhD in History 1996

Areas of Research/Interest

US-Chinese relations since 1949, Washington’s National Security Establishment and US global stratagizing, 20th century debates over US foreign policy in the U.S. and in China. 

Institutional Affiliations

2016- Pangoal Institution, Senior Fellow, Beijing

2005 – Adjunct Instructor New York University in History and East Asia Departments (seminars on Cold War in Asia and the Vietnam War)

1986-2005.  Founder and Director, U.S.-China Book Publication Project and Executive Editor of the Culture and Civilization Project at Yale and the China International Publishing Group in Beijing.

1972-1990 Senior Editor, Pantheon Books, New York. Edited the Pantheon Asia Library as well as books on foreign policy, U.S. politics and history, European history and philosophy. Authors included: Senator J. William Fulbright, E. P. Thompson, George Kennan, Liu Binyan, Edward Said, Alva Myrdal, Sissela Bok, Noam Chomsky, Norodom Sihanouk, Francois Jacob, Franz Schurmann, Stuart Schram, John W. Dower, Jean Chesneaux, Warren Sussman, Gabriel Kolko, Ienaga Saburo, Moss Roberts, Richard Fox, Thomas Edsell, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fred Halliday, Sidney Blumenthal

1970-1972 Co-Director (with Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell), Bay Area Institute (the West coast branch of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.), San Francisco.

1969-1970   Chair of United States-China Foreign Policy Seminar at the Kennedy Institute of Politics, Harvard University

Books

  • Misunderstanding China: Why Washington Gets it Wrong
    Metropolitan Books, forthcoming, 2020
  • Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights
    Metropolitan Books, 2010
    Ideal Illusions
  • Washington’s China: U.S. Globalism and the National Security World
    University of Massachusetts Press, 2004
    Washington's China
  • The Dragon’s Pearl: My life with Zhou Enlai (with Sirin Phathanothai)
    Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994
  • The Chomsky Reader (edited with an interview and introduction by James Peck)
    Pantheon Books, New York, 1984
    The Chomsky Reader (edited with an interview and introduction by James Peck)
  • China’s Uninterrupted Revolution: From 1840 to the Present (With Victor Nee)
    Pantheon Books, New York, 1976
    China’s Uninterrupted Revolution: From 1840 to the Present (With Victor Nee)
  • The Indochina Story (co-editor)
    Bantam Books, New York, 1970
    The Indochina Story (co-editor)

Talks/Appearances

“On Global Governance,” talk at the 7th World Forum on China Studies, Shanghai, December 2017

Guest Lecture, Tsinghua University, International Affairs Program, “U.S. National Security Views of China,” December 2016

Guest Lecture, Beijing University, Foreign Affairs Symposium, “The Central Misunderstandings Between China and the U.S. since 1949,” December 2015.

Keynote Speaker, Amnesty International Symposium at the Films that Matter Festival at The Hague, March 2012 -- “Human Rights: Ideal Illusions?”

Book Discussion on C-Span with James Hoge: “Ideal Illusions: the U.S. Government and Human Rights, March 31, 2011.