John Waterbury

Who is John Waterbury?

John Waterbury is an American academic.

Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Waterbury attended Princeton University, studied Arabic at the American University of Cairo, and got his PhD in political science in 1968 at Columbia University. He went on to the University of Michigan as assistant professor of political science. In 1971 he joined the American Universities Field Staff, a consortium of American Universities, which he represented in Cairo from 1971 to 1977. In the winter of 1972, he was a visiting professor at the AUFS facility in Rome. During 1977-78 he was visiting professor at the University of Aix-Marseille III in France.

He was then, for nearly twenty years, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He specialized in the political economy of the developing countries with a special focus on the Middle East. He was director of Princeton's Center of International Studies and editor of the academic journal, World Politics, from 1992 to 1998.

In 1998 Waterbury became the 14th president of the American University of Beirut, a post he held until 2008.