CISAC faculty member appointed to endowed chair

James D. Fearon is the new Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, an endowed position.

The award, approved by the University Board of Trustees, came as a surprise to the political science professor. "I had no idea I was being considered for it," he said. "I'm extremely honored."

Fearon "is a tremendous colleague who contributes a great deal to CISAC with his great depth in a diverse set of problem issues including civil wars, ethnic conflict, and arms control regimes," said Scott Sagan, CISAC co-director.

"Jim is enormously deserving of this honor," said Terry Moe, political science department chair, in an announcement to the department.

Among Fearon's previous honors include his election in 2002 as a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a 1999-2000 fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He also won the International Studies Association's 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, "presented on an annual basis to a scholar under the age of forty or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her doctoral degree who is judged to have made, through a body of publications, the most significant contribution to the study of international relations and peace research."

Fearon's research on civil and interstate wars and ethnic conflict receives frequent recognition. "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," an article he wrote with political science and CISAC colleague David Laitin, received two annual awards in 1997--for best article in the field of comparative politics and best article in the American Political Science Review. Fearon received the Political Science Association's 1993 Helen Dwight Reid award for best dissertation on international relations, law, and policy. At CISAC Fearon served as principal investigator for a 2001-2003 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, supporting "Research and Training in Conflict Prevention and Resolution."

The Theodore and Frances Geballe Professorhip was established in 1990 through gifts from Professor Theodore Geballe, an internationally recognized physicist, and his wife, Frances Koshland Geballe, a member of one of San Francisco's pioneer families. Theodore Geballe joined Stanford's faculty in 1968, established a program in superconductivity and materials physics in the Department of Applied Physics, and served as department chair and director of Stanford's Center for Materials Research. He is the emeritus Sydney and Theodore Rosenberg Professor of Applied Physics and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fearon is the second professor to be named to the endowed chair. His predecessor was Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, who vacated the chair when he left Stanford last summer for a joint appointment as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.