Richard J. Samuels

RICHARD J. SAMUELS is Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Center for International Studies. He is also the Founding Director of the MIT Japan Program. In 2005 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Samuels served as Head of the MIT Department of Political Science between 1992-1997 and as Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Japan of the National Research Council until 1996.  From 2001-2007 he was Chairman of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, an independent Federal grant-making agency that supports Japanese studies and policy-oriented research in the United States.  In 2010 he was appointed a member of Scientific Committee of the Italian Institute of Culture in New York.  Grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Abe Fellowship Fund, the National Science Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Smith Richardson Foundation have supported more than a decade of field research in Japan and Europe.

Dr. Samuels’ most recent book, Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, was named one of the five finalists for the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book in international affairs.  His previous book,  Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan, a comparative political and economic history of political leadership in Italy and Japan, won the 2003 Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the 2004 Jervis-Schroeder Prize for the best book in International History and Politics, awarded by the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association.

His 1994 study, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan won the 1996 John Whitney Hall Prize of the Association of Asian Studies and the 1996 Arisawa Memorial Prize of the Association of American University Presses. His book, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize in 1988. In 1983, Princeton University Press published his Politics of Regional Policy in Japan.

He is currently writing a book about political kidnappings.

His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Security, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, International Organization,The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The National Interest, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Daedalus, and other scholarly journals.

Dr. Samuels received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

Courses

Selected Articles

  • Eric Heginbotham, Ely Ratner, and Richard J. Samuels, "How Japan is Changing—and What It Means for the United States," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No 5, September-October 2011.
  • Richard J. Samuels, “Kidnapping Politics in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies, Volume 10, No.3 (November 2010).
  • Samuels, Richard J. and Robert Madsen, “Japan, LLP” The National Interest, No. 107, May/June 2010, pp. 48-56.
  • Richard J. Samuels, “Wing Walking: The US-Japan Alliance,” Global Asia, Vol. 4 No.1, Spring 2009.
  • Samuels, Richard J. and J. Patrick Boyd, “Prosperity’s Children: Generational Change and Japan’s Future Leadership,” Asia Policy, Number 6 (July 2008), pp.15-51.
  • Richard J. Samuels,  "New Fighting Power!': Japan's Growing Maritime Capabilities and East Asian Security." International Security Vol. 32, No. 3 Winter 2007/2008, pp. 84-112.
  • Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, " Japan's Dual Hedge, " Foreign Affairs Vol 81 No. 5 (September/October 2002) pp. 110-121.
  • Richard J. Samuels, " Leadership and Political Change in Japan: The Case of the Second Rincho," Journal of Japanese Studies 29:1 (2003) pp 1-31.