Jessica Chen Weiss

Jessica Chen Weiss

David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies, SAIS; Senior Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis

Jessica Chen Weiss is the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis.  Weiss was formerly the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars.

Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research appears in International OrganizationChina QuarterlyInternational Studies QuarterlyJournal of Conflict ResolutionSecurity StudiesJournal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy. With commentary in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, and the Ezra Klein show, Weiss was profiled by the New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Thinkers for 2024. Weiss was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, where her dissertation won the American Political Science Association Award for best dissertation in international relations, law and politics.