Mel Gurtov (Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Oregon, and Senior Editor of the quarterly journal Asian Perspective, which he served as Editor-in-Chief for 23 years. Gurtov previously was on the staff of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif. (1966-1971), where he was a co-author of the Pentagon Papers, and was Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside (1971-1986).
Mel Gurtov has published thirty books and numerous articles on East Asian affairs (specializing in China and Korea), U.S. foreign policy, and global politics from a human-interest perspective. His latest book is Engaging China: Rebuilding Sino-American Relations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Other recent books are America in Retreat: The Foreign Policy of Donald Trump (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020); Engaging Adversaries: Peacemaking and Diplomacy in the Human Interest (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); Learning from Fukushima: Nuclear Power in East Asia, edited with Peter Van Ness (ANU Press, 2017); and Will This Be China’s Century? A Skeptic’s View (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013). His books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.
Dr. Gurtov regularly visits Asia, where he has been a visiting professor and Senior Fulbright Scholar—at Waseda University in Tokyo and Hankuk Foreign Studies University in Seoul—and has lectured at universities and research institutes in South Korea, Japan, and China. He is fluent in Chinese.
His blog on foreign affairs, “In the Human Interest,” is at https://melgurtov.com. He also broadcasts weekly “Global Citizen” commentaries on KBOO in Portland, OR and KXCR in Florence, OR, and his podcasts are available on Substack (https://melgurtov.substack.com). He currently lives in Deadwood, Oregon.