CWP alum Jessica Chen Weiss, Renowned China Experts, to Join SAIS Faculty

The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is pleased to announce that Jessica Chen Weiss and Jeremy Wallace, internationally recognized China scholars, will join its faculty on July 1, 2024. Their appointment continues SAIS’ longstanding reputation at the forefront of policy-relevant China scholarship, bolstered further by the recent promotion of faculty member Ling Chen to William L. Clayton Associate Professor.

Jessica Chen Weiss has been appointed the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies. She will also become the inaugural director of a new institute to be established at SAIS this fall, bringing together scholars, practitioners, and experts from the private sector and NGOs, to foster deeper understanding and informed policy making on the evolving role of China in the world. Weiss comes to SAIS from Cornell University, where she was the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government. 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 Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal 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.

Jessica Chen Weiss and Jeremy Wallace, Renowned China Experts, to Join SAIS Faculty