Donald K. Emmerson

Donald K. (“Don”) Emmerson is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies where he has long been an Affiliated Scholar with both the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law while heading the Southeast Asia Program in Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He is especially interested in Southeast Asia and most notably in Muslim-majority Indonesia, whose Muslims outnumber those in any other country.   

Don’s publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and hundreds of shorter pieces, mostly about or related to Southeast Asia.  His interpretation of “Islamism” has been debated in conferences and publications including Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? (Princeton University Press, 2016) and in Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar, ed., Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (Stanford University Press, 2009).  In the latter book, Don argued the need to diversify the concept of Islamism well beyond a derogatory rendition of that term.   

Don’s interest in foreign policy, including testimony on Asian affairs before US House and Senate committees, led to a two-year Research Associateship awarded by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”  Other fellowships included a year at the Institute for Advanced Study.   

Before coming to Stanford, Don was a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His degrees are from Yale (PhD) and Princeton (BA).  His interest in Islam dates from his high-school years in Beirut, Lebanon.  Fluent in the Indonesian language, he retains some competence in French and Russian.  He was born in Tokyo, the son of a U.S. foreign service officer.