David D. Laitin (born in 1945) is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science in the School of Humanities and Science at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He is a

comparative politics Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the ''comparative method'' or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relatin ...

scholar who has written works on civil war,

ethnic identity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

, culture and nationalism. He is known for his application of

rational choice Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postula ...

to the study of ethnic conflict, and for bridging a gap between

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

and rational choice. He was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in 2021. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. Before joining Stanford University, he was a professor in the political science department at the University of Chicago. In 1986, he published a book about the Yoruba in Nigeria, ''Hegemony and Culture: The Politics of Religious Change Among the Yoruba''. Laitin studied Russian and lived with a Russian family in Estonia for a year. The experiences formed the basis of his 1998 book ''Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad''. In the 1990s and 2000s, Laitin published several highly influential works on ethnicity with

James Fearon James D. Fearon (born 1963) is the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; he is known for his work on the theory of civil wars, international bargaining, war's inefficiency puzzle, audience costs, and ...

Early life and education

Laitin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. He grew up in a Jewish family in

Flatbush, Brooklyn Flatbush is a neighborhood in the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood consists of several subsections in central Brooklyn and is generally bounded by Prospect Park (Brooklyn), Prospect Park to the north, ...

. He is the grandson of émigrés from Russia and Austria. In 1967, he was awarded an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College. While at Swarthmore, he took a class alongside fellow students

Margaret Levi Margaret Levi (born 1947) is an American political scientist and author, noted for her work in comparative political economy, labor politics, and democratic theory, notably on the origins and effects of trustworthy government. Education Marga ...

and

Peter Katzenstein Peter Joachim Katzenstein FBA (born February 17, 1945) is a German-American political scientist. He is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. Katzenstein has made influential contributions to the ...

, who would both go on to become prominent political scientists. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, where he did his dissertation under the guidance of Ernst Haas,

Hanna Pitkin Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (born July 17, 1931)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Hanna Fenichel Pitkin." Accessed March 5, 2008. is an American political theorist. She is best known for her seminal study ''The Concept of Representation'', publi ...

, and Kenneth Waltz. During his time at Berkeley, Laitin served with the Peace Corps in Somalia and Grenada. Laitin has said that this decision was in part motivated by seeking to avoid the Vietnam draft. Laitin's experiences in Somalia influenced his dissertation and his 1977 book ''Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience''.

References

American political scientists Stanford University faculty Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Swarthmore College alumni 1945 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Anthropologists of the Yoruba People from Brooklyn {{Africanist-stub