James B. Palais

Background

James Palais was born on March 8, 1934, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States; the son of Harry Palais, a manufacturer, and Henrietta (Aronovitz) Palais.

Education

Palais graduated from high school in Brookline, and from Harvard in 1955. He enrolled at the Army Language School in Monterey (nowadays Defense Language Institute) and intended to study Russian, but the classes were full. James opted for Korean instead. He went on to receive a master's degree from Yale and a Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard.

Career

Palais began his career at Norfolk State University as an assistant professor in 1966. He held this position for a year and then became an assistant professor at the University of Maine. The University of Washington hired Professor Palais in 1968, and his arrival helped make the school one of the most respected Korean-history centers in the nation. Palais continued to teach part-time after his retirement from the UW in 2001. He also served as dean for international studies at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea for three years.

Professor Palais' exhaustive research led him to study texts written in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. From 1974 to 1977, Palais edited Occasional Papers on Korean Studies, known as the Journal of Korean Studies. He also wrote books on Korea's history and human rights, most notably the 1,230-page Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions, a work covering 500 years of Korean history.

Some of his writings were controversial, such as his characterization of Korea as a slave society for part of its history.

Achievements

• Palais was one of the foremost scholars, mentoring a generation of academics and writing books still regarded as authoritative. His book Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the late Choson Dynasty was awarded the John Whitney Hall book prize as the best book on Japan or Korea in 1998.
  
  Palais was also recognized with the Yongjae Paek Nakchun Award from Korea's Yonsei University in 1995, and by The Association for Asian studies with a lifetime achievement award in Asian Studies in 2001.
  
  The James B. Palais Professorship of Korean History was established in his honor at the University of Washington. The Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council presents the James B. Palais Book Prize. It has been awarded annually since 2010 for an outstanding English language book published on Korea.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions

    (Although Yu was ignored in his own time by all but a few ...)

    1996
  • Views on Korean History

    (The two reports collected in this book propose a new inte...)

    1998
  • Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea

    (Mr. Palais theorizes in his important book on Korea that ...)

    1975

Membership

James Palais was a member of the Association for Asian Studies.

Personality

Palais was a passionate teacher and lecturer - and a sharp critic. With his phenomenal memory, he was able to dissect problems with precision and come up with novel views and ideas that often baffled his students and colleagues. He had the ability to type at great speed.

Physical Characteristics: I'd like to add that my dad had a great sense of humor and a big laugh. One of his favorite things was getting a good laugh out of students in class or staff at faculty meetings. He would come home and say "oh I got a big laugh today...". While obviously he was very serious and intense about his work, he was also very laid back and warm. He was a big sports fan having played college basketball at Harvard. He studied to be a classical pianist as a youth and was told by his instructor that if he was going to continue on that path he would have to quit baseball and basketball, which was not something he wanted to sacrifice at that time. He loved going to the movies with my mom...they saw everything that came out and he would always stay to the end of every movie despite how bad it could be, optimistically noting it "could pick up speed". He was very generous with his time with students but also with people in general. He was a humanitarian who cared and wrote often about human rights. He was a wonderful father.

Quotes from others about the person

• Michael Robinson: "His door was open all the time. He never threw us out. I don't know that he slept."
  
  Clark Sorensen: "He was extremely rigorous. He was uncompromising and he insisted on a depth of research grounded in original sources."

Interests

• music, sports, swimming

Connections

James Palais married Jane S. Tobin on May 9, 1959. The couple had two children - Julie Ann and Michael Aaron.

Father:

Harry Palais

Harry Palais was a manufacturer.

Mother:

Henrietta (Aronovitz) Palais

Spouse:

Jane S. Tobin

Daughter:

Julie Ann Palais

Son:

Michael Aaron Palais