Background

James D. Seymour was born on April 22, 1935, in New York City, New York, United States.

Education

Seymour was educated at Yale University, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1957. Eleven years later he obtained his doctor's degree from Columbia University.

Career

Early in his career, Seymour taught at New York University, as a chair of the Politics Department in Washington Square College. In 1980 he joined Columbia University as a senior research scholar at East Asian Institute. He still works at that university. He was a member of board of advisers of Asian-Pacific Council on Democracy, as well as a member of Commission on American-Asian Relations Center for Development Policy. Seymour held a position of an adviser for China Democratic Parties’ Overseas Center.

Currently, Seymour holds a position of an adjunct associate professor at Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of Chinese University of Hong Kong. Seymour is also an honorary senior research fellow of the Universities Service Centre for China Studies of Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Seymour is a contributor to academic journals. He is also a founder of journal Chinese Law and Government, he served there as an editor and as a member of editorial board. For 5 years from 1979, Seymour worked as an editor of journal SPEAHRhead: Bulletin of the Society for the Protection of East Asians’ Human Rights. Another journals where he served were Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and China Information (Leiden, Netherlands) and American Asian Review and Human Rights Quarterly.

Seymour is the author of books titled China: The Politics of Revolutionary Reintegration, China Rights Annals, Volume I: Human Rights Developments in the People's Republic of China, China's Satellite Parties and New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prison Camps and the Laogai System in Contemporary China.

Works

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• book

  • New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China

    (In the case of each province under study, the authors dis...)

    1998
  • China's Satellite Parties

    (This text looks at the future orientation of the People's...)

    1987
  • China: The Politics of Revolutionary Reintegration 1976
  • The Fifth Modernization: China's Human Rights Movement, 1978-1979 1980

Politics

Seymour is a treasurer and a director of The Hongkong-based labor rights organization China Labour Bulletin.

Membership

Seymour is a member of the Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists. He is also a life member of the Association for Asian Studies, as well as an executive director of the Society for the Protection of East Asians’ Human Rights.

• He was a chairperson.

  Columbia University Seminar on Modern China , United States

  1979 - 1980

• He was a chairperson.

  Columbia University Seminar on Modern China

  1986 - 1987

• He was a member of executive committee.

  Human Rights in China

  1996