John Waterbury

John Waterbury became the fourteenth president of the American University of Beirut in January 1998 and the first president to reside in Beirut since 1984. During his tenure at AUB, Dr. Waterbury has sought to restore the University to its long-standing place and reputation as an institution of higher learning meeting the highest international standards. He has announced that he will resign at the end of the 2007-2008 school year. Dr Peter Dorman, a noted professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago will become the 15th AUB president on July 1, 2008.Before joining AUB, Waterbury was, for nearly twenty years, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He specialized in the political economy of the developing countries with a special focus on the Middle East. He was director of Princeton's Center of International Studies and editor of the academic journal, World Politics, from 1992 to 1998.

Waterbury earned his PhD in public law and government at Columbia University in 1968 and went on to the University of Michigan as assistant professor of political science. In 1971 he joined the American Universities Field Staff, a consortium of American Universities, which he represented in Cairo from 1971 to 1977. During 1977-78 he was visiting professor at the Universite‚ Aix-Marseilles III in France.

Dr. Waterbury has published widely on the politics of the Middle East, the political economy of public enterprise, and on the development of international river basins. His latest book, ‘The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action,’ was published by Yale University Press in 2002.

Waterbury has announced that he will resign as president at the end of the 2007-2008 academic year.