Francis Fukuyama

Lore & Background

Francis Fukuyama was born in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. His paternal grandfather fled the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and was incarcerated during World War II. His father, Yoshio Fukuyama, was a second-generation Japanese American trained as a minister, with a doctorate in sociology. His mother, Toshiko Kawata Fukuyama, was born in Kyoto, Japan, daughter of the founder of the Economics Department of Kyoto University. Fukuyama grew up in Manhattan as an only child, had little contact with Japanese culture, and did not learn Japanese. In 1967, his family moved to State College, Pennsylvania.

He received a Bachelor of Arts in classics from Cornell University, studying under Allan Bloom. After graduate studies in comparative literature at Yale and time in Paris studying under Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, he became disillusioned and switched to political science at Harvard University, studying with Samuel P. Huntington and Harvey Mansfield. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard for a thesis on Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East. In 1979, he joined the RAND Corporation. He later held professorships at George Mason University and Johns Hopkins University, and since July 2010 has been a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, also serving as director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy.

Reader's Guide

Fukuyama's significance rests primarily on his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which expanded on his 1989 article 'The End of History?' in The National Interest. He argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies was largely at an end, with liberal democracy emerging as the final form of human government after the Cold War. This thesis provoked substantial debate: authors such as Ralf Dahrendorf and Luciano Canfora argued in 1990 that the essay gave Fukuyama his 15 minutes of fame, but he remained a relevant public intellectual. Bernard Crick criticized Fukuyama's principle as a poor misreading of historical processes. Fukuyama himself noted that one main critique was his aggressive stance against postmodernism, which he believed undermined liberal democracy.

His later works include The Origins of Political Order (2011), describing what makes a state stable through comparative political history, and Political Order and Political Decay (2014), covering events since the French Revolution and arguing that the United States is experiencing political decay. In Our Posthuman Future, he qualified his original thesis, arguing that biotechnology could alter human nature and put liberal democracy at risk. He is a fierce enemy of transhumanism. Other works explore social norms, neoconservatism, and development gaps between Latin America and the United States. Fukuyama serves as a council member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies and is one of 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Did You Know?

• Fukuyama's Japanese name is Yoshihiro.
• He studied under Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida in Paris before switching to political science.
• His paternal grandfather was incarcerated during World War II.
• He is a fierce enemy of transhumanism.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American philosopher, political economist, and author best known for his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man." — Francis Fukuyama "Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up." — Francis Fukuyama "The more progress that has been made toward eradicating social injustices, the more intolerable the remaining injustices seem, and thus the moral imperative to mobilizing to correct them." — Francis Fukuyama "In situations of de facto diversity, attempts to impose a single way of life on an entire population is a formula for dictatorship." — Francis Fukuyama