Prof. Valerie Hudson George H.W. Bush Chair and Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University

Talk Title: "The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide."
Monday, February 15

Dr. Valerie Hudson is University Distinguished Professor and the holder of the George H.W. Bush Chair in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

An expert on international security and foreign policy analysis as well as gender and security, she received her PhD in political science at The Ohio State University. She also was a member of the faculty at Brigham Young University. At Texas A&M, she directs the Bush School's Program on Women, Peace, and Security.

In 2009, Foreign Policy named her one of the top 100 Most Influential Global Thinkers. Her co-authored book, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, and the research it presents, received major attention from the media with coverage in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, BBC, CNN, and numerous other outlets. The book received two national book awards. Another co-authored book, Sex and World Peace, published by Columbia University Press, was named by Gloria Steinem as one of the top three books on her reading list. A recent book, with Patricia Leidl, is The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy, published in June 2015. Her newest co-authored book is The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide (Columbia University Press, 2020). She was recently named a Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis by the International Studies Association.

Dr. Hudson has developed a nation-by-nation database on women, the WomanStats Database, that has triggered both academic and policy interest (the latter includes its use by both the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and various agencies of the United Nations). Using this data, Hudson and her co-principal investigators from the WomanStats Project have published a wide variety of empirical work linking the security of women to the security of states, with research appearing in International Security, American Political Science Review, Journal of Peace Research, Political Psychology, and Politics and Gender.

Dr. Hudson offers courses on women and nations (the foundations course for the Women, Peace, and Security concentration), foreign policy analysis, and a capstone on Women, Peace, and Security. Throughout her career, Dr. Hudson has demonstrated a strong commitment to collaboration with other scholars both in her own field and in other disciplines and has received significant research grants, including grants from the US Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative and the National Science Foundation, to support her work in international affairs.

Her research and teaching experience is complemented by three major teaching awards and numerous research awards, and she has recently been awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. She was also a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Australian National University in early 2017.

Hudson served as vice president of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012. She is a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and also serves or has served on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review, Politics and Gender, the American Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Review.