James Witte

Retired Founding Director of the Institute for Immigration Research and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at George Mason University

James is the recently retired founding director of the Institute for Immigration Research and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at George Mason University. He previously held faculty positions at Clemson University and Northwestern University, and earlier served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Carolina Population Center and a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. James has published widely in leading academic journals and is the author of three books, including The Normal Bar, a New York Times bestseller.

He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Major projects have included founding the Institute for Immigration Research, the NSF-funded AI and Peer Review project, and international partnerships focused on immigration research with an emphasis on South Asia.