Bruce Gilley

Bruce Gilley (born July 21, 1966) is a Canadian–American professor of political science and director of the PhD program in Public Affairs and Policy at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.

He is the founder and president of the Oregon Association of Scholars, member of the Heterodox Academy and founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom.

Prof. Dr. Bruce Gilley a Canadian born American of Scottish descent received his Bachelor of Arts in economics and international relations from the University of Toronto in 1988.

As a Commonwealth Scholar he did his Master of Economics at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 1991, and went to China to spend a year teaching English.

From 1992 to 2002, he worked as a journalist in Hong Kong writing for the Eastern Express newspaper and then the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine where his biggest scoop was exposing an illicit technology transfer by a Stanford professor to China's military.

During his stay the British transferred their crown colony Hong Kong to China on the first of July 1997.

The tremendous fear among the population of Hong Kong prior to the transfer of power to China in 1997 made a big impression on him.

Gilley describes himself as a "classical liberal" and "an independent voter".

Gilley was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Princeton University from 2004 to 2006 from where he received his PhD in politics in 2007.

His 2006 article "The meaning and measure of state legitimacy: results for 72 countries" introduced a novel multidimensional, quantitative measure of the qualitative concept of political legitimacy.

His work has since been extended by other scholars, and customized to specific geographical regions such as Latin America and Europe.

Gilley himself has since updated his work on quantification of legitimacy with additional empirical data.

He became an associate professor in 2008 at the Department of Political Science of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.

He was granted academic tenure in 2011 and promoted to full professor in 2016.

Gilley's research centers on comparative and international politics and public policy.

His work covers issues as diverse as democracy, climate change, political legitimacy, and international conflict.

He is a specialist on the politics of China and Asia.

Gilley gained international acclaim but also a storm of criticism for his highly controversial peer-reviewed article "The Case for Colonialism," published in an advance online edition of the scientific journal Third World Quarterly in 2017.

Fifteen members of the journal's board resigned over Gilley's article.

Gilley's article "The case for colonialism" was published in an advance online version of the Third World Quarterly in 2017.

According to Gilley, colonialism was both objectively beneficial (the benefits outweighed the harms) and subjectively legitimate (it was accepted by large portions of the local population).

Consequently, the author calls for a revival of colonialism.

The article was controversial both for its argument and for its subsequent withdrawal, and resulted in a debate about academic standards and peer review.

Fifteen members of the journal's board resigned over the issue.

In 2017, Gilley withdrew from the American Political Science Association, stating that he considered it to lack intellectual diversity and to possess an anti-conservative bias.

As a member of the Heterodox Academy, he has been critical of tenure evaluations which require a pledge to uphold collegiate diversity.

Gilley has been critical of educational initiatives designed to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Gilley is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Democracy and the Journal of Contemporary China.

furthermore Gilley is the chapter president of the Oregon Association of Scholars, the state chapter of the National Association of Scholars, member of the Heterodox Academy and founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom.

He is the recipient of the following awards and nominations for scholarly achievement and articles:

Critics described the article as low-quality and said that it was published, over the objections of reviewers, as a form of academic clickbait, while board member Noam Chomsky defended the publication of the article, saying that it's “pretty clear that proper procedures were not followed in publishing the article, but I think retraction is a mistake – and also opens very dangerous doors...Rebuttal offers a great opportunity for education, not only in this case.” The article was ultimately withdrawn with Gilley's assent after the editor had received threats of violence and it was re-published in the National Association of Scholars' journal Academic Questions in April 2018.

When asked if it would be ethical to publish a paper making a case for genocide, Gilley said, "I think everyone would agree, [genocide] is a moral wrong" but that he did not believe colonialism was a moral wrong.

In the spring of 2022, Gilley responded to many of his critics in a second article entitled 'The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics'.

Gilley's biography of Sir Alan Burns, entitled The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns's Epic Defense of the British Empire, was withdrawn from publishing by Rowman & Littlefield after J. Moufawad-Paul started a petition, which gained more than 1000 signatories, saying the author espoused a "pro-colonial" and "white nationalist" perspective.

Gilley defended the book by saying it had passed a peer-review procedure and was endorsed by historians Tirthankar Roy and Jeremy Black; Roy confirmed that it had been peer-reviewed and that he had endorsed it and stated that "[t]hat it could be an apology for empires ... never crossed my mind, I do not think this book is one".

The book was published by conservative publishing house Regnery Gateway in September 2021.

Gilley's views about colonialism were strongly influenced by his years as a journalist when he worked in Hong Kong.