After relocating as a child to Jerusalem with his family, James studied at Hebrew and Tel Aviv universities before completing a degree in political science at Stanford University. During this time, James worked for the Associated Press in Jerusalem, first as a translator and then as a reporter.

In the early 1990s, James Ron worked as a consultant to Human Rights Watch, writing reports on the activities of Israeli undercover units in the West Bank and Gaza, and on security force interrogations of Palestinians.

In 1999, James completed a Ph.D. in sociology at UC Berkeley, where he studied the links between geography, nationalism, and political violence. His doctoral dissertation compared Israeli and Serbian state violence and was published by the University of California Press.

During his doctoral studies, James consulted for the International Committee of the Red Cross, evaluating their collaboration with other international agencies on efforts to uphold international humanitarian law. James also evaluated the human rights implications of humanitarian aid provided by CARE-USA in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwandan refugees.

James held a predoctoral fellowship at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Watson Institute at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He then worked as a tenure-track, and then tenured, sociologist and political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, McGill University, Carleton University, and the University of Minnesota. His academic research continued to focus on political violence, human rights, and international aid.

In 2005, James and colleagues began using statistical methods to examine the correlates of international NGO and media coverage of human rights problems, including detailed studies of reporting by the Economist, Newsweek, and Amnesty International. The results of their research appeared in a variety of scholarly journals.

In 2011, James and his collaborators began conducting opinion surveys in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, analyzing public opinion toward human rights organizations, policies, and principles. In 2017, their work resulted in a co-authored book published by Oxford University Press. 

In a related project, James Ron worked with colleagues to conduct surveys assessing the willingness of ordinary citizens in Mexico and Colombia to contribute funds to local advocacy organizations. Their research employed innovative survey experiments, including providing citizens with small amounts of cash they could choose to either keep or donate.

Since 2010, James has volunteered as a program evaluator for Life for a Child, an Australian charity providing insulin and other critical medical supplies to thousands of children with Type 1 diabetes in low and middle-income countries. James was motivated to work with the group after learning that his two-year-old son had contracted the auto-immune disease and would be insulin-dependent for life. This work has taken him to India, Mexico, Morocco, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

In 2013, James helped co-found Open Global Rights, an online platform fostering multilingual discussions on human rights strategies, research, funding, and impacts. The platform secured substantial support from prominent foundations, including the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations.

James Ron's long-term association with Human Rights Watch includes investigations in Nigeria, where he documented violations in the country’s oil-wealthy Delta; in Turkey, where he investigated violations during the war against Kurdish rebels; Albania, where he studied Serbia’s actions against Kosovar civilians; and Ingushetia’s border with Chechnya, where he documented the effects of Russia’s bombing campaign.

James now works as a private consultant. Recent clients include the international Red Cross, which included him in a team evaluating their forensic work in Mexico and the Swiss government, which hired him to participate in a team evaluation of aid to civil society groups in the Middle East.

You can learn more about James Ron on his website and LinkedIn profile, and read his scholarly articles on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. To learn more about how others have used his work, please visit his Google Scholar page. James blogs on professional issues here, and on personal themes here.