Francis Fukuyama

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Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952 in Chicago) is an influential American political economist and author. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science, and is currently Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Fukuyama is best known as the author of the controversial book The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argues that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War. He has written a number of other books, among them Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity and Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. In the latter, he qualifies his original "end of history" thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own evolution, it may allow humans to become fundamentally unequal, and thus spell the end of liberal democracy as a workable system.

Fukuyama is sometimes criticised as being a bio-luddite because of his critiques of the political ramifications of transhumanism, though to others Fukuyama is considered a bioconservative because of his cautious support for Genetically modified organism technologies.

Politically, Fukuyama has in the past been considered neoconservative. He was active in the Project for the New American Century think-tank starting in 1997, and signed the organization's letter recommending Bill Clinton overthrow the then President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein [1]; however, he did not approve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq as it was executed, and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense [2]. In an editorial in the New York Times in 2005 which was strongly critical of the invasion [3], he referred to "neoconservatives" in the third person.

In August 2005 Fukuyama, together with a number of other prominant political thinkers, co-founded The American Interest [4], a quarterly magazine devoted to the broad theme of "America in the World".

As of 2004, he serves in the Bush administration as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

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