Dr. Valerie Hudson - Distinguished Professor, Award-Winning Author, Texas A&M

Valerie M. Hudson is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the George H.W. Bush Chair in the Department of International Affairs at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security.

She has previously taught at Brigham Young, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. Her research foci include foreign policy analysis, security studies, gender and international relations, and methodology. Hudson’s articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, the American Political Science Review, Population and Development Review, the Journal of Peace Research, Political Psychology, and Foreign Policy Analysis, as well as policy journals such as Foreign Policy and Politico.

She is the author or editor of several books, including (with Andrea Den Boer) Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (MIT Press, 2004), which won the American Association of Publishers Award for the Best Book in Political Science, and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Best Book in Social Demography, resulting in feature stories in the New York Times, The Economist, 60 Minutes, and other news publications. Hudson was named to the list of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009, and in 2015 was recognized as Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA/ISA) and awarded an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship as well as an inaugural Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Australian National University (2017). Winner of numerous teaching awards and recipient of a National Science Foundation research grant and a Minerva Initiative grant from the US Department of Defense, she served as the Director of Graduate Studies for the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies for eight years, and served as Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012.

Hudson is one of the Principal Investigators of The WomanStats Project, which includes the largest compilation of data on the status of women in the world today. She is also a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and a current or former editorial board member of the American Journal of Political Science, Politics and Gender, the American Political Science Review, and the International Studies Review, has testified three times before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, assisted the National Intelligence Council in preparing its 2017 Global Trends: Paradox of Progress report, and served as a member of the Expert Group on the Data 2X Initiative. Her book Sex and World Peace, co-authored with Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad Emmett, and published by Columbia University Press, was listed by Gloria Steinem in 2014 as one of the top three books on her “Reading Our Way to the Revolution” list. Hudson’s book with Patricia Leidl, also from Columbia University Press, entitled The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy (2015), won the 2016 Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers in the Government and Politics category. Her latest coauthored book project, with Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen, is The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide, published in 2020 with Columbia University Press.

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Q. Best advice for women who want to go out in life and crush it!

A. Life is short and then you die, so walk, talk, and act like the equal you are.

Q. What do you do to celebrate women?

A. I teach the rising generation of women about why everyone should celebrate women. I see in their eyes a brighter future, not only for women, but also for men.

Q. What do you want to see more of?

A. Physical security for women. We cannot unleash women's full potential until they feel safe.

Q. Recommended reading:

A. Parity of the Sexes, by Sylviane Agacinski

I underlined nearly every sentence of this book; it taught me that the face of humanity is dual, and what that really means, and what must be done in light of that truth.

Q. The theme for this year's women's history month is Valiant Women of the Vote. What women's rights are you most passionate about?

A. I feel strongly that there are 3 wounds that women have suffered in the house built by men: physical insecurity, family and personal status laws biased in favor of men, and lack of voice in the councils of human decision making. We lay out a call to action in our books Sex and World Peace, and also The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide.

Q. Shout out to another woman who has made a difference in your life and how she/they did that.

A. My grandmother Roberta Florence Ward changed my entire life by loving me without abandoning me. Because of her, I was able to transfer that gift to my children.

Connect with Dr. Valerie Hudson online:

Monica Phillips