Dr. Jonathan Fanton is a Franklin D. Roosevelt visiting fellow at Hunter College and holds a Ph.D in American History from Yale University where he taught and was chief of staff to President Kingman Brewster. Dr. Fanton was president of the MacArthur Foundation from 1999–2009, where during his tenure he worked closely with civil society organizations and other partners around the globe in advancing major support for the International Criminal Court/Rome Statute system and for the cause of international justice.
Prior to the MacArthur Foundation, Dr. Fanton was vice president of planning at the University of Chicago and for 17 years was president of The New School for Social Research. Dr. Fanton was chair of Human Rights Watch, Security Council Report, the Union Square Development Corporation, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in New York, and was also an advisory trustee at the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. He is currently chair of the Africa Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch, chair of Scholars At Risk, and sits on the boards of Research Alliance, Common Cause, and the Asian Cultural Council.
Dr. Fanton is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and is the author of Foundations and Civil Society, Volume I and II (2008), and The University and Civil Society, Volume I and II (1995, 2002).
