Mugambi Jouet
An author specialized on American law, politics, and culture, Mugambi Jouet is a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School. His bookExceptional America: What Divides Americans From the World and From Each Other was published by the University of California Press in 2017.
His articles have been featured in academic journals and the media, including Mother Jones, Slate, The New Republic, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Salon, Guernica, The Hill, Truthout, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur magazine, and Le Monde, France’s flagship newspaper. His article on the harshness of the U.S. penal system was cited in The Wall Street Journal. His academic articles are regularly cited in scholarly journals and books. He has been interviewed by the media many times, such as on C-SPAN’s Book TV, National Public Radioshows, France 24 TV news programs, French national public radio, and Radio Canada about his research on American society.
Exceptional America, his new book, takes a comparative look at peculiar dimensions of American politics, law, social issues, economics, and religion. At a time when the Obama presidency and election of Donald Trump have sharply divided the United States, it also explains how and why Americans are far more polarized than other Westerners over their basic values and worldview. In addition to historical, political, legal, and sociological sources, Jouet’s original book draws on his observations as a “global citizen” having lived in different regions of America, from the liberal North to the Southern Bible Belt and West Coast.
After being raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, he attended university in the United States, studying law, public policy, history, and sociology. He holds three degrees, including a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Northwestern University. He then served for three years as a public defender representing indigent persons in Manhattan’s courtrooms. He subsequently practiced international law at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for another three years.
Trilingual in English, French, and Spanish, he has traveled widely internationally and within America.