Jason Stearns
| Jason K. Stearns | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 31, 1976 (age 40) San Francisco, California |
| Nationality | USA |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Notable works | Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa |
| Spouse | Lusungu Kayani |
Jason Kauahooululaunaheleonakuahiwi Stearns (born October 31, 1976) is an American writer who worked for ten years in the Congo, including three years during the Second Congo War. He first traveled to the Congo in 2001 to work for a local human rights organization, Héritiers de la Justice, in Bukavu. He went on to work for the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUC). In 2008 Stearns was named by the UN Secretary General to lead a special UN investigation into the violence in the country.
Stearns is the author of the book, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, and the blog, Congo Siasa. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University on May 24, 2016.
Jason Stearns was born in San Francisco in 1976 to Stephen C. Stearns, an evolutionary biologist, and Beverly Peterson Stearns, a journalist. He has an older brother, Justin, who is professor of Middle Eastern history at New York University.
At the age of six, the family moved to Switzerland, where Stephen Stearns taught biology at the University of Basel. Stearns attended Swiss public school in Arlesheim and Muenchenstein, on the outskirts of Basel, and spent a year in Laja, Chile, on an exchange program. Upon graduation from Gymnasium Muenchenstein, he volunteered at the Swiss Tropical Institute's field research station in Ifakara, Tanzania.
In 1997, Jason joined his older brother in the United States, attending first Hampshire College and then neighboring Amherst College in Massachusetts. He graduated with a degree in political science. Having been accepted to law school at Harvard Law School, he traveled to Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to volunteer with Héritiers de la Justice, a local human rights group in September 2001. Deferring law school, he went on to work for the International Human Rights Law Group and the United Nations peacekeeping operation MONUC for the following two years. He eventually decided not to attend law school, enrolling in a PhD program in political science at Yale University in 2009.
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