I am a writer and political scientist interested in the intersection of politics, society, and ideas. I am currently a Senior Editor at Foreign Affairs magazine, based in New York City. I am also an Affiliated Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China and a Carnegie China Fellow. I have regional expertise in China, Taiwan, and the United States, and have lived for extended periods of time in all of those places over the last decade. I received my Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and have a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University.

In addition to my academic work, I write comedy and used to do stand-up and sketch comedy.

If you are confused as to why there are no pictures of large burly men or football statistics, you are probably looking for Josh Freeman, the former starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That is not me. You may also be wondering about emotional intelligence, but, unfortunately, that would be the purview of a different Joshua Freedman. (He is bald; I am not. For now, at least.) If you meant to email Josh Freeman, who also completed his PhD at Harvard and also researches China and worked at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, I’ll forward it along, don’t worry. He is very nice and we have a lot in common. If you aren’t sure whether you’re trying to contact me or Joshua B. Freeman, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at CUNY, it is effective—albeit somewhat awkward—if you just put us both on the same email thread and hope the correct one of us responds. And for those of you congratulating me for a recent publication in International Organization, I’m afraid that you should direct your kind words to Joshua M. Freedman, assistant professor of international relations at Oberlin College, who, again, is not me.

On this site, you will find links to some of my work. I have written articles about politics, social policy, and contemporary culture for a variety of print and online publications. I also worked in policy research and wrote policy papers and reports. Please go to “WRITING” to read all of those. I contribute humor pieces to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New Yorker‘s Daily Shouts, and other online publications. Please go to “COMEDY” to read those. When I write something more personal or niche, I sometimes publish it directly. Please go to “OTHER” to see some selections of my miscellaneous scribblings. There will eventually be some part of this website dedicated to my additional writings and research about tea, the world’s greatest and most sociologically interesting beverage, but it is still brewing.