Bruce Gilley (born July 21, 1966) is a Canadian–American professor of political science and director of the PhD program in Public Affairs and Policy at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. He is the founder and president of the Oregon Association of Scholars,^[2][3] member of the Heterodox Academy and founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom.^[4] Gilley gained international acclaim but also a storm of criticism for his highly controversial peer-reviewed article "The Case for Colonialism," published in an advance online edition of the scientific journal Third World Quarterly in 2017. Fifteen members of the journal's board resigned over Gilley's article.

Gilley, a Canadian born American of Scottish descent^[1] received his Bachelor of Arts in economics and international relations from the University of Toronto in 1988. As a Commonwealth Scholar he did his Master of Economics at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 1991, and went to China to spend a year teaching English.^[1] From 1992 to 2002, he worked as a journalist in Hong Kong writing for the Eastern Express newspaper and then the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine where his biggest scoop was exposing an illicit technology transfer by a Stanford professor to China's military. Gilley was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Princeton University from 2004 to 2006 from where he received his PhD in politics in 2007.^[4][5] He became an associate professor in 2008 at the Department of Political Science of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. He was granted academic tenure in 2011 and promoted to full professor in 2016.^[6] Gilley's research centers on comparative and international politics and public policy. His work covers issues as diverse as democracy, climate change, political legitimacy, and international conflict. He is a specialist on the politics of China and Asia.^[3] His 2006 article "The meaning and measure of state legitimacy: results for 72 countries" introduced a novel multidimensional, quantitative measure of the qualitative concept of political legitimacy.^[7][8][9] His work has since been extended by other scholars, and customized to specific geographical regions such as Latin America^[8] and Europe.^[9] Gilley himself has since updated his work on quantification of legitimacy with additional empirical data.^[9][10]

Gilley's article "The Case for Colonialism" was published in an advance online version of the Third World Quarterly in 2017.^[11] According to Gilley, colonialism was both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate. Consequently, the author calls for a revival of colonialism.^[12] The article was controversial both for its argument and for its subsequent withdrawal, and resulted in a debate about academic standards and peer review. Fifteen members of the journal's board resigned over the issue.^{[13][14][15][11][16]} Critics described the article as low-quality and said that it was published, over the objections of reviewers, as a form of academic clickbait, while board member Noam Chomsky defended the publication of the article, saying that it is "pretty clear that proper procedures were not followed in publishing the article, but I think retraction is a mistake – and also opens very dangerous doors ... Rebuttal offers a great opportunity for education, not only in this case."^{[citation needed][11][17]} The article was ultimately withdrawn with Gilley's assent after the editor had received threats of violence and it was re-published in the National Association of Scholars' journal Academic Questions in April 2018.^[18][17] When asked if it would be ethical to publish a paper making a case for genocide, Gilley said, "I think everyone would agree, [genocide] is a moral wrong" but that he did not believe colonialism was a moral wrong.^[19][20] In the spring of 2022, Gilley responded to many of his critics in a second article entitled "The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics".^[21] In 2023, he followed this with a full length book of the same name.

Gilley's biography of Sir Alan Burns, entitled The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns's Epic Defense of the British Empire, was withdrawn from publishing by Rowman & Littlefield after J. Moufawad-Paul started a petition, which gained more than 1000 signatories, saying the author espoused a "pro-colonial" and "white nationalist" perspective.^[22] Gilley defended the book by saying it had passed a peer-review procedure and was endorsed by historians Tirthankar Roy and Jeremy Black; Roy confirmed that it had been peer-reviewed and that he had endorsed it and stated that "[t]hat it could be an apology for empires ... never crossed my mind, I do not think this book is one".^[22] The book was published by conservative publishing house Regnery Gateway in September 2021.^[23]

Gilley's views about colonialism were strongly influenced by his years as a journalist when he worked in Hong Kong. During his stay the British transferred their crown colony Hong Kong to China on the first of July 1997. The tremendous fear among the population of Hong Kong prior to the transfer of power to China in 1997 made a big impression on him.^[1]

Gilley describes himself as a "classical liberal" and "an independent voter".^[1] In 2017, Gilley withdrew from the American Political Science Association, stating that he considered it to lack intellectual diversity and to possess an anti-conservative bias.^[24] As a member of the Heterodox Academy, he has been critical of tenure evaluations which require a pledge to uphold collegiate diversity.^[25] Gilley has been critical of educational initiatives designed to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion.^[26][27]

Gilley is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Democracy and the Journal of Contemporary China.^[25] furthermore Gilley is the chapter president of the Oregon Association of Scholars, the state chapter of the National Association of Scholars, member of the Heterodox Academy and founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom.^[4] He is the recipient of the following awards and nominations for scholarly achievement and articles:^[A]

• Commonwealth Scholarship, University of Oxford (1989–1991)
• East Asian Studies Prize, Princeton University (2002)
• Woodrow Wilson Scholars Fellowship, Princeton University (2004–2006)
• Marcel Cadieux Award, Best Article on Foreign Policy, Canadian Institute of International Affairs
• Nominated for Gabriel A. Almond Best Dissertation Award, American Political Science Association (2006, 2012)
• Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics, Department of Politics, Princeton University (2007)
• Frank Cass Prize, Best Article in Democratization (2010)
• Dean's Award for Scholarly Achievement – Senior Faculty, College of Urban and Public Affairs (2016)

• Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite. University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 0520213955^[28]
• Model Rebels: The Rise and Fall of China's Richest Village. University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0520225329^[29]
• China's New Rulers: The Secret Files. New York Review of Books, New York, 2003. (With Andrew Nathan) ISBN 978-1590170465^[30]
• China's Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead. Columbia University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0231130844^[31]
• The Right to Rule: How States Win and Lose Legitimacy. Columbia University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0231138727^[32]
• The Nature of Asian Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0521761710^[33]
• The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns's Epic Defense of the British Empire. Regnery Gateway, 2021. ISBN 978-1684512171^[34]
• In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West. Regnery Gateway, 2022. ISBN 978-1684512379^[35]
• The Case for Colonialism. New English Review Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1943003907

• Middle Powers and the Rise of China. Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, 2014. (With Andrew O'Neil)
• Political Change in China: Comparisons With Taiwan. Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 2008. (With Larry Diamond)
• Asia's Giants: Comparing China and India. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005. (With Edward Friedman)

• "Against the Concept of Ethnic Conflict", Third World Quarterly. 25 (6): 1155–1166. doi:10.1080/0143659042000256959. Archived from the original on January 20, 2018.
• "The Case for Colonialism", Third World Quarterly, 2017. (Republished in Academic Questions, June 2018, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 167–185. )
• The Case For Colonialism In The Middle East, A Hoover Institution essay from the caravan notebook, August 2020.
• "The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics", Academic Questions, Spring 2022.
• "King Hochschild’s Hoax", The American Conservative, April 17, 2023.
• The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind., The American Conservative, May 29, 2023.

• Contributions of Western Colonialism to Human Flourishing: A Research Bibliography. Version 4.0, January 2023.

• Nigel Biggar
• Colonialism

Wikiquote has quotations related to Bruce Gilley.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bruce Gilley.

• Bruce Gilley and Douglas Murray discuss one of the biggest criticisms of the West – colonialism, Uncancelled History, 2022.
• "Essays on "The case for colonialism"". Portland State University. Archived from the original on January 10, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
• Video of lecture "The Case for Colonialism" at Texas Tech University, 2018. (text Archived December 7, 2022, at the Wayback Machine)
• Bruce Gilley publications indexed by Google Scholar
• List of research papers at ResearchGate
• List of his books at Goodreads