Dr. Richard Leitch earned his BA in East Asian Studies from Colby College in 1985, and went on to earn an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign after a two year career on Wall Street. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Illinois in 1995, where he was the recipient of the Harriet and Charles Luckman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching, and the College of Liberal Arts Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Graduate Assistant. He has been a member of the Political Science Department at Gustavus since 1996, where he teaches courses in International Relations, Comparative Politics, Asian Politics, and Environmental Politics. In 2000 he received the Swenson-Bunn Award for Teaching Excellence at Gustavus. His research interests include Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy, and he is the co-author of Japan's Role in the Post-Cold War World (published in 1995). He is presently writing a book on Japanese domestic politics
