John Bryan Starr is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Yale University. He serves as a consultant to the Tri-State Consortium, an alternative accrediting organization with member districts in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. He also serves as consultant to the Superintendents Network at the Connecticut Center for School Change in Hartford. He was educated at Dartmouth College. Following four years' service as a United States Naval officer, he took his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. After teaching Chinese politics at Berkeley for ten years, he moved to Yale in 1978. While continuing to offer course work in Chinese politics at Yale, he served as Executive Director of the Yale-China Association for fifteen years and, subsequently, as President of China Institute in New York City. In the course of his work for these organizations he traveled frequently to Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China.

He has written extensively on contemporary Chinese politics and political thought. His most recent book, Understanding China, was published by Hill & Wang in 1997. He is currently at work on a third edition of the book, which is scheduled for publication in 2009.

Dr. Starr served for nine years as an elected member of the New Canaan, Connecticut Board of Education and for a year as a trustee of the independent St. Lukes School in New Canaan. He joined the faculty at Brown University in 1995 and served for four years as Managing Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. In this capacity he worked with Institute directors Ted Sizer and Warren Simmons, and interim directors Vartan Gregorian and Ramón Cortines. While at Brown he offered two seminars in the Education Department. In 1999, Dr. Starr was appointed Executive Director of the Tri-State Consortium, a post in which he served until his retirement in 2008.

Dr. Starr returned to the Yale University Department of Political Science in the fall of 2006 to offer two new seminars dealing with the interface between public schools, politics, and public policy.