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Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27 , 1952 , Chicago, Illinois ) is an Asian-American philosopher, Political Economist and author. EARLY LIFE Francis Fukuyama was born October 27, 1952, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago . His father, Yoshio Fukuyama, a second-generation Japanese American, was trained as a minister in the Congregational Church and received a doctorate in sociology from the University Of Chicago . His mother, Toshiko Kawata Fukuyama, was born in Kyoto, Japan , and was the daughter of Shiro Kawata, founder of the Economics Department of Kyoto University and first president of Osaka Municipal University in Osaka, Japan . Fukuyama's childhood years were spent in New York City . In 1967 his family moved to State College, Pennsylvania , where he attended high school. EDUCATION Francis Fukuyama is currently the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at the Paul H. Nitze School Of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University . He received his B.A. in classics from Cornell University , where he studied political philosophy under Allan Bloom . He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He has been affiliated with the Telluride Association since his undergraduate years at Cornell, an educational enterprise that was home to other significant leaders and intellectuals, including the Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg and the defense and foreign affairs official, Paul Wolfowitz . WRITINGS Fukuyama is best known as the author of '' The End Of History And The Last Man '', in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on Liberal Democracy after the end of the Cold War and when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Fukuyama predicts the eventual triumph of political and economic liberalism. He has written a number of other books, among them ''Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity'' and ''''. In the latter, he qualified his original "end of history" thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own Evolution , it may allow humans to alter "human nature", thereby putting Liberal Democracy at risk. One possible outcome could be that an altered human nature could end in radical inequality. The current revolution in biological sciences leads him to theorize in an environment in which as he says history is not at an end because science and technology are not at an end. Also among them is ''The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order''. In this book, he explores where social norms come from and talks about how the current disruption, due to the shift from the manufacturing age to the information age, is normal and will correct itself due to the need for humans to have social norms and rules. Relationship to Neoconservatism Politically, Fukuyama has in the past been considered Neoconservative . He was active in the Project For The New American Century think tank starting in 1997, and signed the organization's letter recommending that President Bill Clinton overthrow the then-President of Iraq , Saddam Hussein 1. He also signed a second, similar letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 Attacks that called for removing Saddam Hussein from power "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack."2. |
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