Victor C. Wu

Victor C. Wu is a PhD student in political science at Yale University. Substantively, his main research interests are in democratic theory, organizational theory, and philosophy of social science, with strong secondary interests in comparative politics and Chinese political thought. Methodologically, his main interest is in “political theory as political science,” drawing on normative and analytical theory to inform empirical inquiry and vice versa. In this spirit, one of his current projects offers a new interpretation of the ancient Chinese classic Han Feizi by drawing on comparative studies of authoritarianism in political science, showing the text's importance as a novel analysis of the principal-agent mechanisms which cause autocrats to inadvertently self-undermine their political survival. Previously, Victor was a Yenching Scholar (2022-2024), an artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps (2018-2022), and a Research Associate at Harvard Business School (2016-2017). He holds an MA in China Studies from Peking University and an A.B. magna cum laude in Social Studies and Philosophy from Harvard College.