Claes G. Ryn

In 2012 Beijing Normal University named Ryn Honorary Professor.

He is a former professor of politics at Catholic University of America (CUA), where he was also chairman of his department for six years. He taught also at the University of Virginia and Georgetown University. He was co-founder and chairperson of the National Humanities Institute and editor of its academic journal Humanitas. He was co-founder and the first president of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. He is a past president of the Philadelphia Society (2001 to 2002). He is the founder and former director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at CUA.

In 2000 he gave the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Beijing University, which also published this lecture series in Chinese translation as a book, Unity Through Diversity (2001). He has lectured and published widely in China. In 2007 he gave a keynote address at the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing. The Chinese edition (2007) of his book America the Virtuous became one of the most hotly discussed in China. Dushu, “probably China’s leading intellectual journal of the past decade”, described it as "the kind of classical work that will be read over the generations." Three of his books and many of his articles have appeared in Chinese translation in China.

Ryn was born and raised in Norrköping in Sweden. He attended the Latin Gymnasium, Norrköpings Högre Allmänna Läroverk' (1959–63). He did military service in the Royal Life Company at the I 4 Regiment in Linkoping and the Signal Corps at the S 1 Regiment in Uppsala. He was an undergraduate and a doctoral student at Uppsala University. He did further doctoral study at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States, (Ph.D. 1974).

\Claes Gösta Ryn (born 12 June 1943) is an American academic and educator.