J. Stapleton Roy

In July 2022, Roy helped found a group of U.S. business and policy leaders who share the goal of constructively engaging with China in order to improve U.S.-China relations.

In remarks at Pomona College in September 2020, he "claimed that the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the Hong Kong protests of 2019 “went too far,” while also denying that China [was] engaged in a genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province."

Every spring since 2014, The J Stapleton Roy Award is awarded to two upperclassmen who embody a passion for social sciences, exhibited in and outside the classroom, throughout their SASPX career. Recent award winners include Victor Vogelsang and Shelly Huang(2018), Donna Qi and Matthew Song(2019) and Harmony Wang and Teresa Shao (2022).

In August 2008, Roy was named director of the Kissinger Institute for Chinese-U.S. Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He sits on the advisory board for Washington, D.C.-based non-profit America Abroad Media.

Roy rose to become a three-time ambassador, serving as the top U.S. envoy in Singapore (1984–86), the People's Republic of China (1991–95), and Indonesia (1996–99). In 1996, he was promoted to the rank of career ambassador, the highest rank in the United States Foreign Service.

Roy was born in Nanking, China, where his father, Andrew Tod Roy, was a Presbyterian missionary and teacher who stayed on in China until he was denounced by the new government and expelled in 1951. His brother was David Tod Roy, a noted scholar and translator of Chinese literature. While in Shanghai, he attended Shanghai American School (SAS), but left China and SAS when the school was closed in 1949 following the Communist takeover of Shanghai. He attended Mount Hermon School (now Northfield Mount Hermon) and Princeton University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in history in 1956 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Revisionists and the Coming of the War to America."

James Stapleton Roy (Chinese: 芮效俭; pinyin: Ruì Xiàojiǎn; born June 16, 1935) is a former senior United States diplomat specializing in Asian affairs. A fluent Chinese speaker, Roy spent much of his career in East Asia, where his assignments included Bangkok (twice), Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing (twice), Singapore, and Jakarta. He also specialized in Soviet affairs and served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Ambassador Roy served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2000.