Daniel Little is chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He serves as professor of philosophy at UM-Dearborn and as faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.
Previous positions of academic leadership include service as vice president for academic affairs at Bucknell University (1996-2000) and as associate dean of the faculty at Colgate University (1993-96). He served as professor of philosophy at Colgate and Bucknell, with teaching experience as well at Wellesley College and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
He received his A.B. in philosophy and B.S. in mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1971 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1977. His research interests fall within the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences.
His books include The Scientific Marx (University of Minnesota Press, 1986), Understanding Peasant China (Yale University Press, 1989), Varieties of Social Explanation (Westview Press, 1991), On the Reliability of Economic Models (edited) (Kluwer, 1995), and Microfoundations, Method, and Causation (Transactions Publishers, 1998). His most recent book is The Paradox of Wealth and Poverty (Westview Press, 2003), a discussion of the ethical issues raised by economic development in the third world.
During 1989-91 he held a Social Science Research Council/MacArthur Foundation fellowship in international peace and security, which he spent as Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
Chancellor Little serves on the boards of New Detroit, the Detroit Urban League, The Future of Minority Studies Research Project Advisory Board, and the Council of Asian and Pacific Americans, and is the chair of the Macrohistorical Dynamics network of the Social Science History Association.
