Jagdish Bhagwati is a university professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was an economic policy adviser to Arthur Dunkel, director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1991 to 1993, and has been a special adviser to the United Nations on globalization and an external advisor to the World Trade Organization. He has also served on the expert group appointed by the director general of the WTO on the “Future of the WTO,” the advisory committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Five volumes of Bhagwati's scientific writings and two of his public policy essays have been published by MIT Press. The recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Rising Sun). Professor Bhagwati’s book In Defense of Globalization was published by Oxford University Press in 2004 to worldwide acclaim. His most recent book Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade (Oxford University Press, 2008) discusses the deleterious effects of preferential trading agreements.