Wilson Center Experts

Andrew Selee is director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, which promotes dialogue and understanding between the United States and Mexico. Part of the Center’s Latin American Program, the Mexico Institute is guided by a Advisory Board of preeminent scholars, business leaders, and public figures from both countries. The Institute promotes policy studies, public forums, congressional briefings, media outreach, and a visiting scholars program.

Dr. Selee is currently an adjunct professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University in the Advanced Academic Programs. He has previously been an adjunct professor of Political Science at George Washington University and a visiting professor at El Colegio de Mexico.

His most recent publications are Mexico’s Democratic Challenges (co-editor, Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2010); Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime (co-editor, Wilson Center, 2010); The United States and Mexico: More than Neighbors (co-author, Wilson Center, 2010); Context Matters: Latino Immigrant Civic and Political Participation in Nine Cities (co-author, Wilson Center, 2010); and Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America (co-editor, Wilson Center Press/John Hopkins University Press, 2009).

Dr. Selee is interviewed frequently in the press, including PBS, CBS, NBC, Fox, NPR, BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and The Economist. His public opinion articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Americas Quarterly, Reforma, El Universal, La Jornada, Nuevo Excelsior, Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica, and America Magazine.

He serves on the board of the Mexico-U.S. Fulbright Program (Comexus) and on the editorial board of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef), as well as on the editorial board of the journal Latin American Policy. He is also a contributing editor to the Library of Congress’s Handbook of Latin American Studies.

Dr. Selee is an associate of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (Comexi) and a member of the Mexican Collective for Security and Democracy (Casede). He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relation’s Independent Task Force on Immigration, chaired by Jeb Bush and Thomas F. MacLarty; a steering committee member of the Migration Policy Institute’s Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future, chaired by Lee Hamilton and Spencer Abraham; and a board member of ImmigrationWorks.

A long time volunteer of the YMCA, he has served on the YMCA of the USA’s national board and he is currently a member of the national board’s International Committee. He was also a member of the World Alliance of YMCAs’ executive committee, based in Geneva.

Dr. Selee received his Prior to joining the Wilson Center as a program associate in 2000, he was a professional staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives and worked for five years with the YMCA of Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico, helping to start a community center and a home for migrant youth.
 

Education

Ph.D. in Policy Studies from the University of Maryland; M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California, San Diego; B.A. in Latin American Studies (Phi Beta Kappa) from Washington University in St. Louis.
 

Experience

Director, Mexico Institute, Wilson Center (2003-present); Program Associate, Latin American Program, Wilson Center (2000-2003); Adjunct Professor, Johns Hopkins University (2006-present); Professional Staff, U.S. House of Representatives (1999-2000); COO and Community Coordinator, YMCA of Baja California (Tijuana, 1992-97).
 

Expertise

U.S.-Mexico Relations, Mexican Politics, Organized Crime, and Immigration