[1] These positions include the chair for the department of anthropology, the director for the program of Chinese studies, provost of Earl Warren College, interim provost of Sixth College, as well as one of the founders of the UCSD department of anthropology with psychological anthropologist Melford Spiro.

[5] His academic interests center in cultural and psychological anthropology, sociolinguistics, and the cross-cultural study of religion.

Even after retirement, Jordan continued to work at the university with his last post as the Interim Provost of Sixth College.

Jordan continues to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses at his home institution in the Departments of Anthropology as well as Eleanor Roosevelt College's "Making of the Modern World" sequence.

Jordan also teaches and founded these courses in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, San Diego.

In the past, he has delivered invited lectures at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China in 2007, and was the keynote speaker at the 2001 Pacific Neighborhood Conference in Hong Kong.