James Sterling Young (October 14, 1927 – August 8, 2013) was an American political scientist, winner of the Bancroft Prize, Professor of Government and Randolph P. Compton Scholar at the University of Virginia.
[3] From 1971 to 1977, Young served as Columbia's third ranking academic officer, holding the posts of Deputy Provost and Vice President.
[3] In 1978, he left his post at Columbia to join the University of Virginia as a professor in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and as director of the Program on the Presidency at the Miller Center.
Young founded the nation's only oral history program focused on United States presidents at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, directing oral histories of the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
In 1987 he was invited by the Republic of Brazil to be a consultant and the United States participant in an international conference in Brasília on the drafting of a new 2 national constitution.
In 1993 he served as U. S. Speaker in Asia for the United States Information Agency, giving talks on the founding and governance of the United States to public and university audiences in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Changchun, Guangzhou, and Bangkok.