Sophal Ear

Sophal Ear is a Cambodian-American political scientist and expert in political economy, diplomacy, world affairs, and international development. A refugee from Cambodia, he studied at Princeton University and at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published extensively on Cambodian genocide and international aid and gives regular talks on these subjects.

Ear is a critic of the impact of foreign aid on Cambodia, writing that Cambodia today “is a kleptocracy cum thugocracy” and that “the international community, led by the UN, is its enabler.” He has written extensively and been critical of scholars, such as Noam Chomsky, accusing them of minimizing or denying the genocide occurring during the rule of the Khmer Rouge.

Early life and education Ear's father, Ear Muy Cuong, was a pharmacist in Phnom Penh. In 1975, the family was evacuated from Phnom Penh to Pursat Province, where they lived in a labor camp and worked the fields. It was there that Ear's father “died of dysentery and malnutrition after a brief stay at a mite-infested Khmer Rouge 'hospital.'” In 1976, when Ear's mother, Cam Youk Lim, heard that Vietnamese citizens in Cambodia were being allowed to return to Vietnam, she pretended to be Vietnamese and was able to escape Pol Pot's Cambodia with Ear and his four older siblings when Ear was ten years old. They went first to Hong Ngu, Vietnam;

He taught on the hospital ship USNS Mercy in support of the Pacific Partnership 2008. He completed his postdoc at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, where he taught Policy and Administration in Developing Countries.

Career He served as a Consultant for WebXpose, in San Francisco from 1995 to 1996, and was a Country Analyst Intern (India and Thailand) for the Sovereign Risk Research Group at J.P. Morgan in New York in 1997. Next he served as a Consultant for the Human Development Social Protection Team and for Middle East and North Africa Human Development at the World Bank in Washington, DC, from 1997 to 2000. Ear served as Assistant Resident Representative in the Democratic Governance Unit and Capacity Development & Special Initiatives Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in Timor-Leste from 2002 to 2003.

A review in the Huffington Post stated that “Sophal has avoided simplistic conclusions or easy condemnations of Cambodia’s donors” but lamented that “his prescriptions for improving aid...appear unlikely to meet with success in the current political climate.” The review concluded that while “foreign powers have been instrumental in creating what little political space currently exists for democracy” in Cambodia, “as Sophal has convincingly shown, genuine progress in the next 20 years will depend less on visiting American presidents than on Cambodians themselves.” A review in the Asia Times stated that “Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid is taken for granted by many observers but few have set out to examine it systematically and in detail,” and that Ear's book sheds major light on the subject. He reportedly depicts that foreign aid to Cambodia has distorted the nation's economy and claims donors bear much of the responsibility for the country's high level of corruption.

Criticism of aid dependence Ear has argued that aid dependency has had a deleterious impact on Cambodian development. Despite large GDP growth rates, Cambodia has continued to experience high levels of infant mortality and corruption, and a widening gap in wealth inequality. He has stated “Cambodia needs foreign exchange. It can’t just live by the credo of Aid or Die.” Nor can it “rely only on garments; it has to diversify. From garments, what about car seats? There is little hope if we cannot produce more and more value-added exports. Cambodia needs these things to grow. Tourism alone cannot carry the economy. We cannot all be busboys and concierges.” Donor countries, he has maintained, are aware of the situation but choose to ignore it.

Comments on Noam Chomsky While still an undergraduate, Ear began writing extensively about scholars in the Western world who had minimized or denied the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge during their rule (1975–1979) in Cambodia. Ear called the apologists and pro-Khmer Rouge academics the "Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia" (STAV). The STAV, which he said included among its adherents almost all Cambodian scholars in the Western world, "hoped for, more than anything, a socialist success story with all the romantic ingredients of peasants, fighting imperialism, and revolution."

In particular, Ear criticized Noam Chomsky's support for the Khmer Rouge. "While my family worked and died in rice fields," Ear said, "Chomsky sharpened his theories and amended his arguments while seated in his armchair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I believe that he would probably have me blame the Americans and their bombs for causing everything around the Khmer Rouge to go wrong." Ear has said that "perhaps someday Chomsky will acknowledge his 'honest errors' in his memoirs, speaking of the burdens of academia and the tragic irony of history. His victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will be joined by his North Korean and Bosnian victims…For decades, Chomsky has vilified his critics as only a world class linguist can. However, for me and the surviving members of my family, questions about life under the Khmer Rouge are not intellectual parlour games."

In a 2023 piece on Henry Kissinger, Ear argued one of Chomsky's main points: the American bombing of Cambodia created the conditions in which the Khmer Rouge were able to come to power.

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Honors and awards Ear has received several honors and awards including: 40 Under 40: Professors Who Inspire (2015) Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Academic Fellowship (2013) Khmerican's Must Watch Top 12 (2012) Gold World Medal in History and Society for “The End/Beginning: Cambodia” as Writer/Narrator, New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards (2012) Council on Foreign Relations Term-Member (2011-2016) Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum (2011-2016) Fulbright Senior Specialist Awarded for the Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, December 2010. AGD Prize Winner (RMB1,000) at the 4th Ditan International Conference on Infectious Diseases in Beijing, China, 15–18 July 2010. Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Roster admission (2009-2014) Top 10 papers in the Health & Economic Development category of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN.ORG), March 2010

Personal life On July 7, 2006, Ear married Chamnan Lim, a daughter of Lone Srey, and the late Lim Ho, in a non-denominational ceremony officiated by an American Baptist minister. The next day they married in a traditional Cambodian wedding ceremony.