George McTurnan Kahin

George McTurnan Kahin
Kahin as a visiting professor at Monash University in 1971
Born	(1918-01-25)January 25, 1918 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	January 29, 2000(2000-01-29) (aged 82) Rochester, New York, U.S.
Citizenship	United States
Fields	History, political science
Institutions	Cornell University
Alma mater	Harvard University Stanford University Johns Hopkins University
Doctoral advisor	Rupert Emerson
Other academic advisors	Owen Lattimore
Doctoral students	Benedict Anderson, Herbert Feith, Daniel Lev and 155 others

George McTurnan Kahin (January 25, 1918 – January 29, 2000) was an American historian and political scientist. He was one of the leading experts on Southeast Asia and a critic of United States involvement in the Vietnam War. After completing his dissertation, which is still considered a classic on Indonesian history, Kahin became a faculty member at Cornell University. At Cornell, he became the director of its Southeast Asia Program and founded the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. Kahin's incomplete memoir was published posthumously in 2003.

George McTurnan Kahin was born on January 25, 1918, in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Seattle, Washington. He received a B.S. in history from Harvard University in 1940.

Kahin married Margaret Baker in 1942, but the marriage ended in divorce. During World War II, Kahin served in the United States Army between 1942 and 1945, where "he was trained as one of a group of 60 GIs who were to be parachuted into Japanese-occupied Indonesia in advance of Allied forces". However, the operation was canceled after it was determined that U.S. forces would bypass the Indies after the Potsdam Conference. As a result, his unit was sent to the European theater. He earned the rank of sergeant before leaving the Army. Kahin's interest in Southeast Asia developed during this period, and he learned to speak Indonesian and Dutch.