Habi received her Ph.D. in political science from Purdue University and Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University. She is originally from China. Her primary research area is comparative political theory. Her study interests include totalitarianism, totalitarian ideologies, and the comparison of political cultures between the West and China. She is also interested in quantitative methodology and its application to research on political behavior and political psychology.

In her spare time, Habi writes commentaries on politics and culture. While at the James Madison Program, she will adapt her dissertation into a book. Her dissertation, “The Confucian Road to Totalitarianism: How Confucianism Predisposed the Chinese to Totalitarian Rule,” challenges the conventional wisdom of research methods, arguments, and conclusions in the literature of totalitarianism, Confucianism, and Chinese politics.