James Kurth (born 1938) is the Claude C. Smith Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Swarthmore College, where he taught defense policy, foreign policy, and international politics. In 2004 Kurth also became the editor of Orbis, a professional journal on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His book, "The American Way of Empire: How America Won a World--But Lost Her Way" was published in December, 2019 by Washington Books.