David Harnish (PhD UCLA, MA U-Hawai‘i) joined University of San Diego in 2011 and serves as Professor, Chair of Music, Director of Gamelan Gunung Mas, and Academic Liaison with the Arts/Philosophy Laureate for the Kyoto Prize Symposium. He is former Interim Dean, Associate Dean, Professor, and Gamelan Director at Bowling Green State University, and twice sailed with Semester at Sea. Author of Bridges to the Ancestors: Music, Myth and Cultural Politics at an Indonesian Festival (University of Hawaii Press, 2006), of thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals and books, and co-author/editor of Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2011) and the forthcoming Religious Trajectories in Majority/Minority Relationships in Bali and Lombok, he is a double Fulbright recipient and National Foundation Fellow. He is former consultant for the BBC, National Geographic, Mtv-Fulbright Awards, and the Smithsonian Institute; has recorded and/or performed Indonesian, jazz, Indian and Tejano musics with five different labels; and currently performs with Latin rock and Indian rock bands.

Since moving to San Diego, Harnish has become engaged in projects with San Diego Opera, San Diego Symphony, the Center for World Music, the Worldview Project, the Irvine Foundation, and the Mariachi Showcase. With the Kyoto Prize Symposium, he has worked with renowned onnagata Tamasaburo Bando and postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.