Arif Dirlik lives in Eugene in the US, in semi-retirement. In 2011 he held the the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy at the CSDS and before that was the first Liang Qichao Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He taught at Duke University for thirty years as professor of history and anthropology before moving to the University of Oregon in 2001 where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science, professor of history and anthropology, and director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies.

He has been and continues to be on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals. He is the editor of the two series Studies in Global Modernity and Asian Modernities, as well as co-editor with Yu Keping of a series of translations of prominent Chinese official intellectuals.

His works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. He has written many books, the most recent being Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (2001), and a collection of his essays, Arif Dirlik Derlemesi, was published in Turkish in 2010. His Liang Qichao Memorial Lectures are scheduled to be published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press as Culture and History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity. Also forthcoming are two edited volumes, Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth Century China: Between Indigenism and Universalism and Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society: Tricontinental Perspectives. He has edited and co-edited a number of books and journals, and authored more than 200 articles on subjects ranging from Chinese history and historiography, to issues of globalization and the Pacific region, to theoretical discussions of postcolonial criticism and postmodernity.

He held the Kothari Chair in the year 2011 and delivered the Annual Rajni Kothari Lecture titled "The Idea of a 'Chinese Model': A Critical Discussion" on 16 September 2011.