Kleinman is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard and professor of medical anthropology and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Kleinman has held a variety of administrative positions, including chair of Harvard's Department of Anthropology, chair of Harvard Medical School's Department of Social Medicine, and director of Harvard's Asia Center (2008–2016). In 2011, Kleinman was named a Harvard College Professor and given the Distinguished Faculty Award. In 1976, he founded the journal
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, The journal was continued by Byron and Mary-Jo Good and Peter J. Guarnaccia. Kleinman directed the World Mental Health Report, released at the UN in 1995, and also directed the World Bank Out of the Shadows Report in 2016. He co-chaired the
American Psychiatric Association's Taskforce on Culture and
DSM-IV, co-chaired the 2002
Institute of Medicine report on Preventing Suicide, and also co-chaired in 2001 and 2002 both the
NIH conference on the Science and Ethics of the Placebo and the NIH conference on Stigma. In September 2003, he gave the Distinguished Lecture sponsored by the
Fogarty International Center at NIH on the Global Epidemic of Depression and Suicide. He was on the Counsel of the Fogarty International Center, NIH, and on the NIH Council of Councils. He was a consultant to the
WHO where he chaired the technical advisory committee of the Nations for Mental Health Action Program, and in December 2002, gave the keynote address to the WHO's first international conference on global mental health research. ==Writing==