While a member of the faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), Ames joined Eliot Deutsch, already a prominent academic and advocate of Chinese and comparative philosophy, and others to continue the tradition begun by Charles A. Moore and
Wing-Tsit Chan to establish UHM as the hub for non-Western and comparative philosophy and intellectual exchange in the United States. Ames became the editor of the academic journal
Philosophy East and West in 1987, the editor of the book review publication
China Review International, the editor and co-editor (with David L. Hall) of the "Chinese Philosophy and Culture" Series as well as (with Paul J. D'Ambrosio) the "Translating China" series with State University of New York Press. He also served as Director for the Center for Chinese Studies at UHM and Co-Director (with Peter D. Hershock) for the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP), and as Director and Co-Director of the East-West Philosophers' Conferences, the largest gathering of non-Western and comparative philosophers, with as many as 300 presenters, held in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2011, and 2016. Ames has been a visiting professor at
National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a Fulbright Professor at
Wuhan University and Peking University. He has received many awards, including the Confucian Culture Award at the 2013 World Congress of Confucianism in Beijing, and the Huilin Culture Award from Beijing Normal University in China in 2016. ==Selected works==