April 2024 – Sigur Center for Asian Studies

April 19, 2024November 19, 2024

Taiwan Relations @45 Years and Counting

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM ET

Lunch: 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM ET

Panel: 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The landmark Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was signed into law by the United States Congress and serves as a foundation for US-Taiwan relations, and guides bilateral and broader policymaking toward the region. As the TRA celebrates 45 years, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies is holding a Roundtable to take stock. How has the TRA’s meaning and interpretation changed over time? What do the US executive and congressional positions on the Act look like? To what extent does the TRA come into play in cross strait relations?

*Guests are highly encouraged to tour the photography collection at the second-floor atrium of the Elliott School

“Interpreting the Taiwan Relations Act Over Time”, Vincent Wang

“US Congressional and Presidential Views on TRA@45”, Ryan Hass

“The TRA and its Role in Cross Strait Relations, Raymond Kuo

Opening Remarks

A picture of Yaqiu Wang smiling and looking at the camera

Alexander Yui has been the Representative for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States since December of 2023. He has previously served as the Representative to the European Union, the Vice minister of Foreign Affairs, the Director-General of the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, as well as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Paraguay. He has a BA in Political Science and Modern Languages as well as an MA in Spanish Literature from Texas A&M University. He also attended Executive programs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2002 as well as The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics in 2010.

Speakers

Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Adelphi University. Wang formerly served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College. He was formerly a Professor of Political Science and Chairman of the Department at the University of Richmond, specializing in international political economy and Asian studies. He has been a Visiting Professor or Fellow at National Chengchi University (Taipei), National Sun-Yat-sen University (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), El Colegio de Mexico, and Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University (Seoul, South Korea). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is a first-generation college student and received his BA from National Taiwan University and MA from Johns Hopkins University.

Chiaoning Su smiling and looking at the camera

Ryan Hass is director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at Brookings. He is also a senior fellow in the Center for Asia Policy Studies. He was part of the inaugural class of David M. Rubenstein fellows at Brookings, and is a nonresident affiliated fellow in the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Hass focuses his research and analysis on enhancing policy development on the pressing political, economic, and security challenges facing the United States in East Asia.

From 2013 to 2017, Hass served as the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) staff. In that role, he advised President Obama and senior White House officials on all aspects of U.S. policy toward China, Taiwan, and Mongolia, and coordinated the implementation of U.S. policy toward this region among U.S. government departments and agencies. He joined President Obama’s state visit delegations in Beijing and Washington respectively in 2014 and 2015, and the president’s delegation to Hangzhou, China, for the G-20 in 2016, and to Lima, Peru, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meetings in 2016.

Prior to joining NSC, Hass served as a Foreign Service Officer in U.S. Embassy Beijing, where he earned the State Department Director General’s award for impact and originality in reporting, an award given annually to the officer whose reporting had the greatest impact on the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. Hass also served in Embassy Seoul and Embassy Ulaanbaatar, and domestically in the State Department Offices of Taiwan Coordination and Korean Affairs. Hass received multiple Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor commendations during his 15-year tenure in the Foreign Service.

Hass is the author of “Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence” (Yale University Press, 2021), a co-editor of “Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World” (Brookings Press, 2021), of the monograph, “The future of US policy toward China: Recommendations for the Biden administration” (Brookings, 2020), and a co-author of “U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis?” (Brookings Press, 2023). He also leads the Democracy in Asia project at the Brookings Institution and is co-chair of the international task force on Taiwan convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Hass was born and raised in Washington state. He graduated from the University of Washington and attended the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies prior to joining the State Department.

Shelley Rigger speaking at an event with hand gestures

Raymond Kuo is the inaugural director of the RAND Corporation’s Taiwan Policy Initiative and a senior political scientist at RAND. He is an expert in international security, international order, and East Asia.

He published two books in 2021: Following the Leader (Stanford University Press) on military alliances and Contests of Initiative (Westphalia-GMU Press) on China’s maritime gray zone strategy. His other research has appeared in International Security, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, The National Interest, the Diplomat, and other outlets.

Kuo was a tenure-track professor at Fordham University and the University at Albany, SUNY. He previously worked for the United Nations, the National Democratic Institute, and the Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan). He holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.

Moderator

Deepa M. Ollapally is a political scientist specializing in Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, and Asian regional and maritime security. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center. She also directs the Rising Powers Initiative, a major research program that tracks and analyzes foreign policy debates in aspiring powers of Asia and Eurasia.

Dr. Ollapally is currently working on a funded book, Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indian Ocean Region, which assesses the shifting patterns of geopolitical influence by major powers in the region since 2005 and the drivers of these changes. She is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008). Her most recent books are two edited volumes, Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (Routledge, 2017), and Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Dr. Ollapally has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asia Foundation for projects related to India and Asia. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Swarthmore College and has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London and at Columbia University. Dr. Ollapally also held senior positions in the policy world including the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNN, BBC, CBS, Diane Rehm Show, and Reuters TV. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

April 10, 2024November 19, 2024

[4/17/24] Managing the Mekong: Infrastructure, Climate Change, and Geopolitics

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The Mekong River basin is shared by six countries and home to over sixty million people, and it plays a defining role in terms of water, energy, and food security both locally and globally. The Mekong’s natural bounty and rich ecosystem is increasingly under threat—from the proliferation of upstream dams, from climate shifts impacting rainfall and extreme water events, and from a range of other pressures such as sand mining, overfishing, and pollution. Join Courtney Weatherby for a discussion about why the Mekong matters, how the river’s health is impacted by upstream dams and climate change, and what is needed in terms of environmental monitoring and political engagement to conserve the human and environmental benefits it provides.

Speaker

Courtney Weatherby is Deputy Director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia program and a Fellow with the Energy, Water, & Sustainability program. Her research focuses on sustainable infrastructure and energy development challenges in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific, particularly at the nexus of issues in food, water, and energy in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Weatherby was a lead author on a range of technical and policy studies, including Thailand’s Energy Development Pathways report in collaboration with Pact Thailand; the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)Sekong, Sesan, Srepok Basin Energy Profile report; the Stimson Center’s Mekong Power Shiftreport; and the TRENDS Institution United Arab Emirates (UAE) Energy Diplomacy report. She provides support to the development and management of the Mekong Dam Monitor, a platform for near-real time monitoring of dams and environmental impacts in the Mekong Basin, and the winner of 2021 Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award, 1st Prize in the 2021 Prudence Foundation’s Disaster Tech Competition, and the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation’s 2021 Outstanding Achievement Award. She also supports the team’s data-driven work on the Mekong Infrastructure Tracker, a platform to track, monitor, and quantify the development of energy, transportation, and water infrastructure in South East Asia.

In 2019, she served as a US-Japan-Southeast Asia Fellow at the East-West Center, focusing her research on US-Japan collaboration on energy infrastructure in Southeast Asia. She has spoken publicly on panels at a variety of institutions including the National Bureau of Asian Research’s Pacific Energy Summit and the Greater Mekong Forum on Water, Food, and Energy. Before joining Stimson in 2014, Weatherby worked with the State Department, Center for Strategic International Studies, and Human Rights Watch. She holds a M.A. in Asian Studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a B.A. in East Asian Studies with honors from Dickinson College.

Moderator

William M. Wise chairs the Southeast Asia Forum, a project to promote the study of Southeast Asia at colleges, universities and research centers in the Mid-Atlantic region. He is a former Non-Resident Fellow at the Stimson Center, affiliated with the Southeast Asia Program.

Professor Wise’s government and teaching career focused on defense, security and intelligence issues in Asia. From 2005 to 2019 he managed the Southeast Asia Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, and taught courses on Southeast Asia and intelligence problems in Asia. Prior to teaching at SAIS, he was Adjunct Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA), George Washington University. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington in 1999.

Professor Wise’s government experience spanned more than three decades. He was Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice-President; Chief of Policy at the U.S. Pacific Command (now U.S. Indo-Pacific Command); and Deputy Director, for Policy Planning, East Asia & Pacific Region, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Earlier, he served in various positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community in Washington and overseas. He retired from the U.S. Air Force as a Colonel in 1997.

Professor Wise received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and master’s degree from the University of Hawaii.

April 9, 2024November 19, 2024

[4/30/24] Updates and Forecast on Corporate Crimes in Asia

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

1:00 pm – 2:40 pm

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Corporate fraud is a growing problem across the world. In response to this situation, more governments have enforced anti-fraud legislation. In Asia, not a few regional authorities tightened their penalties for fraudulent behaviours, governance codes continue to evolve to ensure responsible management in each country, and proxy advisory institutions and elevated the proxy voting guidelines to strengthen corporate governance, and thus, deter fraud. However, these efforts have not yet resulted in a reversal of trends. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, prolonged periods of remote work weakened the governance for fraudulent behaviour, which led to an increase in opportunities for fraud, particularly cybercrime. Corporate fraud can have devastating consequences, and hence, fraud prevention is crucial.

Today, GW visiting scholars from Korea and Japan share the updates and forecast on corporate crimes, aiming to provide meaningful insights for preventing fraud in Asia. Specifically, Seongkwang Seo provides legal perspectives given his prosecutor experience, and Asuka Takaoka argues academically and professionally.

Agenda:

13.00-13.10 Welcoming and introduction by Hiromi Ishizawa

13.10-13.40 Presentation by Seongkwang Seo

13.40-13.55 Q&A

13.55-14.25 Presentation by Asuka Takaoka

14.25-14.40 Q&A

14:40-14.45 Closing by Hiromi Ishizawa

Speakers

Asuka Takaoka has a wealth of consulting experience spanning the globe. For the past thirteen years, she has been a management consultant at the Frankfurt and Tokyo offices of McKinsey & Company, as well as a human resources consultant in London and Tokyo. Most recently, she took on a regional role in Asia for the assessment practice at Willis Towers Watson, a leading human resources consulting firm. With expertise in CEO succession planning, executive assessment and development, and board effectiveness, she holds qualifications from the British Psychological Society, Hogan Assessments, SHL OPQ, and Saville Assessment.

At GLOBIS University, she lectures for courses such as Leadership Development, Ethics, and Values. She also researches corporate governance as a visiting scholar at George Washington University in the United States. She is the founder and CEO of Bancho Board Advisory Co., Ltd.

Seongkwang Seo is a prosecutor of South Korea. After passing the bar exam in 2009 and training at the Judicial Training Institute for two years, he joined the prosecutor’s office in 2011. He has worked for 13 years in various district prosecutors’ offices, and is currently working at the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office.

He has experience in investigating various crimes, including public security cases (election crimes, illegal political fund crimes, etc), corporate crime cases, bribery cases, sexual crimes, and economic crimes. He is also experienced in maintaining the prosecution of the various cases mentioned above at trial. In particular, he specializes in election crimes and political fund crimes in the field of public security investigation, and has been working in the public security investigation department for many years.

In recognition of his contributions as a prosecutor, he was awarded the Minister of Justice’s Commendation for Public Security Affairs in 2017. He also received the Prosecutor General’s Award for Exemplary Prosecutor in the second half of 2019 and the Prime Minister’s Commendation for Prosecutorial Affairs in 2021.

Based on his experience as a prosecutor, he is going to research the latest U.S. cases and scholarship on the admissibility of evidence for electronic file documents created on computer or other electronic devices, a topic that has become increasingly important in recent years.

Moderator

After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Ishizawa spent two years as a post-doctoral research associate at the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests are in the areas of social and family demography, immigration, sociology of language, and urban sociology. Her research focuses on the understanding of how immigrants integrate into American society. In particular, her work emphasizes the influence of context, such as family and neighborhood, on the process of integration. She has published work that examines many aspects of immigrant integration, including minority language maintenance, civic participation, health, sequence of migration within family units, intermarriage, and residential settlement patterns among minority language speakers. In addition, she conducts research on another immigrant destination country, New Zealand. Her work focuses on residential segregation and patterns of ethnic neighborhoods among recent immigrant groups and the indigenous Maori population. Additionally, her research project examines life satisfaction among immigrants in Japan.

April 9, 2024November 19, 2024

[4/24/24] Evacuation Campaigns in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and the Case of Children in Vinh Linh Special Zone

A graphic with the title of the event and date

Friday, April 24, 2024

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Chung-wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Evacuation campaigns were part of the systematic response strategy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to minimize human and property losses, protect labor forces and production resources, and preserve material and spiritual resources to serve the national liberation war for reunification of Vietnam. These evacuation campaigns began shortly after the French attempted to recolonize Vietnam after 1945 and lasted until the U.S. ceased their air strikes in the North Vietnam and then withdrew from Vietnam in 1973. By collecting archival materials in Vietnam related to these campaigns, this presentation clarifies the systematic efforts of the central and local governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in evacuating the people to cope with the destructive war in the North Vietnam by the air and naval forces of the U.S. Through interviews, the presentation will also delve into the memories of those who were children in the Vinh Linh Special Zone adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone evacuated to other provinces of North Vietnam. From there, it will analyze some of the impacts of the evacuation campaigns on people, especially children, during and after the Vietnam War.

Speaker

Dr. Lê Nam Trung Hiếu is a Vietnamese historian, with his field of interests in Vietnamese perspectives into the American war in Vietnam and diplomatic relations amongst relevant stakeholders of the war. He earned his PhD in International History in Hue University in 2017, with mobility periods at Ghent University for exchange MA program in Political Sciences and at Porto University for exchange PhD program in historiography. With the chapter “Another Kind of Vietnamization: Language Policies in Higher Education in the Two Vietnams”, he is a corresponding author in Vietnam over the Long Twentieth Century – Becoming Modern, Going Global (edited by Liam C.Kelly and Gerard Sasges) in the book series Global Vietnam published by Springer. He has also worked in a diplomatic history-pertaining project of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is based in Danang, Vietnam, and teaches at Duy Tan University.

Moderator

Linda J. Yarr is Research Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs and Director of Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia (PISA). She began her work for PISA in 1995, when PISA was located within the American Council for Learned Societies. PISA promotes international affairs education training and research in cooperation with leading agencies and universities in Asia. Ms. Yarr has secured foundation grants and private donations to underwrite all of PISA’s activities and designed its collaborative and path-breaking programs in Asia. Ms. Yarr taught at American University, Friends World College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of Denver. She has held visiting scholar appointments at the University of Helsinki, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, the Institute for Malaysian and International Studies of the National University of Malaysia, the School of International Service of American University, and the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute. She serves on the board of directors of Critical Asian Studies and is a member of the National Committee on North Korea.

April 8, 2024November 19, 2024

[4/23/24] A Conversation with Geling Yan

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies for a conversation with accomplished novelist and screenwriter Geling Yan 嚴歌苓. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.

After more than a decade with the PLA, she published her first novel in 1986 and has been writing constantly ever since. Her best-known novels in English are The Secret Talker, Little Aunt Crane, The Banquet Bug, The Lost Daughter of Happiness, and White Snake and Other Stories. Many of her novels have been adapted for films and television series, including Youth (Feng Xiaogang), three films by Zhang Yimou (The Flowers of War, Coming Home, and One Second), Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (directed by Joan Chen), A City Called Macau (directed by Li Shaohong) and Siao Yu(directed by Sylvia Chang and produced by Ang Lee). Her novel The Lost Daughter of Happiness is being adapted into a musical, FUSONG, which was presented to the New York Citytheater community earlier this month and addresses anti-Asian racism, violence, and the transcendence of love.

In this talk, Ms. Yan will discuss her life, her works, censorship, and her latest book Milati, which was published in 2023. The story is about a young woman named Milati, a dancer tuned novelist, her cohort, and that of her artist father during the 1980s in China, when the country opened up, everything seemed possible, and they thought would go on forever. Selected copies of Ms. Yan’s works will be sold at the event.

Speaker

Geling Yan 嚴歌苓 is one of the most acclaimed novelists and screenwriters in the Chinese language and a well-established writer in English. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.

Many of Ms. Yan’s works have been adapted for film and television, directed or produced by famous directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Feng Xiaogang, Ang Lee, Li Shaohong and Joan Chen. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ms. Yan holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago. She has published over 40 books and has won over 30 literary and film awards. Her works have been translated into twenty-one languages. She has been subject to an unwritten ban in China since March 2020, when she wrote an essay criticizing the Chinese government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. She resides in Berlin, Germany and has recently co-founded a company, New Song Media GmbH, to produce films and to publish her works outside China.

Discussant

As a Public Interest Technology Scholar Program fellow and an affiliate at the Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law and Society (TRAILS), Alexa Alice Joubin is a leading voice in generative AI and social justice issues. She is the inaugural recipient of the bell hooks Legacy Award and holder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. She writes about artificial intelligence (AI), race, gender, globalization, Taiwan and Sinophone diaspora studies, cultural diplomacy, and film and theatre. The bell hooks Award recognizes her achievements in “dismantling intersectional systems of oppression with the distinct goals of uplifting members of historically marginalized populations and striving for social justice,” through her “groundbreaking work that speaks to our moment in history and our hope for the future” and her public scholarship, use of generative AI tools as assistive technology in class, open-access publications, and inclusive pedagogies. The recipient of George Washington University’s Trachtenberg Research Award, Dr. Joubin is the co-author of Race (2018) and the author and editor of 24 books on global feminism, critical race theory, and performance studies.

Dr. Joubin teaches in the English department, is an affiliated faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and co-founded the GW Digital Humanities Institute . She directed the Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare (a signature program of GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences). At MIT, she is co-founder and co-director of the open access Global Shakespeares digital performance archive. Her publications can be accessed on ResearchGate.

Her teaching and publications are unified by a commitment to understanding the mobility of early modern and postmodern cultures in their literary, performative, and digital forms of expression. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, International Shakespeare Association, Folger Institute, and other agencies.

Moderator

Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs, and the interim director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media.

Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Her book, “Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia,” focuses on Tempo magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. “Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia,” explores the relationship between journalism and Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants to Indonesia and a third to Serbia, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Kosovo. The author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice, her 2014 book, “Email Dari Amerika,” (Email from America), is a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her most recent book, forthcoming in October 2023, is called “Malaysiakini and the power of independent media in Malaysia.”