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[06/05/2025] Taiwan Roundtable: What’s Next for Taiwan: Navigating New Diplomatic, Economic, and Security Dynamics

May 13, 2025June 17, 2025Archives & Recordings, Taiwan RoundtablesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, June 5th, 2025

11:30 AM – 1:30 PM ET

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

.Since the outset of 2025, Taiwan has entered a critical period of domestic political upheaval and geostrategic recalibration. From growing concerns regarding cross-Strait military activity amidst large-scale Chinese exercises, to increased uncertainty about U.S. trade ties and political support, to deeply contentious domestic politics and constitutional issues, Taiwan is presently navigating numerous challenging policy positions and international trends. What are the most pressing issues for the United States and Taiwan to navigate in the near-term to safeguard stable and productive political, economic, and security relations?

To address this pertinent topic, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University and the Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) at UC Berkeley are bringing together a panel of scholars from the U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group to examine the most urgent priorities facing Taiwan over the next three to six months, with a focus on policy credibility and consistency, political psychology, civil-military strains, and people-to-people ties.

The U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, administered by IEAS with generous support from the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in San Francisco, is an in-depth training program for scholars and policymakers with an interest in U.S.-Taiwan relations. The program aims to identify, nurture, and build a community of American public policy intellectuals across a wide range of sectors and facilitate policy-oriented research teams and projects. In all, it will contribute to the understanding of Taiwanese points of view in international venues through facilitating deeper dialogue and vigorous research.

Please join the Sigur Center and IEAS for this timely discussion with a group of multidisciplinary experts from the Working Group to identify, evaluate, and discuss near-term priorities for U.S.-Taiwan relations!

“Policy Credibility and Consistency,” Raymond Kuo, Director of the Taiwan Policy Initiative and Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation

“The Political Psychology of U.S.-Taiwan Relations,” Rosalie Chen, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dominican University of California

“Confidence in Crisis: How U.S. Civil-Military Strain Shapes Taiwan’s Strategic Outlook,” Gary Sampson, Independent National Security Strategist

“The Importance of People-to-People Ties and Diplomatic Engagement in U.S.-Taiwan Relations,” Adrienne Chih-fang Wu, Program Manager, Global Taiwan Institute

Moderator: Richard J. Haddock, Assistant Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies; Co-Director, Taiwan Education & Research Program

RSVP

Panel Speakers

A picture of Raymond Kuo, smiling and looking at the camera

Dr. Raymond Kuo is the inaugural Director of the Taiwan Policy Initiative and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in international security, international order, and East Asia. He is the author of two books, and his work has been published in International Security, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and War on the Rocks. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has previously worked for Fordham University, the United Nations, the National Democratic Institute, and the Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan).

Professor Rosalie Chen is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Dominican University of California. Her research interests are interdisciplinary in nature and lie at the intersection of social psychology, political science, and culture. She studies ideology in the East Asian cultural context, the national identity issue in cross-strait relations, and the role of culture-specific emotions at the group level in motivating international conflict. She is particularly interested in exploring international relations from the angles of political psychology and culture.

Growing up in North Africa, East Asia, and North America enabled Prof. Chen to connect with people from diverse backgrounds and cemented an early interest in culture and international relations. She is dedicated to contributing to knowledge that enhances cross-cultural understanding and addresses the causes of international conflict. Her overarching research goal is to contribute to the understanding of international conflict by elucidating how ideology, identity, and emotion motivate political perception, attitudes, and behavior.

Previously, Prof. Chen taught at Colgate University before joining DUC. She received her B.S. from Truman State University, M.A. from George Washington University, and Ph.D. from National Taiwan University.

Dr. Gary J. Sampson is an independent national security strategist and recently retired U.S. Marine Corps intelligence and international affairs officer. He specializes in East Asian security, alliance politics, and U.S.-China dynamics. His work has been published by Studies in Intelligence, Military Review, The Strategy Bridge, and CSIS. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School and studied in Taiwan as an Olmsted Scholar at National Sun Yat-sen University. He previously held policy roles on the Joint Staff, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and at Headquarters Marine Corps.

Adrienne Chih-fang Wu is a program manager at the Global Taiwan Institute and the host and producer of Taiwan Salon, GTI’s cultural policy and soft power podcast. She is a member of the UC Berkeley US-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group and a member of the Foreign Policy for America’s Next Gen Initiative. Additionally, she was a 2024 Taiwan-US Policy Program Delegate. Previously a Taiwan Delegate for Strait Talk 2023 at George Washington University, she is currently a Strait Talk facilitator-in-training. Before joining GTI, she graduated from Ritsumeikan University and Kyunghee University with a Dual Master’s Degree in International Relations. She spent seven years living in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan—including three years of teaching English in Japan and Taiwan and a year of study at Waseda University while pursuing her BA in Honors East Asian Studies from McGill University.

Moderator

A picture of Dominik Mierzeejewski, smiling and looking at the camera

Richard J. Haddock is the Assistant Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University, where he leads the Center’s robust Taiwan affairs programming, outreach, and curriculum development. He is also a member of the UC Berkeley U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, where his research focuses on U.S.-Taiwan education diplomacy and exchange. Previously, he has held positions at the GW East Asia National Resource Center, the National Democratic Institute’s Asia team, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy Section, and the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an MA in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BA in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.

[05/06/2025] “Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America

April 21, 2025May 9, 2025Archives & Recordings, High Profile EventsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, May 6th, 2025

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW

Washington, D.C., 20052

and Online via Zoom

RSVP

The Elliott School Book Launch Series and Sigur Center for Asian Studies are pleased to present the book launch for Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America. This will be a hybrid event that is held in-person and available to stream via Zoom. Please use this Zoom link, if you’d like to join online: https://gwu-edu.zoom.us/j/97616093139.

About the Event

4:00PM, Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayres, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

4:05PM, Author’s Remarks

David Shambaugh, Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program, GWU

4:45PM, Commentary

Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

5:00PM, Q&A

About the Book

For over five decades following the 1972 rapprochement between the United States and China, the two countries seemed to be steadily building a sound relationship, even accounting for periodic setbacks like the Tiananmen Square massacre. The last decade, though, has seen a sharp increase in tensions and a complete reorientation of American policies toward China—from “engagement” to “competition.”

What happened? In Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America, esteemed scholar David Shambaugh examines the evolution, expansion, and disintegration of the American engagement strategy towards China.

This is the book we have all been waiting for: the definitive history of the sea change in American policy toward China during the past half century from engagement to competitive rivalry. Shambaugh’s book is objective, detailed, and valuable reading for everyone worried about the future of US-China relations.
— Susan Shirk, Emeritus Chair, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego

David Shambaugh is one of today’s most respected and influential thinkers on China. His decades of research, teaching and leadership in the field make for an unparalleled dive into the development and fracturing of the world’s most important bilateral relationship. If understanding our past reveals much about our future, then this brilliant analysis should be considered required reading in understanding one of history’s most consequential geopolitical megatrends.

— Jon Huntsman, Former Ambassador to China, Russia, Singapore, and Governor of Utah

The U.S. sees China as the pacing challenge in our strategic competition. But China is also a puzzle. Why did our strategy of Engagement fail? No one is better placed to solve this puzzle than David Shambaugh in this well-informed and very readable account. Anyone interested in our great power competition with China must read this book.
— Joseph S. Nye, Former Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School

Speaker

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized scholar and award winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. An active public intellectual and educator, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, and investment funds. He is currently the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Affairs at George Washington University,and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He previously was Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), where he also served as Editor of the prestigious journal The China Quarterly

[4/24/25] The First 100 Days: Trump 2.0 and New Dynamics in U.S.-Taiwan and Cross Strait Relations

April 7, 2025April 24, 2025Archives & Recordings, Taiwan Conference SeriesLeave a Comment

Thursday, April 24th, 2025

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM ET

State Room, 7th Floor

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Since President Trump’s second inauguration, actions taken by the administration have already set new tones for U.S.-China-Taiwan relations. From Trump 2.0’s approach to the Ukraine war, to heightened rhetoric on tariffs and trade imbalances, to the pursuit of new investment opportunities in semiconductor manufacturing and energy security, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term provide a critical lens for analyzing the changes and continuities to U.S. foreign policy priorities. Taiwan remains central to this discourse: debates regarding U.S. support for Taiwan in the security, economic, and political domains reflect wider discussions on the Trump administration’s broader Indo-Pacific strategy. Cross-Strait relations are also experiencing new pressures, from increased military readiness on both sides to greater wariness of maligned influence across civil society. Domestic politics in all three contexts further add layers of complexity to these evolving dynamics. What might the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 augur for triangular relations in the near and long-term?

Join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies for a timely conversation with a group of multidisciplinary experts to unpack, explore, and assess the impacts of the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 on U.S.-Taiwan and cross-Strait relations!

Panel One: Assessing Change and Continuity in U.S.-Taiwan Relations (10:30am–12:00pm)

“US-Taiwan Relations have considerable potential in President Trump’s Second Term,” Rupert Hammond-Chambers, President, US-Taiwan Business Council & Senior Advisor, Bower Group Asia

“Taiwan’s Security Interests and the Implications for US-Taiwan Relations,” John Tai, Professorial Lecturer, George Washington University

Tiffany Ma, Senior Vice President for Geopolitics and Research, The Asia Group

Lunch: (12:00–12:30pm)

Panel Two: Evaluating New Developments in Cross-Strait Relations (12:30–2:00pm)

“Trump’s Unilateral Nationalism and the Changing Techno-Security Structure across the Taiwan Strait: A Statist Analysis,” Dean Chen, Professor of Political Science, Ramapo College

Kitsch Liao, Associate Director of the China Hub, Atlantic Council

“CCP Covert Operations in Taiwan and the Dynamics of Democratic Resilience,” Cheryl Yu, China Studies Fellow, Jamestown Foundation

RSVP

Panel Speakers

Dr. John W. Tai is Senior Advisor, Pamir Consulting LLC. He is also a Course Coordinator (McColm consultant) at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, where he teaches courses on China and Taiwan. For nearly 12 years, he supported the U.S. intelligence community as an open-source analyst. Earlier in his career, John had served as an East Asia analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He had also advised the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. He is the author of Building Civil Society in Authoritarian China (Springer, 2015) and has written on China’s technological, political, and economic developments, China’s maritime strategy, Taiwan’s military diplomacy and its external relations, and South Korea’s relations with the United States and China.

Mr. Hammond-Chambers was born and raised in Scotland before emigrating to the United States in 1987 and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree at Denison University. As a new graduate in 1991, he worked for Advanced Telecommunication Corporation (ATC), managing a variety of clients with business interests in the Caribbean and Latin America.

In April 1993, he joined The Center for Security Policy, a defense and foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C., as the Associate for Development.

He began working for the US-Taiwan Business Council in October 1994. In March of 1998, he was promoted to Vice President of the Council. Mr. Hammond-Chambers was elected President of the Council in November 2000.

Mr. Hammond-Chambers is also a Senior Advisor at Bower Group Asia overseeing the Taiwan practice – a strategic consultancy. He is also responsible for Bower Group Asia’s defense and security practice.

He sits on the Board of The Project 2049 Institute. He is a Trustee of Friends of Fettes College and is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. He has two daughters.

Tiffany Ma is a Senior Vice President and Director for Geopolitics and Communications at The Asia Group (TAG), where she leads the Research & Analytics Team and Geopolitics practice. At TAG, Tiffany advises multinational clients on geopolitical developments and strategic risks in the Indo-Pacific, leveraging her extensive background in client service and policy analysis.

A recognized thought leader, Tiffany regularly contributes to discussions on China-Taiwan relations, U.S.-China dynamics, and Asia-Pacific maritime security. She has testified before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on U.S.-Taiwan relations, and is frequently featured in U.S. and international media outlets.

Prior to joining TAG, Tiffany was a Senior Director at BowerGroupAsia, where she provided strategic support to Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare, defense and aerospace, and consumer goods sectors. She was responsible for managing client and stakeholder relationships as well as supporting efforts to address market access as well as policy and regulatory challenges.

Tiffany previously served as the Senior Director for Political and Security Affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) in Washington, D.C. In that role, she led key initiatives on geopolitical and international security issues in the Asia-Pacific, facilitating high-level discussions with senior government officials and experts. Following her tenure, she remains a non-resident fellow at NBR. She began her career as a research associate at the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia, and has previously worked at the International Crisis Group in Beijing, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Tiffany holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was a public service fellow and a Belfer student fellow. She earned bachelor’s degrees in international relations and psychology from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is a native Mandarin Chinese speaker. Outside of her professional endeavors, Tiffany is an avid runner and marathoner.

Dean P. Chen (Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara) is a professor of Political Science at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is the author of three books: U.S.-China-Taiwan in the Age of Trump and Biden: Towards a Nationalist Strategy (New York: Routledge, 2022), U.S.-China Rivalry and Taiwan’s Mainland Policy: Security, Nationalism, and the 1992 Consensus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and U.S.-Taiwan Strait Policy: The Origins of Strategic Ambiguity (Lynne Rienner, 2012). His articles have appeared in Asian Survey, Asian security, Asian Politics & Policy,Pacific Focus, and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, The Diplomat, The National Interest, Global Taiwan Brief, and East-West Center Occasional Papers. In 2014-16, Chen served as coordinator of the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He was a Taiwan Fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the ROC (Taiwan) in 2014 and a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in the PRC in 2017-18. He is a member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a board member of the American Association for Chinese Studies. He is visiting scholar at National Taiwan University in Spring 2025 for his sabbatical and archival research at the Academia Historica.

Kitsch Liao is an associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Liao worked in the US Congress, in diplomatic postings, and as a cyber intelligence analyst for the private sector. He is also the cyber and military affairs consultant for Taiwan’s Doublethink Lab. He has worked on various projects with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Institute of National Defense and Security Research, the US Department of Defense, and Janes on topics including Taiwan’s order of battle; China’s chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capability; and Chinese disinformation and cyber espionage operations.

Liao has also published with various journals and media outlets including the Diplomat, Jamestown China Brief, National Interest, among others. Liao has also provided commentary for media outlets such as the New York Times, Financial Times, Deutsch Welle, and Al Jazeera.

He received an MA in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BSc from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

Cheryl Yu is a Fellow in China Studies at The Jamestown Foundation and the co-author of the recently published Global Taiwan Institute report “Chinese Communist Party Covert Operations Against Taiwan.” Her research on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its operations has been published by think tanks and global media. Previously, she was the China Programs and Research Manager at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a research and outreach consultant for Freedom House’s China analysis team. She has a Master’s degree in public administration from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, where she produced an independent research project on the impact of the CCP’s surveillance of Chinese students in the United States. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

Moderator

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. It won the 2021 John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association.

Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel has also completed a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Schluessel has also completed a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

[04/15/2025] Gaston Sigur Memorial Lecture: India’s Foreign Policy and the China Factor

February 25, 2025April 17, 2025Archives & Recordings, Gaston Sigur Memorial LectureLeave a Comment

Tuesday, April 15, 2024

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

City View Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The weight of the China factor in India’s foreign policy is evolving. New Delhi continues to see China as a primary geopolitical rival. How will tensions along the Line of Actual Control evolve? What about trade tensions and the contest for regional influence in South Asia? This brewing conflict is playing out during an unpredictable new period of U.S.-China relations. In this changing geopolitical environment and in an attempt to balance against China, India must reassess its foreign policy and role in the Indo-Pacific. Former Indian Ambassador to China and the United States Nirupama Rao will discuss India’s policy options, the changing strategic bilateral and multilateral space, and India’s place in the world.

RSVP

Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayres, Dean of the Elliott School

Alyssa Ayres was appointed dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs and professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University effective February 1, 2021. She is the first woman to serve in the role of permanent dean at the school. Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. From 2013 to 2021, she was senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow.

Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. An updated paperback edition was released in 2019. Ayres is also interested in the emergence of subnational engagement in foreign policy, particularly the growth of international city networks, and her current book project (working title, “Bright Lights, Biggest Cities: The Urban Challenge to India’s Future,” under contract with Oxford University Press) examines India’s urban transformation and its international implications.

From 2010 to 2013 Ayres served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, she covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people at the time (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Before serving in the Obama administration, Ayres was founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, the Washington-based international strategic advisory firm, from 2008 to 2010, and served as a part-time senior advisor to the firm from 2014 to 2021. From 2007 to 2008, she served as special assistant to the undersecretary of state for political affairs as a CFR international affairs fellow. Prior to that she worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India and at the Asia Society in New York.

Originally trained as a cultural historian, Ayres has carried out research on both India and Pakistan. Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2009 and received an American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize for 2011–2012. She has coedited three books on India and Indian foreign policy: Power Realignments in Asia; India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?; and India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change.

Ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received four group or individual Superior Honor Awards for her work at the State Department. She speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Halifax International Security Forum agenda group, and she serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group. In 2021 and 2022, the Washingtonian included her as one of their “most influential people shaping policy.”

Speaker

Nirupama Rao is a former Indian Foreign Service officer. She retired as Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, the senior most position in the Foreign Service, being the second woman to occupy the post (2009-2011). She was the first woman spokesperson (2001-02) of the Indian foreign office. She served as India’s first woman High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Sri Lanka (2004-2006) and to the People’s Republic of China (2006-2009). She was Ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013.

In retirement she has taught at various universities, including as a Senior Visiting Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University where she taught an undergraduate seniors course on “India in the World” and as George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Her book entitled The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China, 1949 to 1962, was published by Penguin India in October 2021.

Ambassador Rao was a Fellow at the India-China Institute of The New School, New York in 2016, Public Policy Fellow at The Wilson Center, Washington D.C. in 2017 and Pacific Leadership Fellow at the School of Global Politics and Strategy, University of California at San Diego in 2019. She is a Global Policy Fellow of the Wilson Center. She was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow from 2015-2016 and a Practitioner-in-Residence at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy in 2017. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, on the Board of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and a Councilor on the World Refugee and Migration Council. She is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the US India Business Council and heads the Board of Trustees of the India board of the American India Foundation (AIF). She has an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (2012) from Pondicherry University, India.

She is a staunch believer in the power of social media as an advocacy platform for policy and currently has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter. Ambassador Rao is the recipient of a number of awards recognizing her contributions in public service. She received the K.P.S Menon Memorial Award in 2010, the Sree Chithira Thirunal Award in 2011, the Vanitha Ratna Award of the Government of Kerala in 2016 and the Citizen Extraordinaire Award of Rotary International in 2018. She is also the recipient of the Fellowship of Peace Award of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Center in Washington D.C in 2018.

Ambassador Rao is a Founder-Trustee of The South Asian Symphony Foundation (SASF) (www.symphonyofsouthasia.org) – a not-for-profit Trust which is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding in South Asia through the creation of a South Asian Symphony Orchestra (SASO).

Moderator

[3/4/2025] Taiwan Roundtable: Bills, Budgets, and Brawls: Understanding Taiwan’s Legislative Crisis

February 14, 2025March 10, 2025Archives & Recordings, Taiwan Roundtables1 Comment

Tuesday, March 4th, 2025

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has long been characterized by intense partisan competition, high-stakes negotiations, and, at times, dramatic confrontations. Recent legislative crises—including controversial cuts and freezes to the operating budgets of several ministries—have highlighted the complex interplay between budgetary politics, institutional constraints, and evolving party dynamics, raising critical questions about the resilience and functionality of Taiwan’s democratic system and constitutional order. At the same time, civil society groups, open-government advocates, and civic tech communities in Taiwan have played active roles in developing participatory mechanisms and transparency tools meant to enhance public engagement and citizen oversight in legislative affairs, but face a variety of resource and outreach constraints. The current legislative dilemma may also have substantial impacts on Taiwan’s diplomatic, national security, and geoeconomic efforts during a time of critical international exposure.

To address these timely and salient topics, please join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies for a panel discussion that brings together leading experts and practitioners to analyze the roots and ramifications of Taiwan’s ongoing legislative turbulence. Scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Taiwan’s democratic development, legislative politics, and governance will find this discussion particularly valuable in assessing both the challenges and resilience of Taiwan’s governing institutions.

Lunch (12:00—12:30)

Roundtable Discussion (12:30—2:00)

“Digital Civic Engagement in Taiwan’s Legislative Crisis,” Ipa (Hsiao-wei) Chiu, Co-founder of g0v.tw community

Wei Ping-Li, Postdoctoral Associate, the University of Maryland, “Manufacturing Consent (or disconsent)? Disinformation and the 2025 Taiwan Budget Debate”

“A Constitutional Crisis during a Time of Global Crises,” Thomas J. Shattuck, Senior Program Manager, Perry World House

Speakers

Ipa is co-founder of g0v.tw, a civic tech community in Taiwan starting from 2012. She is a writer and documentary director. She focuses on citizen engagement and public participation for the past 12 years, with the g0v community, which promotes online collaboration through open source culture between civil society and public sectors. She will publish her second book at the end of 2024, which is about her sociologist father and the intellectual community during Taiwan’s democratization process in the 1990s.

Dr. Wei-Ping Li is a is a postdoctoral researcher at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the Taiwan Factcheck Center. Dr. Li holds a Ph.D. degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and an LL.M. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her research focuses on disinformation, fact-checking, social media content moderation, and privacy issues in the digital era. Dr. Li is admitted to the practice of law in New York State.

Thomas J. Shattuck is a Senior Program Manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. He is a 2024-25 non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum a 2024-25 non-resident Research Fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and a 2025 fellow with Atomic Anxiety in the New Nuclear Age. His research focuses on cross-Strait relations, Taiwanese and Chinese domestic and foreign affairs, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, and the US role in the Indo-Pacific. Shattuck is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, Non-Resident Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, member of Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Pacific Forum’s Young Leaders Program, where he participated in the 2022 US-Philippines Next-Generation Leaders in Security Initiative.

Moderator

[03/24/2025] NBAS: “State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border”

February 14, 2025March 25, 2025Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Monday, March 24th, 2025

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Online via Zoom

How did two Cold War-era revolutionary states—China and Vietnam—and their people collaborate and compete along their shared border? GW alumna Qingfei Yin dove into archives to unearth the intersections of grand strategy and daily life in China and Vietnam, 1949–1976.

Zoom Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82352435507?pwd=wrbxaqbTMY3qbysu0m8bRhYi96Uira.1

Passcode: 538678

Speaker

Dr. Qingfei Yin is an Assistant Professor of International History (China and the World) at LSE. As a historian of contemporary China and inter-Asian relations, her research focuses on China’s relations with its Asian neighbors, Asian borderlands, and the Cold War in Asia. She is particularly interested in how the global Cold War interacted with state-building projects in Asia. Her first book State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border (Cambridge University Press, 2024) weave together international, national, and transnational-local histories to present a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations, centering on the two modernizing revolutionary powers’ competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it. Subsequent projects are a history of China’s ocean shipping industry and the historical memory of the Sino-Vietnamese Cold War partnership in the two countries. Her research has been funded by the Association for Asian Studies China and Inner Asia Council and the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies.

Qingfei is an alumna of the LSE-Peking University Double MSc in International Affairs Programme. She studied International Politics and History at Peking University for her undergraduate degrees and completed her PhD in History at George Washington University. Before returning to LSE, she was Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Military Institute. She also serves as the Book Review Editor of Journal of Military History and on the Editorial Board of Cold War History.

Qingfei is a passionate scholar-teacher. She has been nominated for the LSESU Teaching Awards multiple times. In 2024, she is among the recipients of the LSE Excellence in Education Award.

Moderator

Gregg A. Brazinsky works on U.S.-East Asian relations and East Asian international history. He is interested in the flow of commerce, ideas, and culture among Asian countries and across the Pacific. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. He is the author of two books: Winning the Third World (2017), which focuses on Sino-American Rivalry in the Third World and Nation Building in South Korea (2007), which explores U.S.-South Korean relations during the Cold War. Currently, he is working on two other book projects. The first examines American nation-building in Asia during the Cold War. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations between 1949 and 1992 and focuses specifically on the development of cultural and economic ties between the two countries. He has received numerous fellowships to support his research including the Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Smith Richardson Foundation junior faculty fellowship, and a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Professor Brazinsky also currently serves as the director of the George Washington Cold War Group.

As director of the Asian Studies Program, Professor Brazinsky has attracted some of the brightest students from around the country and the world who share a commitment to pursuing careers related to Asia. He helped to launch a special mentoring program for Asian Studies MA students and has worked to expand fellowship and professional opportunities for students in the program.

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[02/11/2025] NBAS: “In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875-1974”

January 28, 2025February 5, 2025Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, February 11th, 2025

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM ET

Online via Zoom

In Search of Admiration and Respect examines the institutionalization of Chinese cultural diplomacy in the period between high imperialism and the international ascendance of the People’s Republic of China. During these years, Chinese intellectuals and officials tried to promote the idea of China’s cultural refinement in an effort to combat negative perceptions of the nation. Yanqiu Zheng argues that, unlike similar projects by more established powers, Chinese cultural diplomacy in this era was not carried out solely by a functional government agency; rather, limited resources forced an uneasy collaboration between the New York-based China Institute and the Chinese Nationalist government.

In Search of Admiration and Respect uses the Chinese case to underscore what Zheng calls “infrastructure of persuasion,” in which American philanthropy, museums, exhibitions, and show business had disproportionate power in setting the agenda of unequal intercultural encounters. This volume also provides historical insights into China’s ongoing quest for international recognition. Drawing upon diverse archival sources, Zheng expands the contours of cultural diplomacy beyond established powers and sheds light on the limited agency of peripheral nations in their self-representation.

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Speaker

I picture of Yanqiu Zheng looking at the camera

Yanqiu Zheng is a historian of China in the world and is the Associate Director of Asia and Pacific Programs at St. Lawrence University’s Patti McGill Peterson Center for International and Intercultural Studies. He led the China and the Global South project, supported by the Ford Foundation, at the Social Science Research Council.

Moderator

A picture of Eric Schluessel, smiling in glasses and lookin gat the camera

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. It won the 2021 John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association.

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[02/05/2025] Walking the Tightrope: The Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia

January 15, 2025February 14, 2025Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Wednesday, February 5th, 2025

9:30 AM – 3:00 PM ET

Linder Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

In May of 1965, the “Wang Gungwu Report” caused massive protests in then-Malaysian state of Singapore by recommending that Nanyang University change its language of instruction from Chinese to English. Despite significant student demonstrations, the committee accepted the recommendations. By August 9 of that year, Singapore declared itself as an independent “multicultural” state separate from Malaysia, with English enshrined as a symbol of its pluralistic model.

Wang Gungwu, in later articles, argued that diasporic Chinese in Southeast Asia should no longer accept the label Huaqiao ‘sojourner’ since it suggested a temporary status and harbored political connotations of patriotic loyalty towards China (Wang 1994). Nor should use of English be considered an alignment with the USA, as Bilahari Kausikan reminds us. In an environment defined partly by two superpowers, and partly by their own competing local interests, diasporic Chinese in Southeast Asia find themselves deploying the symbols of language, cultural identity, and political interests to walk – and “talk” – a tightrope.

We have chosen to focus on the “Malay archipelago” broadly defined – i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Philippines and southern Thailand – as a uniquely perilous context that includes not only risky territorial claims, but one that is variously framed in “civilizational” terms that make reference to long histories of Chinese, European and Middle Eastern participation in the region. This conference seeks papers that document and analyze the diverse but often precarious practices of everyday management of linguistic and cultural identities of diasporic Chinese in the Southeast Asian region.

Topics:

Chang-Yau Hoon: “Chinese Christians in Indonesia: The Interplay of Ethnicity, Religion, and Class”

Hannah Ho Ming Yit: “The Inscrutable Voices: Subjective Writing in Transnational Anglophone Chinese Bruneian Poetry”

Charlotte Setijadi: “Dreams of Singapore: Narratives and Symbolisms of Order in Chinese Indonesian Residential Enclaves”

Chong Wu Ling: “Constrained Agency: Malaysia’s Ethnic Chinese-Based Political Parties’ Attitudes Towards Independent Chinese Secondary Schools (ICSSs) and Unified Examination Certificate (UEC)”

Ravando: “Bringing Chinese Indonesian Narratives into Indonesia’s Medical History: The Role of Chinese Indonesian Doctors in Advancing Public Health System in Colonial Indonesia”

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Featured Speaker

Dédé Oetomo is an activist, independent scholar, and educator in research, education and advocacy in the fields of language and society, the Chinese diaspora, diversity in gender-sexuality, and HIV & AIDS, mainly as Founder and Trustee at GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation (www.gayanusantara.or.id), which also hosts the Coalition for Sexual & Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR; www.csbronline.org). He also serves on the Board of Indonesia AIDS Coalition. Academically, he is an adjunct senior lecturer at Universitas Airlangga, Universitas Surabaya, Widya Mandala Catholic University in Surabaya and Universitas Ciputra Surabaya, Indonesia.

Speakers

Hoon Chang Yau smiling looking into camera

Chang-Yau Hoon is Professor at the Institute of Asian Studies, and former Director of the Centre for Advanced Research, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He is also Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Honorary Director of Institute of Brunei Studies at Guangxi Minzu University, and Advisor of Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at South China Normal University. He was Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in 2023-2024. Additionally, he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Asia in Transition book series at Springer. Professor Hoon specializes in Chinese diaspora, identity politics, multiculturalism, and religious and cultural diversity in contemporary Southeast Asia. His latest books include Christianity and the Chinese in Indonesia: Ethnicity, Education and Enterprise (sole-authored, Liverpool University Press, 2023); Southeast Asia in China: Historical Entanglements and Contemporary Engagements (co-authored, Lexington Press, 2023); and Stability, Growth and Sustainability: Catalysts for Socio-economic Development in Brunei Darussalam (co-edited, ISEAS Publishing, 2023).

Hannah Ming Yit Ho is Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at the University of Brunei Darussalam. She is also a research associate at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her PhD in Asian diasporic literatures was completed at the University of York, United Kingdom. She was previously a research fellow at King’s College London and University of California, Berkeley. Her current research interests include Chinese identity in contemporary literatures of Southeast Asia. Her publications in journals include Asiatic, Kritika Kultura, Southeast Asian Review of English, Science Fiction Studies (forthcoming) and The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture. She serves as a section editor (Southeast Asia) for The Year’s Work in English Studies (Oxford University Press). She coedited Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Cultures (Springer 2021). Her forthcoming book is entitled Transnational Southeast Asia: Communities, Contestations and Cultures (2025).

Charlotte Setijadi smiling looking into camera

Charlotte Setijadi is a Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. She researches Chinese identity politics in Indonesia and Indonesian diaspora politics. Charlotte has published widely in academic journals such as the Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Survey, and Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. Her first book Memories of Unbelonging: Ethnic Chinese Identity Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia was published by University of Hawai’i Press in 2023. She is currently working on a new book project on the migration trajectories of highly-skilled Indonesian professional migrants.

Wu-Ling Chong (钟武凌) is a senior lecturer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Malaya, Malaysia. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her areas of expertise include ethnic Chinese studies and Southeast Asian politics. She is the author of Chinese Indonesians in post-Suharto Indonesia: Democratisation and ethnic minorities (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018). The book explores the role of ethnic Chinese Indonesians in shaping the democratization process as well as their position in post-Suharto Indonesia across business, politics and civil society. She is also the co-author of Kaedah penyelidikan dan panduan penulisan [Research methods and guidance for writing, in Malay] (Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Malaya Press, 2016) (with Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja and Noraini Mohamed Hassan).

Ravando is a John Legge Research Fellow in the Department of History at Monash University. He obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2023, with a thesis examining the history of Sin Po (1910–1949), the most influential and widely circulated Sino-Malay newspaper in colonial Indonesia. His research focuses on Chinese-Indonesian history, the intersection of medicine and ethnicity, and transnational health networks in Southeast Asia. He has authored five books, including his latest, Merawat Kehidupan: 100 Tahun Rumah Sakit Husada (Jang Seng Ie), which documents a century of medical care at one of Indonesia’s oldest hospitals. He is currently developing a book project based on his doctoral research.

Discussant

Margaret Scott is a journalist focusing on Southeast Asia and teaches at NYU’s Program in International Relations. She is also one of the founders of the New York Southeast Asia Network. Currently she is working on the role of Islam in Indonesian politics since 1998, and her research interests include democratic consolidation and decline, Islam, and religious actors in Southeast Asia. She writes primarily for The New York Review of Books. Scott also worked for The Far Eastern Economic Review, a magazine based in Hong Kong. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine and the Times Literary Supplement.

Moderators

Joel Kuipers is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington DC. Since 1978, he has conducted linguistic and ethnographic research in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, focusing on the relation of specialized language registers to systems of authority. He has published widely in academic journals such as American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Anthropological Quarterly, Anthropological Linguistics, Indonesia, Sapiens, Cultural Anthropology, Language in Society, and Anthropology Today. His first (U Penn 1990) and second (Cambridge 1998) books concerned ritual speech on the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba; a third about the work of anthropologist Harold C Conklin (Yale 2007), and edited volumes on discourses of science in US middle schools (2008), and cell phone use (2018). He is currently at work on a new book project that draws on his Southeast Asian work concerning the relation between speech registers and sociocultural scale.

Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media. A frequent visitor to Southeast Asia, she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized workshops 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. Her most recent book, published in 2023 by NUS Press, is called “Malaysiakini and the power of independent media in Malaysia.”

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[1/28/2025] 不亦樂乎: Foggy Bottom, Beijing, the Ways Between—and Now I’m Back?

January 14, 2025January 29, 2025Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, January 28th, 2025

12:00 – 1:30 PM ET

Chung-Wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room

Elliott School of International Affairs Suite 503

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

What strange paths make a life? Peter Rupert Lighte graduated from GW’s School of Public and International Affairs in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War protests. He went on to earn a PhD in Chinese history at Princeton in 1981. Doctorate in hand, his first port of call was academia and, then, perchance, banking. After postings in Beijing, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo, he became the founding chairman of JP Morgan Chase Bank in China. Peter has authored several books on his adventures, including Straight Through The Labyrinth: Becoming a Gay Father in China (2022) and Host of Memories: Tales of Inevitable Happenstance (2015). Join us to learn of Peter’s views on the wisdom of taking risks, considering the lessons of the past which inform our futures, the roads we know and those we dare to take.

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Panel One

A picture of Peter Lighte, smiling and looking at the camera

Peter Rupert Lighte (BA ’69), graduated from GW’s School of Public and International Affairs (now the Elliott School of International Affairs). A sinologist by training, in the early 1970s, Peter studied Chinese culture at Princeton University and subsequently taught Chinese history and philosophy to college students. In the early 1980s, he entered the world of international finance. He continued to live abroad for almost three decades, dividing his time between London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing. In Beijing, he served as the founding chairman of JP Morgan Chase Bank in China. Currently, he serves on the boards of Half the Sky Foundation and the Council on International Educational Exchange and is active in Princeton alumni affairs. He’s on the boards of Prudential Financial, the Council for International Educational Exchange, and OneSky UK. He is the author of Straight Through The Labyrinth: Becoming A Gay Father in China, Host of Memories: Tales of Inevitable Happenstance, and Pieces of China. A calligrapher, mosaicist, and needlepointer, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his husband Julian Grant, a distinguished Anglo-American composer, and Fuqi, their pooch from Beijing. Their daughters, both Barnard women, are now well out in the world.

Moderater

Professor Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. It won the 2021 John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association.

Professor Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Professor Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Schluessel has also completed a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

[01/16/2025] The Future of U.S. Policy and the Indo-Pacific

December 17, 2024March 10, 2025Archives & Recordings, High Profile EventsLeave a Comment

Thursday, January 16th, 2025

1:00 – 4:30 PM ET

The State Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

What opportunities and challenges lie ahead for the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region? This two-panel event brings together experts from the United States and Asia to discuss the future of U.S. policy and the policies of key regional players, including Korea, Japan, China, and their neighbors. As we enter a new year marked by political transitions in many capitals, the speakers will assess the foreign policy challenges and domestic political dynamics that will shape U.S. engagement and broader developments across the Indo-Pacific.

This GWIKS Korea Policy Forum is organized in partnership with GW’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies, East Asia National Resources Center, Taiwan Education and Research Program, Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, and Ritsumeikan University’s Center for East Asian Peace and Cooperation Studies.

Agenda:

Panel 1: Grand Strategy (1:00 -2:30 PM)

Youngjoo Jang, Visiting Research Fellow, Center for East Asian Peace and Cooperation Studies, Ritsumeikan University
Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, The George Washington University
Drew Arveseth, Director, Korean Peninsula and Mongolia, United States National Security Council (NSC)
Bumsoo Kim, Director, Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, Seoul National University

Break and Networking (2:30–3:00)

Panel 2: Emerging Challenges (3:00-4:30 PM)

Inwook Kim, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Sungkyunkwan University
Ilaria Mazzocco, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Prashanth Parameswaran, Global Fellow, The Wilson Center; CEO and Founder, ASEAN Wonk Global; Senior Columnist, The Diplomat
Ann Kowalewski, Senior Non-Resident Fellow, The Global Taiwan Institute
Tashi Rabgey, Research Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University

Panel One

A picture of Youngjoo Jang, smiling and looking at the camera

Dr. Youngjoo Jang is a visiting research fellow at the Center for East Asian Peace and Cooperation Studies, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. Her research interests include the U.S.-DPRK relations, the Japan-DPRK relations, and North Korea’s foreign policy over its nuclear development. She holds M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Ritsumeikan University. Her dissertation title is “The U.S.-DPRK Nuclear Agreements through Interactions of Coercive Diplomacy from 1992 to 2012.” Her recent works appear in books (in Japanese) of New Horizons of North Korean Studies (Nakato and Choi, 2023) and External Relations of North Korea (Nakato and Mori, 2023) as a chapter, in Asia-Japan Research Institute website as a review article about North Korea (2023), and in the Ristumeikan Journal of International Studies as a journal article (2019).

Robert Sutter looking ahead smiling, in suit

Professor Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University (2011-Present ). He also served as Director of the School’s main undergraduate program involving over 2,000 students from 2013-2019. He has served as Special Adviser to the Dean on Strategic Outreach (2021-present). His earlier full-time position was Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University (2001-2011).

A Ph.D. graduate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, Sutter has published 23 books (four with multiple editions), over 300 articles and several hundred government reports dealing with contemporary East Asian and Pacific countries and their relations with the United States. His most recent books are Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force, Fifth Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), US-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present, Fourth Edition (Rowman & Littlefield 2022), and Congress and China Policy: Past Episodic, Recent Enduring Influence (Lexington Books, 2024)

Sutter’s government career (1968-2001) saw service as senior specialist and director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the US Government’s National Intelligence Council, the China division director at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A picture of Drew Arveseth, smiling and looking at the camera

Drew Arveseth is the Director for the Korean Peninsula and Mongolia at the U.S. National Security Council (NSC). During his tenure on the NSC staff, he has engaged on U.S. policy issues ranging from extended deterrence, risk reduction, denuclearization, and Indo-Pacific regional security dynamics to civil-nuclear cooperation, regional development initiatives, economic security, transnational threats, and human rights. Drew played an integral role in preparations for the U.S.-ROK-Japan Camp David Trilateral as well as the State Visit of ROK President Yoon to the United States in 2023, which culminated in the release of the Washington Declaration. Prior to arriving at the NSC, he served as a U.S. Government analyst covering economic, political, and security developments on the Korean Peninsula and in the broader East Asia Pacific region. Before his national security career, Drew served with the Saejowi Initiative, an organization providing medical support and social services to DPRK defectors in the ROK. He received a Master’s in International Affairs from the George Washington University, where he focused on security in East Asia. He is a graduate of Utah State University, where he studied economics and international business.

Kim Bumsoo looking at the camera and smiling

Professor Bumsoo Kim received his B.A. and M.A. from the Department of International Relations at Seoul National University in 1992 and 1997 respectively, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2006. Since then, he has worked as a research professor in the BK Program of the Department of Political Science at Seoul National University and as a lecturer at Seoul National University, and since 2010, has been a professor in the College of Liberal Studies (CLS) at Seoul National University. In the College of Liberal Studies, he served as an associate dean twice (2012-2014 and 2017-2019), and since February 2023, has been serving as a Dean. At the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (IPUS), he served as a chief of External Relations Division, head of the Center for Unification Studies, and deputy director from 2016 to 2023, and since March 2023 has been serving as a director. He has also served as a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo and a visiting professor at the University of Washington, U.S.A. He has served as a vice president of the Korean Political Science Association, a research board member of the Korean Association of International Studies, a president of the Governance Research Association, and a consultant for university restructuring at the Ministry of Education. As of March 2023, he is a member of the Academic Council of Seoul National University and an advisory board member of the Overseas Koreans Foundation.

His main research interests include political theory such as theory of justice and freedom, human rights theory, peace theory, nationalism, and multiculturalism. He has published many books in Korean, including What Is Fairness in Korean Society: 7 Theories of Justice to Protect a Fair Me (Akanet, 2022); What Is Peace Studies: Genealogy and Issues (Seoul National University Press, 2022); Korea-Japan Relations: Beyond Conflict to Reconciliation (Parkmun Press, 2021). He has also published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, which include “Bringing Class Back In: The Changing Basis of Inequality and the Korean Minority in Japan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(5), 2008, pp. 871-898; “Are North Korean Compatriots ‘Korean’? The Trifurcation of Ethnic Nationalism in South Korea during the Syngman Rhee Era (1948-1960),” Journal of Korean Studies, 24(1), 2019, pp. 149~171; “Are the Freedom of States and International Public Laws Compatible? Kant’s Theory of Peace and the Freedom of States” Korean Journal of International Relations, 59(3), 2019, pp. 7-54. In 2009, he received the Best Article Award of the Korean Political Science Association for his article “Who Is Japanese? the Boundaries of the ‘Japanese’ in Post-War Japan,” published in Journal of the Korean Political Science Association, 43(1), pp. 177-202.

Panel Two

Professor Inwook Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Sungkyunkwan University. His main research interests include history and geopolitics of oil, politics of alliances, and the Korean Peninsula. His works have either appeared or are forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, The Pacific Review, Foreign Affairs, and others.

Professor Kim holds a PhD in Political Science from the George Washington University where he was also a research affiliate at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies (ISCS). He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) from University of Oxford and received MSc in Politics of the World Economy from London School of Economics . He is also a former recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, and previously taught at Korea Military Academy, the University of Hong Kong, and Singapore Management University.

Ilaria Mazzocco is deputy director and senior fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has over a decade of experience researching industrial policy, Chinese climate policy, and the intersection between the energy transition and economic and national security. Prior to joining CSIS, she led research on Chinese climate and energy policy for Macropolo, the Paulson Institute’s think tank. She holds a PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where her dissertation investigated Chinese industrial policy by focusing on electric vehicle promotion efforts and the role of local governments. She also holds master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins SAIS and Central European University, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Bard College. She speaks Chinese and Italian.

Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a fellow with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, where he produces analysis on Southeast Asian political and security issues, Asian defense affairs, and U.S. foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific. He is also the CEO and Founder of ASEAN Wonk Global, a research hub that produces the weekly ASEAN Wonk BulletBrief newsletter; Senior Columnist at The Diplomat, one of Asia’s leading current affairs publications; and an Advisor at BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm focused on the Indo-Pacific region. His new book, “Elusive Balances: Shaping U.S.-Southeast Asia Strategy,” published in 2022, develops and applies an original “balance of commitment” approach to examining U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia over the past half century, along with policy recommendations for future administrations.

A political scientist by training, Dr. Parameswaran is a recognized expert on Asian affairs and U.S. foreign policy in the region, with a focus on Southeast Asia and politics and security issues. He has conducted grant-based field research across the region, consulted for companies and governments, and taught courses affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State. His policy insights, research and commentary have been published widely in the United States and across the region in leading publications and journals including CNN, The Washington Post, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Asia Policy and Contemporary Southeast Asia.

Dr. Parameswaran has held roles across think tanks, government, media and business in the United States and in the region, including most recently the Foreign Service Institute and The Diplomat, where he served as senior editor. In those capacities, he advanced research and analysis on key Asian political and security trends using rigorous research methodologies and extensive in-country networks, with an emphasis on Southeast Asia.

Dr. Parameswaran holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Arts from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University focused on international security, international business and U.S. foreign policy, and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia where he studied foreign affairs and peace and conflict studies and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Ann E. Kowalewski has a decade of experience in think tank, government, and private sector on Indo-Pacific policy. Annie led the Indo-Pacific portfolio as a senior professional staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she managed legislation and oversight regarding strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), US policy towards Taiwan, alliance management, and the US diplomatic and security posture in the region. She also served as an Indo-Pacific senior policy analyst on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for three years.

Prior to serving on the Hill, Ms. Kowalewski spent four years researching Indo-Pacific issues at various think tanks. As a research associate with the American Enterprise Institute, she researched, wrote, and presented on topics to include US Indo-Pacific strategy, PRC military modernization programs, and recommendations for strengthening US defense alliances in the Indo-Pacific. She was also a China research assistant for Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies and the United States Institute of Peace.

Before her career in DC, Ms. Kowalewski served in the Scottish Parliament for two years as a parliamentary assistant working on EU case law and nuclear non-proliferation issues. She received her MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University and her LLB (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh, School of Law. She is fluent in Mandarin.

Professor Tashi Rabgey is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School where she specializes in statehood, authoritarianism and territorial politics, with a focus on multilevel governance and the politics of scale in the People’s Republic of China. She also works on constitutional and international legal issues relating to special status arrangements of asymmetric states and autonomous regions in comparative global contexts. Her primary regional focus is Tibet and Greater China, with a specialization in the Sino-Tibetan dispute. She is completing a long-term study of Chinese statehood, elite and institutional politics and Tibet’s rule and governance during China’s global rise.

At the Elliott School, she directs the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS) which convenes a Track II dialogue process with policy researchers in Beijing on state asymmetry and territorial autonomy. She is also founding director of the Tibet Governance Lab, a research platform and incubator for policy research on Tibet that provides a dynamic hub for the exchange of research, practice-driven insight and approaches to governance in contemporary Tibet.

Before joining the Elliott School, Professor Rabgey was codirector of the University of Virginia Tibet Center where she was a lecturer in contemporary Tibetan studies. She is also cofounder of Machik, a global nonprofit that has delivered strategies for Tibetan-language education, community empowerment and civic engagement in Tibet for over twenty years. She has been a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, a visiting scholar at Sichuan University and visiting professor at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr in Kurdistan (Iraq). She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as law degrees from Oxford and Cambridge where she was a Rhodes scholar.

Moderaters

Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an MA in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BA in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.

portrait of Celeste Arrington posing with arms crossed in black outfit

Professor Celeste Arrington specializes in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Her research interests include law and social change, governance, civil society, social movements, policy-making processes, lawyers, the media and politics, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in the international relations and security of Northeast Asia and transnational activism.

Her first book was Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell, 2016). She has published articles in Comparative Political Studies, Law & Society Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Law & Policy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere. With Patricia Goedde, she co-edited Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge, 2021). Her current book project analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese governance through paired case studies related to tobacco control and disability rights.

Her research has received support from numerous fellowships and programs. She is a core faculty of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and President of the Association for Korean Political Studies. GW’s Office of the Vice President for Research awarded her the 2021 Early Career Research Scholar Award.

logos for the east asia national resource center, the gw institute for korean studies, and the sigur center