Archives & Recordings – Page 3 – Sigur Center for Asian Studies

[9/11/24] Okinawa’s Subnational Diplomacy: Promoting Cooperation and Preventing Conflict in East Asia

September 3, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & Recordings, High Profile EventsLeave a Comment

Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

4:00 PM – 5:15 PM ET

State Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

and Online

The security and economic environment surrounding Okinawa is becoming more uncertain and worrisome. In response, the Okinawa Prefectural Government recently launched its Subnational Diplomacy initiative to promote cooperation and prevent conflict in East Asia. Governor Denny Tamaki of Okinawa will discuss the basic thinking behind this Subnational Diplomacy, some of the concrete steps taken thus far, and the prospects for the future. Then a panel of prominent experts on Japan, international relations, and security policy will comment on Governor Tamaki’s remarks and assess the opportunities and constraints that Okinawa faces to develop and exert its influence in shaping the regional environment.

Speakers

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

Governor Denny Tamaki was first elected as Governor of Okinawa in October 2018 and was re-elected again in September 2022 to serve another four-year term. He was a member of the House of Representatives of Japan from 2009 to 2018 (4 terms). Prior to that, he was a member of the Okinawa City Assembly from 2002 to 2005. He graduated from Sophia School of Social Welfare. He was born in Okinawa in 1959.

Sheila A. Smith is John E. Merow senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, she is the author of Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (released in Japanese as 日中親愛なる宿敵: 変容する日本政治と対中政策), and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance. She is also the author of the CFR interactive guide Constitutional Change in Japan. Smith is a regular contributor to the CFR blog Asia Unbound and a frequent contributor to major media outlets in the United States and Asia.

Dr. Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities. Kavanagh’s research examines U.S. military strategy, force structure and defense budgeting, the defense industrial base, and U.S. military interventions. Her most recent projects have focused on U.S. defense policy in Asia and the Middle East. Previously, Kavanagh was a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She also worked as a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where, among other roles, she served as director of RAND’s Army Strategy program. Her work has been published in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Washington Quarterly, Lawfare, Los Angeles Times, and War on the Rocks, among other outlets. Kavanagh received an AB in Government from Harvard University and a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Michigan. She is also an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

Professor Mochizuki holds the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr. Mochizuki was director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 2001 to 2005. He co-directs the “Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific” research and policy project of the Sigur Center. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was also Co-Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at RAND and has taught at the University of Southern California and Yale University.

[9/17/24] Deconstructing Racism “Denial” in Asia

September 3, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, September 17th, 2024

1:15 PM – 3:00 PM ET

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Join us for a focused discussion on research from the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), exploring the critical intersection of racism and nationalism in Asian contexts. As Asia becomes increasingly central to the global economy and culture, it faces significant challenges, including rising inequality, cultural intolerance, and institutional shortcomings. SNAPL is committed to addressing these issues through interdisciplinary, evidence-based, and policy-relevant research. This event will highlight SNAPL’s discourse analysis of reports submitted by 16 Asian countries to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The research investigates how race and racism are conceptualized in these reports, uncovering patterns of “denial” and exploring how these perspectives align with or diverge from those in other global contexts. The discussion will also examine how historical identities and dominant social, political, and religious values shape national understandings of race in Asia. We aim to foster a deeper understanding of racism, often underdiscussed in the region, and promote the critical dialogue necessary for building a socially and culturally mature “Next Asia.” Two distinguished discussants—Dr. Hiromi Ishizawa from George Washington University and Dr. Erin Aeran Chung from Johns Hopkins University—will join us to share their insights, ensuring a lively and engaging conversation on these pressing issues.

Speakers

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology; senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005; and the founding director of the Korea Program since 2001, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

Shin is the author/editor of twenty-five books and numerous articles. His recent books include Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy from Asia (2020); Strategic, Policy and Social Innovation for a Post-Industrial Korea: Beyond the Miracle (2018); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Asia’s Middle Powers? (2013); Troubled Transition: North Korea’s Politics, Economy, and External Relations (2013); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia (2006); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin’s latest book, Talent Giants in the Asia-Pacific Century, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India, will be published by Stanford University Press in 2025. In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. In May 2024, Shin also launched the new Taiwan Program at APARC.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea’s foreign relations and historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia and to talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before coming to Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Junki Nakahara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), housed within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Her research interests include nationalism and xenophobia, critical and cultural studies, feminist (digital) media studies, and postcolonial/decolonial international relations. She earned her PhD in Communication from the School of Communication (2023) and an MA in Intercultural and International Communication from the School of International Service (2019), both at American University. Her publications include contributions to New Media & Society, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, and Discourse Approaches to an Emerging Age of Populism (edited by I. Íñigo-Mora & Lastres-López).

As an inaugural member of SNAPL, she leads the “Nationalism and Racism” research track, focusing on two major projects: (1) Racism “Denial” in Asian State Party Reports to the UN CERD, and (2) Elite Articulation of “Multiculturalism” in Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis and computational textual analysis, the team examines how nationalism and racism intertwine to create various forms of suppression and intolerance across the Asia-Pacific region, where entanglements among race, ethnicity, nation, and postcoloniality complicate the related debates.

About the Discussants

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.

Erin Aeran Chung is the Charles D. Miller Professor of East Asian Politics and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She previously served as founding co-director of the Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship (RIC) Program and director of the East Asian Studies Program at Hopkins, and as co-president of the APSA Migration and Citizenship Section.

Professor Chung specializes in East Asian political economy, comparative citizenship and migration politics, civil society, and comparative racial politics. She is the author of Immigration and Citizenship in Japan (Cambridge, 2010, 2014; Japanese translation, Akashi Shoten, 2012) and Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies (Cambridge, 2020), which received the 2021 ASA Asia and Asian America Section Transnational Asia Book Award, Honorable Mention for the 2021 APSA Migration & Citizenship Section Book Award, and the 2021 Research Excellence Award from the Korea Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea. She was awarded a five-year grant from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) to support the completion of her third book project on Korean Diasporic Citizenship: Three Tales of Political (Dis)Incorporation in the United States, Japan, and China.

Professor Chung is currently serving as co-editor of the Politics and Society of East Asia Elements series at Cambridge University Press and as founding co-director of the Initiative on Critical Responses to Anti-Asian Violence (CRAAV) at Hopkins. She has been a Mansfield Foundation U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Program Scholar, an SSRC Abe Fellow at the University of Tokyo and Korea University, an advanced research fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and a Japan Foundation fellow at Saitama University. At Hopkins, Professor Chung teaches undergraduate courses on Japanese, Korean, East Asian, and Asian American politics and graduate courses on civil society, citizenship and immigration politics, the political economy of development, democratization, and comparative racial politics.

[9/3/24] China’s Belt and Road and the Global South – Importance Today

August 16, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

China’s growing ambitions in the so-called Global South center on Beijing’s Belt and Road and related policy initiatives. A team of four European experts on these matters is visiting Washington led by Professor Dominik Mierzejewski of the University of Lodz, a widely published scholar well known for on-the-ground assessments of China’s Belt and Road efforts throughout the Global South and Europe. He and his team will offer their findings on recent in-person investigations in eight countries: Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Kenya, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, and Thailand.

Sigur Center Director and Professor Eric Schluessel will serve as discussant.

Speakers

Dominik Mierzejewski is the head of the Centre for Asian Affairs (a university-based think-tank) and Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of International and Political Studies at the University of Lodz. His research focuses on the rhetoric of Chinese diplomacy, the PRC’s political transformation, and the provinces’ role in Chinese foreign policy. He is the author of China’s Provinces and the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge 2021).

A picture of Jaroslaw Jura smiling and looking at the camera

Jarosław Jura is an Assistant Professor at Lazarski University (Warsaw, Poland). His research interests focus primarily on Chinese expansion in Africa and social sciences methodology. He has conducted field research in Angola, Zambia, Kenya, Sudan, and China.

A picture of Bartosz Kowalski smiling and looking at the camera

Bartosz Kowalski is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of International and Political Studies, Poland, and a researcher at its Centre for Asian Affairs at the University of Lodz. His research focuses on China’s foreign policy, relations between China and Central Europe, and the modern political history of Xinjiang.

Mario Esteban Rodrigez smiling and looking at the camera

Mario Esteban Rodriguez is a Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute and Senior Lecturer at the Centre for East Asian Studies of the Autonomous University of Madrid. His research focuses on China’s foreign aid in the Global South and China’s relations with the European Union.

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. He is the Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center, and an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs. 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. Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellon Fellow 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.

Taiwan Relations @45 Years and Counting

April 19, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & Recordings, Taiwan RoundtablesLeave a Comment

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.

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

April 10, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

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.

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

April 9, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

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

A graphic with the title of the event and date

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

April 9, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

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.

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

April 8, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & Recordings, High Profile EventsLeave a Comment

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.”

[Gaston Sigur Memorial Lecture] The Future of American Policy Towards Southeast Asia

March 26, 2024May 31, 2024Archives & Recordings, Gaston Sigur Memorial Lecture2 Comments

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

City View Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The lecture will analyze broad trends in the US approach towards Southeast Asia and the drivers of these trends in the context of global and regional developments. These developments include, but are not confined to, US-China strategic competition. It will suggest that American policy towards Southeast Asia and the region’s responses may offer clues towards the development of the broader Indo-Pacific.

Read the Text of the Speech Here

Speaker

Bilahari Kausikan is a Singaporean academic and retired diplomat. He was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the former ambassador to the UN and Russia. Bilahari is currently Chairman of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.

Bilahari Kausikan joined the civil service in 1981. He was appointed as Singapore’s ambassador to the newly formed Russian Federation in 1994, and subsequently as ambassador to the United Nations (1995 – 1998). Bilahari was appointed Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001, and promoted to Permanent Secretary in 2010.

After a 37-year career in Singapore’s foreign relations, Bilahari is known to speak his mind about the issues confronting the country and the wider region. He believes the civil service has become too accommodative and argues that ‘when you are polite, nothing gets done.’ He has called for Singapore to be more muscular in its own delicate diplomatic relations, saying that true neutrality means ‘knowing your own interests, taking positions based on your own interests and not allowing others to define your interests for you by default’. Furthermore, he warns of the danger of passivity in relation to the current US-China split, saying there is no ‘sweet spot’ to keep both the Chinese and Americans ‘happy’.

Bilahari studied political science at the University of Singapore before receiving a scholarship to embark on a PhD in international relations at Columbia University. However, he decided against an academic career and returned to Singapore to join the Foreign Ministry. He is the author of Singapore is Not an Island: Views on Singapore Foreign Policy (2017).

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.

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[3/27/24] NBAS: “The Ripple Effect: China’s Complex Presence in Southeast Asia”

March 14, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Lindner Family Commons, Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Many studies of China’s relations with and influence on Southeast Asia tend to focus on how Beijing has used its power asymmetry to achieve regional influence. Yet, scholars and pundits often fail to appreciate the complexity of the contemporary Chinese state and society, and just how fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized China is today. In The Ripple Effect, Enze Han argues that a focus on the Chinese state alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of China’s influence in Southeast Asia. Instead, we must look beyond the Chinese state, to non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants. These actors affect people’s perception of China in a variety of ways, and they often have wide-ranging as well as long-lasting effects on bilateral relations. Looking beyond the Chinese state’s intentional influence reveals many situations that result in unanticipated changes in Southeast Asia.

Speaker

Enze Han is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2019), Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China (Oxford University Press, 2013), and various articles appearing in International Affairs, World Development, The China Quarterly, Security Studies, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies among many others. During 2015-2016, he was a Friends Founders’ Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, United States. Dr. Han received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University, and he was also a postdoctoral research fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University.

Moderator

Bruce Dickson speaking at a podium during an event

Professor Bruce Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993.

Professor Dickson’s research and teaching focus on political dynamics in China, especially the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it governs. In addition to courses on China, he also teaches on comparative politics and authoritarianism.

His current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving strategy for survival, and the changing relationship between state and society. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.