Single-Speaker Seminars – Sigur Center for Asian Studies

[9/30/24] Objects in Disruption: Oppression in Thailand

September 13, 2024November 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Monday, September 30th, 2024

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons, Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

In April 2024, the US State Department released the 2023 report on the Human Rights Practices in Thailand. The report painted a grim picture of the Thai human rights situation at a critical juncture in which the then government of Srettha Thavisin failed to address the human rights problems and the monarchy continued to challenge the constitution leading to intensifying application of laws to suppress its critics. Since the release of the report, Thailand made another dangerous turn, with Srettha forced to step down, the pro-reform opposition Move Forward Party dissolved, and now with Paethongtarn Shinawatra becoming the prime minister.

This talk will focus on the human rights problems facing Thailand in a specific context of the excessive use of lèse-majesté law, or Article 112 of the Criminal Code, which forbids anyone to criticize the monarchy. Since the enthronement of King Vajiralongkorn in 2016, there has been a sharp increase of lèse-majesté cases, particularly against young activists who called for immediate reforms of the monarchy and Article 112. In May 2024, a young activist, Netiporn Sanesangkhom, charged with lèse-majesté, died in prison due to hunger strike. Her death reiterated the fact that the monarchy has remained at the heart of the Thai political crisis. Meanwhile, the new Paethongtarn government has announced that it would not support the reform of Article 112, supposedly because of its close partnership with the monarchy. The speaker will discuss the lèse-majesté situation and his own international advocacy in raising awareness of the problems of lèse-majesté law.

The speaker will also bring with him a mobile exhibition. Titled “Objects of Disruption,” this exhibition will showcase 10 images that convey the ongoing activism among Thais who have sought to “disrupt” the political status quo. The speaker has worked with a group of Thai artists in Thailand in the production of these artworks.

Speaker

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. He is also the chief editor of the online journal, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, in which all articles are translated from English into Japanese, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Filipino, Vietnamese and Burmese. In the aftermath of the coup, Pavin was summoned by the junta to have his “attitude adjusted.” He rejected the summons. As a result, a warrant was issued for his arrest and his passport revoked, forcing him to apply for a refugee with Japan. In 2021, he set up his own project “112WATCH” as an international advocacy to raise awareness of the lèse-majesté issue in Thailand and to seek global support for the reform/abolition of this law.

[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.

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.

[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.

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.”

[3/26/2024] Myanmar in Crisis: Human Rights, Regional Impacts, and Future Prospects

March 12, 2024May 14, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Chung-Wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Three years after the military seized power from Myanmar’s elected government, a wide range of armed resistance groups continue to challenge the regime’s power. Many parts of the country are no longer under the regime’s control, while 2.7 million civilians have been displaced from their homes. Neighboring countries are confronting challenges of their own as ever more Myanmar citizens attempt to flee across borders. In conversation with Christina Fink, Wai Wai Nu will discuss the human rights implications of the regime’s and resistance groups’ policies and practices, neighboring countries’ responses, and the prospects for peace and a political settlement.

RSVP today! Free lunch will be provided.

Speaker

Wai Wai Nu is the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Peace Network (WPN) and a counselor at the National Unity Consultative Council in Myanmar. She spent seven years as a political prisoner in Burma. Since her release from prison in 2012, she has devoted herself to promoting democracy and human rights. Through WPN, Wai Wai works to build peace and mutual understanding between Myanmar’s ethnic communities and aims to empower and advocate for the rights of marginalized women throughout Myanmar. To engage youth in the peacebuilding process and promote democracy education, Wai Wai founded the Yangon Youth Center, where young people from diverse backgrounds can come together to learn, share, and explore their ideas and promote leadership in social justice, political movements, and peace-building. She organized the My Friend Campaign, which involved hundreds of youth from different communities, that aimed to promote tolerance and reduce discrimination among diverse groups.

Wai Wai has been recognized as a Champion of Prevention by the United Nations Office of the Prevention of Genocide and Responsibility to Protect. She is an Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University and a Bush Institute Liberty Leadership Scholar. Wai Wai is the recipient of various awards, including the N-Peace Awards (2014), Democracy Courage Tributes, World Movement for Democracy (2015), Hillary Rodham Clinton Award (2018), City of Athens Democracy Award (2021), and International DVF Award (2021). She was also named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; among “100 Top Women,” by BBC (2014); among 100 World Thinkers, by Foreign Policy Magazine (2015); Next Generation Leader, by Time Magazine (2017); Women of the Year, Financial Times (2018).

Wai Wai obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Yangon in Myanmar and her Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from UC Berkeley’s School of Law. In recent years, she was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center.

Discussant

Christina Fink joined the Elliott School in 2011 as an associate professor in the International Development Studies Program. Since 2022, she has also been serving as the Director of the BA and BS in International Affairs Program.

She received her B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.

She has combined research, teaching, and international development work throughout her career. Primarily based in mainland Southeast Asia from 1995-2010, her full-time positions and program evaluation consultancies addressed civil society capacity building in Myanmar with particular attention to gender and social inclusion, and political, economic, and social reforms. During this time, she also wrote Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (Zed Books: 1st edition 2001, 2nd edition 2009) and served as a lecturer and program associate at the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Thailand.

In recent years she has contributed to the development of the GenderPro capacity-building and credentialing program run by GW’s Global Women’s Institute in partnership with UNICEF. She also served on the United States Institute of Peace senior study group on Myanmar which produced two reports: China’s Role in Burma’s Internal Conflicts (2018) and Anatomy of the Military Coup and Recommendations for the US Response (2022).Her latest publications have addressed the position of religious and ethnic minorities in Myanmar, anti-Muslim violence and the role of Facebook, and the many facets of civil society engagement in development in Myanmar.

Moderator

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

[2/28/24] Southeast Asia’s Place in the US-China Competition

February 20, 2024March 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Chung-Wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Many Southeast Asian nations have found themselves caught between the United States and China as tensions continue to increase between the two states. The region’s key military and economic positions have only served to intensify that pressure. The decisions that these countries will make will undoubtedly have global impacts felt around the world. Prof. William M. Wise, the Chair of the Southeast Asia Forum, and Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran from the Woodrow Wilson Center will discuss the complicated position that these countries face as well as the interests the United States and China have within the region.

Join the Sigur Center and the Southeast Asia Forum as we discuss the role that Southeast Asia will play and its impacts on US-China relations. RSVP today! Free lunch will be provided.

Speaker

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.

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.

Moderator

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

[1/12/24] AI Technology for Tibetan Language Preservation: A Tibetan Monk’s Harnessing of AI for Advancing Tibetan Language Use

January 5, 2024February 23, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Friday, January 12, 2024

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Dr. Geshe Lobsang Monlam is a pioneer in Tibetan information technology. In this seminar, he will introduce the recently-launched and groundbreaking Monlam Artificial Intelligence. This will be set in the context of the broader work of the Monlam Information Technology Research Centre. Geshe Monlam will discuss recent changes in Tibetan language and education preservation, while providing insight into the future of Tibetan-language artificial intelligence.

About the Speaker:

A picture of Geshe Monlam, smiling and looking at the camera

Geshe Lobsang Monlam, PhD, CEO and Founder of Monlam IT Research Centre

Geshe Lobsang Monlam is a Buddhist scholar, lexicologist and leading innovator of Tibetan information technology. Born in Trosig Ngaba, Tibet, Geshe Monlam completed his Buddhist studies at Sera Mey Monastery in India before becoming a renowned figure in the field of Tibetan lexicology. His Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary has 223 volumes in print version. He has developed and released over 37 Tibetan language applications, available on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS. His Monlam Dictionary App has been downloaded by millions worldwide. He earned a PhD in Library Science in 2023. In November 2023, Geshe Monlam launched the groundbreaking Monlam Tibetan AI.

About the Moderator:

Tashi Rabgey, in black shirt against dark grey background

Tashi Rabgey is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School where she directs the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS) and the Tibet Governance Lab. Her primary research focuses on territorial politics, asymmetric governance and problems of contemporary statehood in the People’s Republic of China. Before joining the Elliott School, Professor Rabgey was a faculty member of the University of Virginia East Asia Center where she was co-director of the University of Virginia Tibet Center. She held a lectureship in contemporary Tibetan studies and taught in comparative politics and global development studies. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as law degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. Following her LL.M. in public international law, she pursued advanced studies in comparative Chinese law at the Center for Asian Legal Studies at Faculty of Law of University of British Columbia. She is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and was Visiting Professor at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr in Iraqi Kurdistan.

[1/11/24] Uyghur Heritage, Chinese Tourism, and the “Xinjiang Dance” Craze

January 5, 2024February 23, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Thursday, January 11, 2024

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

In parks and town squares across China in 2023, Chinese people engaged in a nationwide “Xinjiang dance” craze. For outside observers, this might seem a bizarre development following the discourses of terrorism and mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in recent years, but it aligned neatly with new initiatives across Chinese government, media and heritage to promote tourism in the Uyghur region. In this talk, Rachel Harris highlights the ways that Uyghur heritage, music and dance are now being used to rewrite the history of the region and the future of its peoples, thinking through the aesthetic formations and imaginaries of Uyghur heritage, and the links between tourism and territory, colonialism and desire.

About the Speaker:

A picture of Rachel Harris, smiling and looking at the camera

Rachel Harris is Professor of Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on musical life, religious and expressive culture among the Uyghurs, and heritage and tourism in China. Her latest book Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam (Indiana University Press 2020) won the 2022 BFE book prize. Recent projects include a British Academy Sustainable Development Project to revitalize Uyghur cultural heritage in Kazakhstan, and the European Research Council Advanced Grant, Maqām Beyond Nation.

About the 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.

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 is also completing 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 as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

9/14/23 | Faces of Victims of 112

August 24, 2023March 19, 2024Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Thursday, September 14, 2023

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

This exhibition is initiated by the Thai human rights group, 112WATCH, and is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. It aims to inform the public about the impact of lèse-majesté law on the lives of individuals. Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, which states that defamatory, insulting, or threatening comments about the king, queen, and regent are punishable and is liberally interpreted by the courts, is among the strictest in the world, with penalties ranging from three to fifteen years in prison. There are many civilians have been targeted by the lèse-majesté law, being criminalized, unable to return home, and forced to become a refugee. In the past years, there has been an increase in the number of Thai youths, charged by lèse-majesté law. Some have faced the consequences within Thailand, while some fled the country. Their fate is uncertain.

This mobile exhibition is part of a journey of the exhibition series in Northern America, the main exhibition will take place at Columbia University from September 18th to 25th. The Sigur Center will be hosting part of the exhibition on Thursday, September 14th from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm in Lindner Family Commons. It will present a reflection on the lèse-majesté law on the life of Thai activists in Thailand, in prison, and in exile. It tells the stories beyond the impact on members of the society, but also on an individual basis. What do they think about the law? How do they feel being in the position of an enemy of the state? What is their view on the lèse-majesté law? And what kind of support do they need from the international community?

As part of the event, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University and the founder of 112WATCH will discuss the future of the 112 following the recent Thai election. He will also explore the potential for both Thai and international communities to effect positive policy change concerning Article 112 in Thailand. Please join the Sigur Center and 112WATCH for this special discussion and exhibition!

For more information about 112Watch: https://112watch.org/

Speaker

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is an Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. His research interests include Thailand’s domestic political and international relations, particularly the role of the Thai monarchy in the political domain. He is also a chief editor of the online journal Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia in which all articles are translated from English into Japanese, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Filipino, Vietnamese and Burmese. Pavin is the author and editor of several books. His forthcoming manuscript is tilted “Rama X: The Thai Monarchy under King Vajiralongkorn,” to be published by Yale Southeast Asia Studies and released this winter. After the coup of 2014, Pavin was twice summoned by the Thai military for his critical comments on its political intervention. Denying the legitimacy of the coup, Pavin rejected the summons. Shortly afterward, a warrant was issued for his arrest and his passport was revoked. This situation forced him to apply for refugee status with Japan. Pavin received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He earned his BA from the Department of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

A graphic for Introducing the Fraudulent Power Model

[1/26/2023] Introducing the Fraudulent Power Model: The Unquestioned Power Behind Corporate Crimes in Japan

December 13, 2022February 28, 2023Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Thursday, January 26, 2023

7:00 PM – 8:30 PM ET

Online via Zoom

As corporate fraud can pose serious problems for firms’ stakeholders and employees, the public, and society, fraud prevention is important on the global agenda. Unlike street crimes, corporate crimes happen due to power rather than personal motives (Stoddard, 1968; Maric et al., 2010). Hence, what are the types of power and the mechanisms that make employees violate the law, even when they know that such actions might deprive them of all they have built up to that point? Previous research has examined this power dynamic between two individuals (Albrecht et al., 2015; Kraus et al., 2018; Schnatterly et al., 2018), but few studies have comprehensively considered the power mechanism among multiple stakeholders involved in organisational crimes. Therefore, this study examined 133 corporate crimes in Japan to identify the power types and mechanisms behind them.

Specifically, the study analysed 133 third-party committee fraud reports written by third-party lawyers during 2015–2020 using grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Locke, 2001). The resulting fraudulent power model identified 10 types of power grouped into four core categories: formal, informal, norm, and neglect power. Norm and neglect power were newly identified. Norm power is perceived by employees as a forced norm; therefore, they naturally follow it, resulting in fraud. Examples include sales/profit supremacy, excessive error-free policy, non-intervention, and blind obedience to customers’ requests. Neglect happens due to organisational malfunctions, leaders’ negligence, and intentional silence.

This study makes two contributions to the literature. First, it identified 10 types of power grouped into four core categories as an empirically grounded framework, adding to the research on fraud models and organisational power. Second, firms can refer to these types of power in practice as fraud risk indicators to assess their status quo and take preventive measures to address latent fraud causes.

Registration is free and open to the public.

This event will be recorded and will be available on the Sigur Center YouTube channel after the event.

Agenda

7pm-7:05: Welcome and Introduction of Speakers

7:05-7:30: Presentation

7:30-7:45: Discussant comment

7:45-50: Response from Takaoka to Endo

7:50-8:20: Open to the audience for Q&A

8:20: Closing remarks

Speaker

Dr. Asuka Takaoka is a Professor at the Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University in Tokyo. Currently, she is an affiliated visiting scholar of the sociology department at George Washington University. Previously, she was Associate Professor at GLOBIS University, after obtaining her D.B.A. from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Her research focuses on corporate governance, particularly white-collar crimes and business ethics. Her recent research was accepted by the Global Consortium in the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, and she presented her papers at the 2022/2021 Annual Meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Presently, she is writing books regarding CEO nomination building her business and leadership experience. Prior to her academic career, she has a wealth of consulting experience spanning the globe. For the past 13 years, she has worked at the Frankfurt and Tokyo offices of McKinsey & Company, followed by executive assessment consulting in London and Tokyo. Most recently, she has taken the regional role in Asia for the assessment business at Willis Towers Watson.

Discussant

Dr. Takahiro Endo joined the University of Victoria as Associate Professor at Peter B Gustavson Business School and Jarislowsky CAPI Chair in East Asia (Japan) in September, 2021. Previously, he was Associate Professor at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and Kobe University after completing a two-year postdoctoral research position at Cardiff University. He obtained Ph.D. from Cardiff University, Wales, UK and MA and BA from Hitotsubashi University. He has been a research fellow at Kobe University, RIEB (Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration) and a governing board member at King’s College London’s FinWork Future Research Centre. His scholarly interests lie in the translation of sustainability ideas and practice in business and management, legal structure and business organizations, commensuration processes and their impacts, and innovation and invention of tradition. As the principal investigator, he has conducted two JSPS (Japanese Society for Promoting Science) funded research projects examining corporate lobbying and its impacts in traditional and new economic sectors. Moreover, he has joined several inter-disciplinary and internationally funded projects examining the translation of renewable energy, commensuration in higher education, and gender issues in professional service firm

Moderator

portrait of Hiromi Ishizawa in white shirt

Professor Hiromi Ishizawa is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Chair of the Department of Sociology at the George Washington University. 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.