This event will bring together experts on social movements in China and Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Korea. It will open with a presentation by Wasserstrom, a China specialist, who will highlight how activists fighting for change in different parts of Asia have learned from and collaborated with one another during the past century and beyond. He will argue that, for over a century, repertoires of resistance in Asia have not only been flowing across national boundaries but also regional distinctions often used by scholars, with East Asian movements influencing Southeast Asian ones and vice versa. Focusing on recent events in Hong Kong and Bangkok, he will emphasize that, even in this era of rapid global flows, while today's young activists, versed in digital media, sometimes draw inspiration from occurrences and symbols in distant places, they are frequently most influenced by developments happening closer to home. Following Wasserstrom's presentation, Weiss and Shin — specialists in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia respectively — will join the conversation.

This event is part of our Contemporary Asia Seminar Series. This series hosts professionals in the fields of public and foreign policy, journalism, and academia who share their perspectives on pressing issues facing Asia today.

Speakers: 

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine. The author of books such as  Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (2020), his new book will deal with protests in Bangkok and Burma as well as Hong Kong. It is titled The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing and will be published by Columbia Global Reports in 2025.

Meredith Weiss is Professor of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), inaugural Director of the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC), and currently a Lee Kong Chian NUS–Stanford fellow. Her work addresses mobilization, identity, and civil society; electoral politics and parties; institutional reform; and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Singapore.
 

Moderator:

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, a professor of sociology, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. At Stanford, he has also served as director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005 and as founding director of the Korea Program since 2001. His research concentrates on nationalism, development, and international relations, focusing on Korea/Asia.

Shin is the author/editor of more than 25 books, including South Korea’s Democracy in Crisis: The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization; The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security; Global Talent: Foreign Labor as Social Capital in Korea; and One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, 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 committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political challenges in Asia through interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. He also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC in May 2024.

Shin previously taught at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a BA from Yonsei University and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington.