Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Responsiveness in the Shadow of Repression: Vietnam and China Compared

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A regime that is responsive to social unrest is one that takes steps to address social grievances and demands, rather than solely suppressing them. The distinction cannot be applied to authoritarian regimes if they are never responsive and always repressive. But that categorical description does not fit the behavior of the self-described communist regimes in Vietnam and China. When facing public protests triggered by official land seizures, both party-states have sometimes behaved responsively.  But not in the same manner or to the same extent.

Dr. Truong will show how and explain why, despite their many similarities, compared with China, Vietnam has been more responsive, and its responsiveness has been more institutionalized. Drawing on 16 months of field research in the two countries, she will make two arguments rooted in the differing histories of the two countries: In Vietnam, a more responsive party-state was forged in a crucible of accommodation and constraint that distinctively affected the political trajectories of the party and the state.  In China, the party-state’s path to power was riddled with confrontations and the dominance of elite over societal interests. 

Democracies and democratic values are being widely challenged in Asia today. It is accordingly vital that academics and policymakers develop a more nuanced and contextual understanding of authoritarian regimes and their institutional histories and dynamics, including their different ways of dealing with societal pressures. Dr. Truong’s talk and the discussion to follow should serve that goal.

Truong photo 4X4
Nhu Truong’s doctoral dissertation, which was nominated for four awards, compares balances of repression and responsiveness under authoritarian rule in historical context in Southeast and Northeast Asia. As a Stanford fellow, she is revising the study for publication. Other writings by her have appeared in the Journal of East Asian Studies and Problems on Communism and in edited books such as Stateness and Democracy in East Asia and State of Land in the Mekong Region. In 2020, as a fellow of the Southeast Asia Research Group, she presented her research at scholarly conferences in political science and Asian studies. Her policy-related activities have included evaluating decentralization in Cambodia for the Asia Foundation, and researching US arms sales to Taiwan for the EastWest Institute. She has a PhD in political science (McGill University), an MPA in public administration (New York University), and an MA in Asian studies (University of Texas at Austin). She will be a Postdoctoral Associate in the Council for Southeast Asian Studies and the Council for East Asian Studies at Yale University in 2021 and an Assistant Professor at Denison University in 2022. 

Haggard photo 4X4
Stephan Haggard is the Krause Distinguished Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. His publications on international political economy include The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000); Developmental States (2018); and Pathways from the Periphery: The Newly Industrializing Countries in the International System (1990). His work with Robert Kaufman on transitions to and from democratic rule includes Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World (Cambridge 2021); Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change (2016); Democracy, Development and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, Eastern Europe (2008); and The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995). His work on North Korea with Marcus Noland includes Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements and the Case of North Korea (2017); Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011); Famine in North Korea (2007); and a blog, Witness to Transformation (2017-19). He currently writes for the The Peninsula, a blog about Korea. His PhD and MA in political science are from the University of California, Berkeley.

Vu photo 4X4
Tuong Vu has been on the faculty of the University of Oregon since 2008 and has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and the National University of Singapore. He is a former co-editor in chief of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and the founding director of the US-Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon. His research has focused on the comparative politics of state formation, revolutions, nationalism, and communism in Northeast and Southeast Asia, and more recently, on Vietnam’s modern history and politics. He is the author and co-editor of six books and numerous journal articles and book chapters. Among his recent and forthcoming books are The Republican Era in Vietnam’s Modern History, vol. 1: From the Idea to the First Republic (1920-1963) (Hawaii, forthcoming), co-edited with Nu-Anh Tran; The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (Cornell, 2020), coedited with Sean Fear; and Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge, 2017). He has a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MPA (Master in Public Affairs) from Princeton University. 

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Register: https://bit.ly/3y9E8Yd

Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Stephan Haggard Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego
Tuong Vu Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Director, Southeast Asia Program, Stanford University
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Biden’s America through Southeast Asian Eyes: Problem? Solution? Neither? Both?

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This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's spring webinar series "The United States in the Biden Era: Views from Asia."

When this webinar is held, Joe Biden’s presidency will be exactly three months old. Enough time to allow for the evaluation of his administration, its policies, and his country by observers around the world, including in Southeast Asia. Ms. Ha will share and interpret the findings of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s latest annual survey of elite Southeast Asian opinions regarding the United States and other nations, which she co-led and co-wrote up with ISEAS colleagues.  Professor Liow will will share some observations on regional views on the Biden administration thus far, focusing on its evolving approach to the region .  Regional impressions and judgments of America now and prior to Biden’s term will also be contrasted, alongside the changing reputations of other countries such as China and Japan.  Policy implications will be drawn as well, especially in light of the unfolding political crisis in Myanmar.

Hoang Thi Ha 4X4
Hoang Thi HA is Fellow and Lead Researcher on Political-Security Affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Her research focuses on political-security issues within ASEAN, including the South China Sea disputes, ASEAN human rights cooperation, ASEAN's relations with the major powers and ASEAN's institutional building. Ms. Hoang worked at the ASEAN Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam and the ASEAN Secretariat before joining ISEAS. She holds an MA in International Relations from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

Joseph Liow 4X4
Joseph Chinyong Liow is Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics, and Research Advisor and former Dean at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He held the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, where he was also a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program.

Joseph’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Joseph is the author, co-author, or editor of 14 books, has testified before the U.S. Congress, and has extensive teaching and consultancy experience. He sits on several editorial boards and governing boards of think tanks, and on the Social Science Research Council of Singapore.

 

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Register: https://bit.ly/2PWPv4z

Hoang Thi HA Fellow and Lead Researcher on Political-Security Affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore
Joseph Chinyong Liow Tan Kah Kee Chair Professor and Dean, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University and Research Advisor, Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore
Seminars

The Crisis in Myanmar: Repression, Resistance, Repercussions

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Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan

Shocking events obliterate context.  The coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021 is a case in point.  Who could imagine the cruelty of the Burmese generals who on February 1st 2021 grabbed power and proceeded to retain it by arresting thousands and murdering hundreds of its local opponents?  Who expected that on February 2nd the country’s youth would launch a nonviolent Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and keep it going and growing against such massively intimidating odds?  In this webinar, two experts will provide the essential but all too often missing contexts—current and historical, domestic and foreign, political and socioeconomic—within which the crisis can be understood, its future projected, and its implications assessed.  To those ends, the on-the-ground knowledge, personal experience, and close observer’s insights of Burmese scholar Moe Thuzar will interact with the insights of American professor David Steinberg based on his Burmese experiences and scholarship dating back into the 20th century.

The webinar will consider in particular what the coup and its aftermath may imply for Southeast Asia and its relations with China.  Relevant in that regard is the involvement of all four panel members in a recent collection, The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century—Steinberg and Ciorciari as authors, Emmerson as editor, and ­­Thuzar as an analyst who is using the book in her own research. 

David I Steinberg 4X4
David I. Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies Emeritus, Georgetown University, where he directed its Asian studies program (1997-2007). Other positions he has held include the presidency of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs and Southeast Asia-related US foreign-policy posts as a member of the Senior Foreign Service. He has also represented The Asia Foundation in South Korea, Burma, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C.  His 15 books and monographs include one translation, more than 150 articles, and several hundred op-eds.. Among these books are: Myanmar: The Dynamics of an Evolving Polity (ed., 2015); Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (2013, 2nd edition); Modern China-Myanmar Relations: Dilemmas of Mutual Dependence (with Fan Hongwei, 2012); Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar (2006); Burma: The State of Myanmar (2001); and Burma’s Road to Development (1981). His expertise includes the two Koreas, about which he has written widely. Professor Steinberg was educated at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Harvard University, Darmouth College, and Lingnan University in Canton (now Guangzhou), China.

Moe Thuzar 4X4
Moe Thuzar joined the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 2008. Her responsibilities there have included managing or co-managing its Myanmar Studies Programme, serving as a lead researcher in its ASEAN Studies Centre, and helping the Centre engage with Myanmar regarding its turn to chair ASEAN in 2014. She spent the 2019-2020 academic year as a Fox International Fellow at Yale University's MacMillan Center researching the socio-cultural underpinnings of Burma’s Cold War foreign policy for her National University of Singapore PhD. Earlier she worked for a decade at the ASEAN Secretariat, where she headed its Human Development Unit. Her many publications include, as co-author, the 2020 and 2019 editions of ISEAS’s widely read State of Southeast Asia: Survey Report. Other recent writing includes chapters and articles in ASEAN-EU Partnerships: The Untold Story (ed., 2020); the Journal of Southeast Asian Economies (2019); Southeast Asian Affairs (ed., 2019); Human Security Norms in East Asia (ed., 2019); and, as co-author, ASEAN’s Myanmar Dilemma (with Lex Rieffel, 2018). Earlier works include Myanmar: Life After Nargis (with Pavin Chachavalpongpun, 2009).

Co-moderated by John Ciorciari, Director, Weiser Diplomacy Center, University of Michigan, and Donald K. Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Program, Stanford University

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David I. Steinberg Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies Emeritus, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Moe Thuzar Fellow and Co-coordinator, Myanmar Studies Programme, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore
John Ciorciari Moderator Director, Weiser Diplomacy Center, University of Michigan

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Moderator Director, Southeast Asia Program, Stanford University
Seminars

Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia

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Few American diplomats can match the years of experience in multiple Southeast Asian countries that Ambassador Scot Marciel has accumulated during his career in the US Foreign Service. The book he is writing at Stanford will interpret the region and its relations with the United States historically and now. Policy questions from the manuscript that the webinar will address include: Can America’s relations with Thailand be reinvigorated, and if so, how? Why have US-Vietnam relations prospered, and with what prospects going forward? Realistically, what can be expected from relations between the US and Indonesia? How should the recent coup in Myanmar be understood and how does it challenge US foreign policy? More broadly, in the near term, what priority ends and means should inform US engagement with Southeast Asia? In exploring answers to these and other questions, Amb. Marciel will interact with a second distinguished speaker, Catharin Dalpino, who is uniquely well qualified to discuss these matters based on her extensive experience in US policymaking positions, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations related to Southeast Asia.

Scott Marciel
Scot Marciel is a career US Foreign Service Officer. He served as America’s Ambassador to Myanmar in 2016-2020 when thousands of ethnic Rohingya were killed, expelled, or emigrated from the country—a challenging time for its democratic transition and for US-Myanmar relations. Earlier assignments included tours as Ambassador to Indonesia, Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he worked as an editor of publications at the National Center for Export-Import Studies at Georgetown University. Ambassador Marciel’s more than 35 years of experience as a diplomat in Asia and around the world have also included assignments in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. His degrees are an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a BA in International Relations from the University of California, Davis.

catharin dalphino
Catharin Dalpino’s remarkable career has encompassed academe, government, and NGOs. At Georgetown University she taught Southeast Asian Studies and launched and led the university’s Thai Studies Program. Other institutions in which she has lectured, researched, administered, or advised include The Asia Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, George Washington University, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and has held positions at the World Bank and the United Nations in Geneva. The author of many articles and three books on US-Asian relations, she has testified on that topic before the Senate and the House of Representatives more than a dozen times. Her degrees are an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Barnard College.

Donald K. Emmerson
Donald K. Emmerson, in addition to heading the Southeast Asia Program, is affiliated with Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and its Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Recent writings relevant to US-Southeast Asia relations include articles in December 2020 in The Diplomat and East Asia Forum and an edited volume, The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (2020). Before moving to Stanford in 1999, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he headed its Center for Southeast Asian Studies.  He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Australian National University, among other institutions. His degrees are from Yale (PhD) and Princeton (BA).

Via Zoom Webinar
Register: https://bit.ly/2Yz9ZB3

Scot Marciel Visiting Scholar and Practitioner Fellow, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Catherin Dalpino Professor Emeritus, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Donald K. Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Seminars

Is Indonesian Democracy In Decline?

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This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's winter webinar series "Asian Politics and Policy in a Time of Uncertainty."

In the 2010s, amid signs of rising illiberalism around the world, Indonesia seemed exceptional—an established democracy bucking the trend.  In 2019, however, at a conference in Canberra, experts on Indonesia from Australia, Asia, and the United States argued otherwise. Their variously skeptical views were recently published in a book alarmingly entitled Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Recession?  In this webinar, a co-editor of the volume will discuss its subtitle with an analyst of Indonesian politics who did not contribute to the book.

Panelists:

Eve Warburton 4X4
Eve Warburton is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include democratic representation, identity, and the political economy of policymaking in young democracies, with a focus on Southeast Asia and especially Indonesia. In addition to Democracy in Indonesia (2020), her work has appeared in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Democratization, Electoral Studies, Pacific Affairs, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and as chapters in several books. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, Reclaiming What's Ours: The Business and Politics of Resource Nationalism in Indonesia. She received her doctorate in international studies from the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs in 2018.  Her master’s and undergraduate degrees are respectively from Columbia University and the University of Sydney.

Tom Pepinsky 4X4
Tom Pepinsky is Tisch University Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His fields are comparative politics and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets and a special interest in Southeast Asia. His work on Indonesia includes, as co-editor, Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam (2018). He has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics, among other venues, including an online platform, New Mandala: New Perspectives on Southeast Asia. He is an active co-founder of the Southeast Asia Research Group (seareg.org), which showcases new research by young scholars on Southeast Asian politics, and he serves on the steering committee of the Association for Analytical Learning on Islam and Muslim Societies (aalims.org).  His PhD in political science is from Yale University.

Southeast Asia Program Director Don Emmerson, who has also worked on Indonesia, will moderate the discussion.

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Register: https://bit.ly/39mafJU

Eve Warburton Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Research Institute, the National University of Singapore.
Tom Pepinsky Tisch University Professor in the Department of Government, Cornell University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution.
Seminars

APARC Offers Fellowship and Funding Opportunities to Support, Diversify Stanford Student Participation in Contemporary Asia Research

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The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) has broadened its fellowship and funding opportunities to support Stanford students working in the area of contemporary Asia. The Center introduced these expanded offerings in response to the harsh impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student’s academic careers and their access to future jobs and valuable work experience, and in recognition of the critical need to make the field of Asian Studies more diverse and inclusive.

APARC’s diversity grant aims to encourage Stanford students from underrepresented minorities (URM) to engage in the study and research of topics related to contemporary Asia and U.S.-Asia relations, including economic, health, foreign policy, social, political, and security issues. The grant, which was first announced in June 2020, is now an ongoing offering. APARC will award a maximum of $10,000 per grant. Current  Stanford undergraduate and graduate students in the URM category from any major or discipline are eligible and encourage to apply.

APARC also invites Stanford Ph.D. candidates specializing in topics related to contemporary Asia to apply for its 2021-22 predoctoral fellowship. Up to three fellowships are available and the application deadline is May 1, 2021.

In addition, APARC continues to offer an expanded array of research assistant internships. The Center is currently seeking highly motivated Stanford undergraduate- and graduate-level students to join our team as paid research assistant interns for the spring and summer quarters of 2021. Applications for spring 2021 research assistant assignments are due on February 22, for summer 2021 assignments on March 8.

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President Biden walks past a row of Chinese and American flags.
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APARC Experts on the Outlook for U.S.-Asia Policy Under the Biden Administration

Ahead of President-elect Biden’s inauguration and on the heels of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that has left America shaken, an APARC-wide expert panel provides a region-by-region analysis of what’s next for U.S. policy towards Asia and recommendations for the new administration.
APARC Experts on the Outlook for U.S.-Asia Policy Under the Biden Administration
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The Center has launched a suite of offerings including a predoctoral fellowship, a diversity grant, and research assistant internships to support Stanford students interested in the area of contemporary Asia.

The Biden Presidency and U.S. Asia Policy

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"America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” declared President-elect Joe Biden as he unveiled his foreign policy team on November 24. Now, however, with the pillars of America’s international mission — multilateralism, alliances, and democracy – significantly frayed after four years of Trumpism, and amidst pressing global challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic to shifting geopolitics and climate change, the Biden administration faces numerous hard choices. The Asia-Pacific region in particular will remain a source of major challenges as the power competition with China looms large over the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In this online panel discussion, APARC experts will examine the challenges and opportunities for U.S. engagement and leadership in Asia, assess Asian nations’ expectations from the incoming administration, and provide recommendations to achieve American economic and security interests. APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin will moderate the conversation.

Panelists 

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Donald K. Emmerson, Director of APARC’s Southeast Asia Program 

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

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Thomas Fingar, Center Fellow, APARC 

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

 

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Oriana Skylar Mastro, FSI Center Fellow at APARC 

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Within FSI, she works primarily in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) as well. She is also a fellow in Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow.

 

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Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Director of APARC’s Japan Program 
Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Shorenstein APARC, the Director of the Japan Program at APARC, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Sociology, all at Stanford University.

 

 

Moderator

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Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC and the Korea Program

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

Via Zoom Webinar
Register:  https://bit.ly/39MlT1n

 

Donald K. Emmerson Director of APARC's Southeast Asia Program
Thomas Fingar Center Fellow, APARC
Oriana Skylar Mastro FSI Center Fellow at APARC
Gi-Wook Shin Director of APARC and the Korea Program
Kiyoteru Tsutsui Director of APARC's Japan Program
Panel Discussions

A Global Town Hall Welcomes America Back

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Donald K. Emmerson
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This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson originally appeared in The Diplomat.

On November 20, 8,300 people in 83 countries attended a virtual Global Town Hall to watch and hear 66 speakers in multiple countries discuss “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World.” Organized in Jakarta by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the event ran 15 consecutive hours.

Few would choose virtual diplomacy over the in-person kind, other things being equal. When speakers are confined to flat boxes on small screens watched by strangers, the disincentives to candor and creativity are too high—not to mention the necessarily disadvantageous clashing of time zones. Gone are the clues and nuances of physical proximity, the creative chats in coffee breaks, the security from digitally prying eyes and ears afforded by a conversational stroll outdoors. But the technology of virtual discourse is here to stay, at least until such time as direct brain-to-brain or bot-to-bot communication is innovated and programmed on a planetary scale.

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Viewed in this cautionary light, the November town hall was distinctive and promising. It was organized not in the world of industrialized democracies where the ubiquity of electronic gatherings has already prompted webinar fatigue.  Nor was it sponsored by the United Front Department of the Communist Party of China or by Russia’s Internet Research Agency to propagandize for Beijing or Moscow. Indonesia’s virtual Global Town Hall was the brainchild of Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, a public figure well known in and outside his country for having founded and led the FPCI. (Although I know him, I played no role in the event or its preparation.)

The Community’s mission is to encourage “healthy internationalism” in Indonesia; “resist xenophobia”; “bring foreign policy to the grassroots”; and serve as “a dynamic meeting point” where Indonesians can interact on foreign affairs with each other and with foreigners “as equals.”

The Global Town Hall lived up to these promises in the size of its audience, the length and scope of its program, and the diversity of its many panels and speakers. Topics discussed during the marathon ranged from narrow to vast—from vaccines against Covid-19 to broad concepts and challenges such as the Indo-Pacific and climate change; development and democracy; nationalism and populism; emerging leaders and world order.

The conference was designed to call for new beginnings in a post-pandemic world.  One session debated the need for a “great social reset.” Another considered the contours of a no less urgent “geo-political reset.”  A third looked for “the light at the end of [a] tunnel” of global contagion and conflict, while a fourth pictured “the worst economic recession of our time” as “the edge of a cliff.” Just as Djalal and his team had intended, the sense of a global turning point calling for creative responses was palpable throughout.

Soft power is perishable. Goodwill can be transient. But the pop-up Global Town Hall delivered an encouraging reminder: America is welcome.
Donald K. Emmerson
Southeast Asia Prograom Director

The pandemic is not only planet-wide.  It is an all-of-society problem that cannot be reduced to adjustments in foreign policy. Accordingly, the town hall’s speakers were not only from different countries but from different walks of life as well.  Impressively, they included, alongside the foreign ministers of Australia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, influencers and analysts from think tanks, international organizations, and universities around the world.

The absence of someone from the Trump administration did not create a vacuum filled by China. On the contrary, the five speakers from the PRC were outnumbered three-to-one by the 15 Americans who spoke.  Yet the program was not stacked against Beijing.  Brainstorming in public is not China’s forte. In any conference that invites originality, creativity, and diversity, China is structurally disadvantaged by its authoritarian system, which limits what people are willing to say. Why invite speakers who are limited to thinking and speaking inside the box traced by a one-party line?

Only one Chinese think tank was among the town hall’s 44 sponsors and partners—the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), an adjunct of China’s foreign ministry. Beijing actively promotes Chinese centers of research and opinion as no less deserving of praise and influence than their counterparts in democratic countries. But that campaign for global legitimacy is not helped by the oxymoronic status of free thinking and speaking in an unfree society.

Barack Obama greets attendants at the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiave (YSEALI) Town Hall event at Taylor's University Lakeside Campus on November 22, 2015.
Barack Obama greets attendants at the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiave (YSEALI) Town Hall event at Taylor's University Lakeside Campus on November 22, 2015. | Flikr, United States Embassy Kuala Lumpur

A case in point is the Pangoal Institution, an ostensibly non-governmental think tank in Beijing. On its website, it upholds “objectiveness, openness, inclusiveness,”  and “innovation.” Yet in 2018, its president warned China’s think tanks to shun “the Western model” of what a think tank should be; eschew “so-called ‘independence’”; and adhere instead “to the leadership of the [Chinese Communist Party] and socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The risk of not channeling the groupthink required by the CPC was implied, as was the need to think “Xi Jinping Thought,” a guideline added to the CPC’s constitution in 2017.

China’s handicap in free speech and candor was also implicitly displayed at the very end of the conference, in its 12th and final panel. Harvard’s Joseph Nye and a balanced set of Washington-based analysts freely and critically discussed a range of sensitive issues in foreign and domestic policy including the jeopardized transition to a Joe Biden presidency. The event was coordinated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of three American think tanks chosen by FPCI to partner in holding the town hall.

[For more news from the Southeast Asia Program, be sure to sign up for updates.]

Even more telling than the remarks the Americans made at that final panel, however, was its title, chosen by Djalal and the FPCI, which amounted to a collective sigh of relief after Donald Trump: “Welcome Back, America!”  The welcome suggested that the challenge of “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World” posed by the Global Town Hall could not be met without the United States fully on board, as if, once on board, Joe Biden would do the right thing.

In November 2019, by a two-to-one margin, elite respondents in Southeast Asia named China over the U.S. as the outside power with the most “political and strategic influence” in their region. But of those who picked China, merely 15 percent welcomed Chinese influence, a fraction of the 53 percent of U.S.-choosers who welcomed American influence.

Soft power is perishable. Goodwill can be transient. But the pop-up Global Town Hall put together so creatively by Djalal and his colleagues in Indonesia, apart from its value as an experiment in worldwide policy discourse, delivered an encouraging reminder: America is welcome. The anti-multilateral jingoism of Donald Trump has failed to destroy the willingness of Djalal, his colleagues, and policy influentials elsewhere in Southeast Asia to work with a United States that can once again, openly and self-critically, interact with others to achieve common goals.

Read More

President-elect Joseph Biden addresses a campaign crowd
Commentary

Biden in Asia: America Together?

Southeast Asia Program Director Donald K. Emmerson considers how the incoming Biden administration's "internationalization" agenda may affect U.S.-Asia relations and partnerships with the global community.
Biden in Asia: America Together?
Leaders from the ASEAN league gather onstage at the 33rd ASEAN Summit in 2018 in Singapore.
Commentary

Southeast Asia's Approach to China and the Future of the Region

In an interview with The Diplomat, Donald Emmerson discusses how factors like the South China Sea, U.S.-China competition, and how COVID-19 are affecting relations between Southeast Asia, China, and the United States.
Southeast Asia's Approach to China and the Future of the Region
Cover of the book 'The Deer and the Dragon' on the background of a Southeast Asia map
News

New Book Analyzes the Dynamics of Inequality Between China and Southeast Asia

In a new volume, Donald Emmerson explores how the ASEAN nations are navigating complex political and policy issues with China during a time when political cohesion within ASEAN is fractured and China is increasingly assertive in its goals.
New Book Analyzes the Dynamics of Inequality Between China and Southeast Asia
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Barack Obama addresses a crowd of young leaders from ASEAN nations.
Barack Obama hosts the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiave (YSEALI) Town Hall event at Taylor's University Lakeside Campus on November 22, 2015
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Despite the reversals of the Trump era, a flurry of online diplomacy served as a reminder that the U.S. is welcome in Southeast Asia writes Donald K. Emmerson in The Diplomat.

The PLA’s Evolving Role in China’s South China Sea Strategy

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During the past eight months of the global COVID pandemic, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been active in promoting China’s claims in the South China Sea.  This essay evaluates PLA statements, military exercises and operations, and deployment of relevant platforms and weapons in the South China Sea during this period. I leverage Chinese-language sources in addition to my own operational knowledge from over a decade of military experience to provide greater context for these activities. I argue that the greatest change in the PLA’s role in the South China Sea has not been operational. Instead, the most interesting development has been the fact that the PLA has taken on a more significant signaling role. Specifically, the Chinese military seems to be purposefully using, and perhaps even exaggerating, its capabilities and activities to enhance deterrence against the United States. This may be seen as necessary as the US increases its own efforts to push back on China’s militarization of the South China Sea. In other words, the PLA has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one.

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China Leadership Monitor
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Issue 66
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The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era

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Co-sponsored by the Japan Program and the Southeast Asia Program

When Yoshihide Suga recently took over as prime minister of Japan, he tellingly focused his first trip abroad on Southeast Asia. The region has long been crucial to Japan’s foreign policy, and Japan has long been a key external partner to ASEAN and its constitutive states and societies. Japan’s engagement in Southeast Asia has become even more important in the era of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” as the region confronts new economic, political and security challenges against the backdrop of waxing Sino-American rivalry and now a global pandemic. This webinar will examine Japan’s role in Southeast Asia in the recent past and the going forward. Drawing on the findings of a collaborative research project involving scholars from Southeast Asia, Japan, and North America – to be published as an edited volume from the University of Michigan Press – the panel will discuss Japan’s engagement in key areas such as infrastructure investment, maritime security assistance, and multilateral diplomacy, as well as Southeast Asian responses to its initiatives. They will also discuss the important roles played by non-state actors in mediating Japanese ties to Southeast Asia, and review key elements of continuity and change likely to extend into the Suga administration and beyond.   

Panelists

John D Ciociari 120820 crop 4X4
John Ciorciari is Associate Professor and Director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. He is the author of Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2021), The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Georgetown University Press, 2010), co-author of Hybrid Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (University of Michigan Press, 2014), and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021).

 

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Emma Chanlett-Avery is a Specialist in Asian Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. She focuses on U.S. relations with Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Thailand, and Singapore. Ms. Chanlett-Avery joined CRS in 2003 through the Presidential Management Fellowship, with rotations in the State Department on the Korea Desk and at the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in Bangkok, Thailand. She also worked in the Office of Policy Planning as a Harold Rosenthal Fellow. She is a member of the Mansfield Foundation U.S. – Japan Network for the Future, Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japan America Society of Washington, and the 2016 recipient of the Kato Prize. Ms. Chanlett-Avery received an MA in international security policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and her BA in Russian studies from Amherst College.

don emmerson 2
Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University where he is also a faculty affiliate of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.  His new book is The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., August 2020).  Other recent publications include “Biden in Asia: America Together?,” East Asia Forum, 8 November 2020; “Donald Emmerson on Southeast Asia’s Approach to China” (interview, The Diplomat, Aug. 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” Asia Policy (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).  He has traveled and lectured widely in Southeast Asia, most recently in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (Dec. 2019). Indonesia figured prominently in earlier fieldwork and writing. Before moving to Stanford in 1999, he taught political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Australian National University, among other institutions.  His doctorate in political science is from Yale. 

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui 120820 crop 4X4
Kiyoteru Tsutsui is Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he is also Director of the Japan Program, a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor of Sociology. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021). 

Via Zoom Webinar.
Register: https://bit.ly/2HnCz3u

John Ciorciari Associate Professor and Director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
Emma Chanlett-Avery Specialist in Asian Affairs, the Congressional Research Service

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Director, the Southeast Asia Program, Stanford University

Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Kiyo Tsutsui1_0.jpg PhD

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), the director of APARC and of the Japan Program at APARC, co-director of the Southeast Asia Program at APARC, executive director of the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, co-director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and professor of sociology, all at Stanford University.

Prior to his appointment at Stanford in July 2020, Tsutsui was professor of sociology, director of the Center for Japanese Studies, and director of the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. More specifically, he has conducted (1) cross-national quantitative analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and (2) qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. His current projects examine (a) changing conceptions of nationhood and minority rights in national constitutions and in practice, (b) populism and the future of democracy, (c) experimental surveys on public understanding about human rights, (d) campus policies and practices around human rights, (e) global expansion of corporate social responsibility and its impact on corporate behavior, and (f) Japan’s public diplomacy and perceptions about Japan in the world.

His research on the globalization of human rights and its impact on local politics has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and other social science journals. His book publications include Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press 2018), and two co-edited volumes Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (with Alwyn Lim, Cambridge University Press 2015) and The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (with John Ciorciari, University of Michigan Press forthcoming). He has been a recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, National Science Foundation grants, the SSRC/CGP Abe Fellowship, Stanford Japan Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, and other grants as well as awards from American Sociological Association sections on Global and Transnational Sociology (2010, 2013, 2019), Human Rights (2017, 2019), Asia and Asian America (2018, 2019), Collective Behavior and Social Movements (2018), and Political Sociology (2019). 

Tsutsui received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kyoto University and earned an additional master’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford’s sociology department in 2002.

Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Director, Japan Program at Shorenstein APARC
Co-Director, Southeast Asia Program at Shorenstein APARC
Executive Director, Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies
Co-Director, Center for Human Rights and International Justice
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