Film Studies major Dexter Sterling Simpson, ’21, dreams of entering the documentary industry after graduation. To test the waters, he moved to New York City for two quarters last year to pursue an internship with a professional documentary house. One recent highlight of his documentary experience, though, occurred while working as a research assistant with Stanford sociologist and the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea Gi-Wook Shin.

The research assistant job, available through the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), which Shin directs, provided Simpson with the opportunity to produce a film that documents how high-skilled migrants to the United States, including several Stanford scholars, continue to make significant contributions to their home countries and create mutually beneficial ties — or “brain linkages” — between the United States and their home countries. The documentary, called Brain Bridges and now available on APARC’s YouTube channel, showcases research that is part of Shin’s multiyear project studying global talent flows, brain hubs, and socioeconomic development in Asia.

A Positive-Sum Approach

“I started working on the project last summer and then continued remotely from New York before remote work became the new norm in the time of COVID-19,” says Simpson. “Surprisingly enough, the pandemic seemed to speed things up for us rather than slow them down. I would meet regularly with Professor Shin and the research team via Zoom to exchange updates and notes on my work. Several weeks ago, we held an outdoor, socially distanced interview shoot to close the film. It has been a unique challenge to work around the abrupt life changes caused by the pandemic, but it is deeply rewarding to emerge with a finished product that, I hope, is inspiring and informative.”

The film traces the stories of several Stanford scholars and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who demonstrate that the migration of high-skilled professionals is not a zero-sum game in which the host country (in this case, the United States) receives a net inflow of human capital from the home country. “Rather than simply enhancing the competitiveness of the host country at the home country’s expense — a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘brain drain’ for the home country and ‘brain gain’ for the host country — what we find is that brain drain offers opportunities for brain circulation and brain linkage, that is, home-host interactions that create a win-win, positive-sum situation for both sides,” explains Shin.

From Human Capital to Social Capital

The story of Indo-American entrepreneur and venture investor Kanwal Rekhi is a case in point. When Rekhi came to the United States from India for graduate studies, he encountered prejudice in American society and criticism of his “unpatriotic” move in his home country. Undaunted, he advanced through the engineering ranks in several technology companies and in 1982, cofounded the computer networking company Excelan in Silicon Valley. Five years later, he became the first Indo-American entrepreneur to list a venture-backed company on the NASDAQ.

From a human capital perspective, Rekhi’s journey is a case of brain drain for India. Following his success, however, he became an advocate for border-bridging entrepreneurs, pushed Indian legislators to reform venture regulations, and cofounded The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE), a nonprofit with a mission to foster entrepreneurship globally. His efforts in Silicon Valley and India helped create a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and a tangible impact on the economies in both countries.

“In considering brain linkage, we must shift from a view that regards labor primarily as human capital to a new model of labor as social capital,” notes Shin. “When educated professionals permanently leave their home countries, it is true that those countries lose the totality of education, skills, and experience embodied by these individuals. But when they stay engaged with the home countries, both home and host countries gain from the productive capacity embodied in the ties and networks linking many individuals and organizations.”

Featuring Stanford Scholars and Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs

Simpson’s documentary film follows the transnational brain bridging stories of several other accomplished academics and industry leaders in Silicon Valley, including Hongbin Li, the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Kyle Loh, assistant professor of developmental biology who heads the Loh laboratory at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine; Arogyaswami Paulraj, professor emeritus at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering; Sievlan Len, Stanford graduate student in international policy studies; Gen Isayama, general partner and CEO at venture capital fund World Innovation Lab; Asha Jadeja, an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist; Young Song, CEO of desktop virtualization company NComputing; Mariko Yang, cofounder of STEAM education organization SKY Labo; and Eugene Zhang, a founding partner of early-stage venture capital fund TSVC.

The documentary film brings to life the powerful lesson from the research by Shin and his colleagues: that transnational social capital and ties spanning geographic and cultural distance remain vital to today’s global market economy, even more so in a time of political tensions at home and abroad.

We are pleased to share that Oriana Skylar Mastro, FSI Center Fellow at APARC, has won the 2020 International Security Section of the American Political Science Association Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member Award for her book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019).

Each year, APSA recognizes excellence in the political science profession and its various subfields. Mastro has won the Association’s award for an untenured scholar who has published the highest quality book in Security Studies in the previous calendar year.

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Mastro is an international security expert with a focus on Chinese military and security policy issues, Asia-Pacific security, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. Her research addresses critical questions at the intersection of interstate conflict, great power relations, and the challenge of rising powers. In The Costs of Conversation, she argues that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation, and these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to engage in direct talks with their enemy. She examines two factors leaders look to when determining the strategic costs of demonstrating a willingness to talk: the likelihood the enemy will interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation. A state will be open to talking with the enemy only if it thinks it has demonstrated adequate strength and resiliency to avoid the inference of weakness and if it believes that its enemy has limited capacity to escalate or intensify the war.

Mastro uses four primary case studies — North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War, those of China in the Korean War and Sino-Indian War, and Indian diplomatic decision making in the latter conflict — to demonstrate that the costly conversations thesis best explains the timing and nature of countries' approach to wartime talks, and therefore when peace talks begin. Her findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.

This interview was originally conducted and published by Melissa De Witte on behalf of the Stanford News Service.

September 2, 1945, is recognized in many American history books as the day World War II formally ended in Asia. But according to Stanford sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the conflict was never fully resolved in the region, leading to strains in diplomatic relations today.

On the 75th anniversary of this historic milestone, Shin discusses the legacy of World War II in the Asia-Pacific, specifically the failure among nations to fully address past wrongdoings and reach a mutual understanding of the conflict.

As a result, there is a “mismatch” in how Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and also Americans memorialize the war: China celebrates its victory against Japan while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Meanwhile, Japan honors the victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an atrocity many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about today, Shin points out.

Here, Shin discusses how these diverging perspectives of World War II have led to misgivings today and how, some 75 years later, relations can still be improved in the region.

Shin is a professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, director of the Korea Program and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has led a decade-long study on historical memory in wartime period in Asia called 'Divided Memories and Reconciliation.'

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As the world remembers 75 years of the war ending in Asia, what legacies from this period persist today?

War has not really ended in Asia. Even before war settlements were signed, another war broke out on the Korean peninsula and technically never ended. Furthermore, “history wars” that began in the 1980s have intensified in recent years, as Japan and its neighbors continue to fight over the unfortunate past and dispute over territories. Despite increased economic, cultural, and educational exchanges and interactions, war legacies persist to strain regional relations.

Is there anything in this history that you think has been largely forgotten, overlooked or misunderstood?

While U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender to allied forces aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay some 75 years ago, legacies from the war have persisted, straining regional relations to this very day, according to Shin. (Image credit: United States Navy/Wikimedia Commons)

America celebrates World War II victory in Europe (Victory in Europe Day) but remains relatively quiet on its victory in the Asia-Pacific war. In contrast to the moral clarity and nobility of purpose associated with the war in Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the path to war with Japan and its conclusion is far less clear and many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about the use of atomic weapons – even if it was militarily necessary but morally questionable. Also, it was during the war that about 120,000 people in the U.S. of Japanese ancestry (62 percent being U.S. citizens) were incarcerated in concentration camps.

Compared to Europe, U.S.-led post-war settlements in Asia such as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and San Francisco Peace Treaty were insufficient in addressing atrocities committed by Japan during wartime and the colonial period, sowing the seeds of current disputes and tensions between Japan and its neighbors. The Tokyo tribunal focused on Japanese actions that had most directly affected Western allies (the attack on Pearl Harbor and the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war) and thus failed to address the massive suffering of the Chinese and the Koreans. The 1951 Peace Treaty expunged Japan’s obligations to pay reparations for its wartime acts but neither the Republic of Korea nor the People’s Republic of China was party to the treaty.

You have written extensively about the repeated failure among Koreans, Chinese and Japanese to produce a shared, historical view of World War II. Can you briefly describe what are these conflicting, historical memories? 

For Koreans and Chinese, Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, sexual slavery and forced labor are key events that shape their historical memories. For Japanese, on the other hand, actions related to the U.S. such as the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor and American bombings (fire and atomic) on Japanese cities are most important to the formation of their memories of war, which led to a widely held view that they were also victims of American aggression and that post-war settlements were “victor’s justice.” These divergent memories are reflected in the ways that they commemorate the end of the war. China celebrates its victory against Japan in the war, while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Japan holds its annual ceremony to honor victims of atomic bombings.

According to your scholarship, what explains these divergent perspectives?

The divergence comes from the different weight each country places on historical events in their respective memory formation. Japanese actions figure prominently for Chinese and Korean, but China and Korea are not as significant to Japanese war memories as much as the U.S. is. This mismatch creates perception gaps and misgivings, hindering historical reconciliation.

How has this tension affected relations in the region? Do you think, some 75 years later, these tensions persist today?

Yes, they are very much alive. Look at the current Japanese-South Korean relations. They are two leading economies with liberal democracies in Asia and also key U.S. allies. They are important trade partners and are facing the same demographic crisis. They share strategic interests in the face of a rising China and North Korean aggression. Nonetheless, the resurfacing of the unresolved historical issues has continued to strain the bilateral relationship. For example, the relationship deteriorated since late 2018 when the South Korea supreme court ruled that Japanese companies should compensate Koreans who were conscripted as forced laborers during the war. In response to the ruling, the Japanese government removed Korea from a list of favored trade partners and the Korean government followed suit. These governmental actions are now fueled by populist nationalism (the rightist in Japan and the leftist in Korea), which has proven to be very effective in the politics of both nations.

Can the U.S. play any role to help achieve historical reconciliation?

The U.S. can take a more proactive role in encouraging Japan to work toward achieving regional reconciliation. As noted above, Japan does not seem to be taking its Asian neighbors as seriously as it should be when it comes to historical matters, but is rather predominantly focused on reconciling with the U.S. For example, Japan had been calling for the U.S. president to visit the sites of atomic bombings as a way of “removing a historical thorn” in the relationship and President Obama did make a historic visit to Hiroshima in 2016. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed suit soon after by visiting Pearl Harbor to pay respects to the victims of the 1941 attack. But the reconciliation efforts stopped there and did not expand to other victim countries of the war.

When you teach this history of World War II, what do you remind students about this period? How might the past shape students’ understanding of Northeast Asia or the U.S. in the present day?

To avoid repeating the unfortunate past (colonialism and war), I ask, what and how we can learn from history? For example, was the war with Japan necessary, or was it the result of a series of accidents and miscalculations or lack of political leadership? How does the war help us to understand the current tensions between the U.S. and China? What can we learn from the experience of the Japanese internment during the war? Even though President Reagan made an official apology of the internment in 1988, why do we still see similar racialist politics in American society? Addressing these questions requires a critical reflection of the history.

<< The original interview is available via Stanford News >>

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Lee studies the impacts of AI and robotics across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail banking, and nursing homes. A trend he sees across most sectors following the adoption of robotics or AI is a positive increase in productivity. This has impacts for both the short-term and long-term relationships between humans and their robot coworkers, or “co-bots.” While it is true that the introduction of automation and robots initially replaces a significant number of workers in sectors such as manufacturing, over time, that impact reverses and there are job gains in many cases.

“The impact of robots often evolves over time from replacing human workers to augmenting them,” Lee explains, “and productivity gains [can] create opportunities for existing and new occupations.” This happens in a variety of ways. In some cases, the use of robotics and automation in one area frees up time, labor, and resources to employ more people in other, higher-skilled areas. In another situation, increases in productivity brought on by automation allow for greater company growth than would not have been possible otherwise. This, in turn, spurs the need to expand the workforce.

Alternatively, supplementing the labor of a small workforce with robotics and AI can also spread limited resources much farther. Lee and Eggleston’s studies of the impacts of robots on nursing home care in Japan repeatedly show that the use of robots positively increases the quality of service that oftentimes-understaffed care facilities can provide to the elderly and infirm. This can range from monitoring the physical condition of patients and reliably delivering medications to providing mental and emotional support to elderly residents through the use of robotic humanoid companions. Such innovative use of tech fills critical gaps that a human-only workforce would struggle to meet in a staffing shortage like Japan faces.

Looking to the future, Lee shares this perspective: “When the automobile was invented, we suddenly had a new demand for drivers. Now we’ll have to see if [automation] creates demand for other new occupations.” It’s an area of innovation and research he, Dr. Eggleston, and other Stanford researchers will be closely watching with their human eyes in the years to come.

Read the original article by Stanford HAI here >>

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take massive tolls on lives and livelihoods at home and abroad, students have been thrown into turmoil and are facing uncertainties about funding, graduation, research opportunities, and career choices. At Shorenstein APARC, we are committed to supporting Stanford students as best we can. We are therefore announcing today new quarter-long research assistantships for current undergraduate and graduate students working in the area of contemporary Asia. These opportunities are in addition to our recent internship and fellowship offerings.

Guidelines

Shorenstein APARC is seeking to hire motivated and dedicated undergraduate and graduate students as paid research assistants who will work with assigned APARC faculty members on projects focused on contemporary Asia, studying varied issues related to the politics, economies, populations, security, foreign policies, and international relations of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

2020-21 research assistant positions will be offered in the fall, winter, spring, and summer quarters. We expect to hire up to 10 research assistants per quarter.

Application Cycles
Students should submit their applications by the following deadlines:

• Applications for fall 2020 by September 1, 2020;
• Applications for winter 2020 by December 1, 2020;
• Applications for spring 2021 by March 1, 2021.
   

The positions are open to current Stanford students only. Undergraduate- and graduate-level students are eligible to apply.

All positions will be up to 15 hours per week for undergraduate students and up to 20 hours per week for graduate students (minimum of 10 hours per week). The hourly pay rate is $17 for undergraduate students, $25 for graduate students.

Hiring is contingent upon verification of employment eligibility documentation.

The fall-quarter employment start date is September 16, 2020.

Successful candidates may request appointment renewal for a consecutive quarter.

Apply Now

• Complete the application form and submit it along with these 3 required attachments:
  • CV
  • A cover letter (up to 1 page)
  • Completed Student Information Sheet
• Arrange for a letter of recommendation from a faculty to be sent directly to APARC. Please note: the faculty members should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu.
   

We will consider only applications that include all supporting documents.

This op-ed by Kiyoteru Tsutsui was originally published in The Hill.

With the specter of a cold war with China arising, allies in Asia-Pacific are increasingly important for the United States, whether in fighting pandemics, negotiating trade deals, or containing territorial disputes. Japan historically has been one of the most important partners for American interests in the region and a steadfast ally in the post-World War II era. 

For Japan, too, the U.S.-Japan security alliance has been the cornerstone of its foreign policy for decades, and the Japanese public clearly understands that. Reflecting this understanding, every new security decision in Japan, from the relocation of a U.S.-base in Okinawa to the recent cancellation of Aegis Ashore deployment, spurs intense public debates about the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance. (Continue reading the full article at The Hill.)

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