Stanford University

Students learn through assignments based on real global events

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Imagine you are on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) and a naval dispute breaks out on the Korean Peninsula while you are at home celebrating Thanksgiving. You have just three hours to prepare a detailed memorandum summarizing the situation and offering recommendations for how the United States should respond.

This is a major responsibility with a large number of interrelated issues that must be taken into account—how would you proceed?

Stanford students in the winter quarter course U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia (IPS 244) had the opportunity to step into the challenging role of the NSC senior director for Asia and consider such a security situation. They wrote and presented memoranda on this and an East Asia trade crisis scenario in class, as well as a final memorandum to the president proposing a China policy for his second term. The assignments required students to consider a wide range of global, regional, and domestic factors—many pulled directly from current global events.

Each member of the team of Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) Asia experts teaching the course drew on decades of related expertise to write the scenarios.

  • Michael H. Armacost, the Center’s Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, previously served on the NSC, in the Defense Department, as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Japan, and as undersecretary of state for political affairs.
  • Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider, an Asia history expert, spent over 30 years as a journalist reporting on international affairs and security issues, including working as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Korea, India, and Russia.
  • David Straub, associate director of Stanford’s Korean Studies Program, is a former State Department official with long-time expertise in U.S.-Korea relations and North Korea, including participation in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.
  • Thomas Fingar, FSI’s Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, is a China expert and has previously held numerous key U.S. intelligence posts, most recently as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He also served as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

In the first assignment, students read about a proposed China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement (FTA). Navigating through a web of regional and domestic issues, they advised on how the United States should respond to an appeal from Japan for certain trade concessions in exchange for its backing out of the FTA. The assignment described complex economic and political conditions in May 2013 after elections in the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and a leadership transition in China. The U.S.-Japan alliance was one of many key factors students took into account.

“It was my great pleasure to participate in this class—it truly broadened my views of U.S. foreign policy toward Northeast Asia. The substantive knowledge presented by both instructors and students during the class will undoubtedly contribute to a much safer, more peaceful, and unified world.”
-Heeyoung Kwon, Visiting Scholar, Korea Foundation


The next memorandum assignment described an inter-Korean naval dispute falling in the crucial weeks between the 2012 U.S. and South Korean presidential elections. It narrated the economic and political situation of each country in precise detail, and set the stage for the dispute with real-life events like the 2010 sinking of the South Korean navy ship the Cheonan. Students were asked to consider the possible role China could play in mediating with North Korea, and how U.S. tensions with Iran could limit its involvement in negotiations.

“In IPS 244…no conversation is irrelevant to current events in Northeast Asia…The memo assignments…are so detailed, so current, and so realistic, that even a seasoned diplomat would be challenged by them—I know this because there are seasoned diplomats taking the class.”
-Jeffrey Stern, MA Student, International Studies Program


Shorenstein APARC offers U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia each winter quarter. The diverse mix of students, combined with the “in-the-field” expertise of the instructors, creates a lively and challenging class environment. IPS 244 goes beyond a traditional academic course to create assignments based on real-life events and global conditions, and place students in the position of thinking like a government official. For the many of them that will go on to pursue government careers, the course serves as an important first-step in training for “scenarios” very similar to those they address in class.

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South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (left), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and Japanese former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the 2009 East Asia Trilateral Summit.
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Seminar series to examine the experience of Asia's Muslim minorities

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A new Shorenstein APARC event series will explore the complex ties between identity and the social, political, and economic status of Asia's Muslim minorities, with a focus on China, India, the Philippines, and Thailand.

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Understanding Muslim Minorities in Asia - The Inter-relationship of Socio-economic Status, Identity, and Politics

The objective of this seminar series is to explain the forces and factors behind the persistent decline in the social, political, and economic status of many Muslim minorities in Asia—including in China, India, the Philippines, and Thailand. Along with the socio-economic decline is a narrowing of identity among citizens who are Muslims to often a purely religious identity. This contrasts with the more pluralistic identity that reflects their real heterogeneity by class, gender, and other socio-economic characteristics.

Discourses of Defiance: Framing Muslim Self-Determination in Thailand and the Philippines

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Using the concept of framing, this presentation will explore discourses behind the move for greater self-determination on the part of the Malay-Muslims of southern Thailand and the Moro of the southern Philippines. It will discuss the shifting referents of ethnic identity and demonstrate how coherent narratives of resistance have taken shape over time and against changing social, political, and economic contexts to frame the collective action of resistance movements over the last four decades.

Joseph Chinyong Liow's research interests are in Muslim politics in Southeast Asia. He is the author of Muslim Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, Politics (East-West Center, 2006); Piety and Politics: Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia (Oxford, 2009); and Islamic Education in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation (ISEAS, 2009). He is also co-editor of Islam in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2010). Liow is currently working on two single-author book manuscripts. The first is on social movement theory and armed ethnonationalist movements in Southeast Asia, and the second is a revised edition of the Dictionary of Modern Politics in Southeast Asia, previously authored by the late Michael Leifer.

This seminar series is co-sponsored by the South Asia Initiative,
 

 

     

    

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Philippines Conference Room

Joseph Chinyong Liow

Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center
616 Serra St C302-23
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-3368 (650) 723-6530
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Autumn Quarter 2011 Visiting Scholar
Joseph_Liow_Web.jpg PhD

Joseph Chinyong Liow is a professor of comparative and international politics and an associate dean at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

His research interests encompass Muslim politics in Southeast Asia and the international politics of the Asia-Pacific region. During his time at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Liow will conduct research and writing on social movement theory and armed resistance in Southeast Asia, as well as a dictionary of modern politics of Southeast Asia.

Liow is the author of Islam, Reform, and Education in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation (2009); Piety and Politics: Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia (2009); and the Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (2005). He is also editor of Islam in Southeast Asia, Four Volumes (2010); co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies (2010); and co-author of Confronting Ghosts: Unpacking Southern Thailand’s Shapeless Insurgency (2010) and the East Asia Summit and Regional Security (2010). Liow is a co-editor of the Asian Security Book Series at Routledge, sits on the editorial board of South East Asia Research, and serves on the editorial team of Asian Security.

Liow holds a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MSc in strategic studies from the Nanyang Technological University, and a BA (Hons) in political science from the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

Joseph Chinyong Liow Professor of Comparative and International Politics Speaker S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University
Seminars
Understanding Muslim Minorities in Asia - The Inter-relationship of Socio-economic Status, Identity, and Politics
South Asia Initiative

Comparing China’s Islams: Muslim Minority Accommodation to Chinese Rule

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Muslim minorities in China are often depicted as either forces for integration (i.e., sinicization and assimilation) or disintegration (as separatists, radical Islamists, or ethnic nationalists). Yet, many of the challenges China’s Muslims confront remain the same as they have for the last 1400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society, though clearly many are new as a result of China's transformed and increasingly globalized society, and especially since the watershed events of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the subsequent Sino-U.S. cooperation on the “war on terrorism.”

Muslims in China live as minority communities amid a sea of people, in their view, who are largely pork-eating, polytheist, secularist, and kafir ("heathen"). Nevertheless, many of their small and isolated communities have survived in rather inhospitable circumstances for over a millennium. 

This seminar will examine Islam and Muslim minority identity in China. Through comparing the two largest Muslim minorities in China (Uyghur and Hui), it will be argued that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in China can be seen to be a measure of the extent to which Muslims have been able to reconcile the dictates of Islamic identiy to their host culture. This goes against the opposite view that can be found in the writings of some analysts of Islam in China, that Islam in the region is almost unavoidably rebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to a non-Muslim state. The history of Islam in China suggests that both within each Muslim community, as well as between Muslim nationalities, there are many alternatives to either complete accommodation or separatism.

Dru C. Gladney is the author of over 50 academic articles, as well as Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic (Harvard University Press, 1996, 2nd edition); Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (Wadsworth, 1998); Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the U.S. (Editor, Stanford University Press, 1998). Former president of the Pacific Basin Institute and dean of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Gladney is also the author of  Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Sub-Altern Subjects  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). He is currently working on a comparative study of Muslim adaptations in China as well as a study of new media in helping to build a Uyghur "virtual" nation. 

 This seminar series is co-sponsored by the South Asia Initiative,
 

   

    

 

Philippines Conference Room

Dru C. Gladney Professor of Anthropology Speaker Pomona College
Seminars
Understanding Muslim Minorities in Asia - The Inter-relationship of Socio-economic Status, Identity, and Politics
South Asia Initiative

Battle Against HIV/AIDS in Cambodia: Successes and Challenges

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More than two decades have passed since the first case of HIV infection was detected in Cambodia in 1991. Cambodia is among the countries with the highest HIV prevalence in Asia and has been experiencing the most serious HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region. The epidemic is spread primarily through heterosexual transmission and revolves largely around the sex trade.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, the Royal Government of Cambodia has made a strong political commitment to the need for prevention of HIV transmission and care for people living with HIV/AIDS. It has received some technical and financial support from national and international agencies. Several prevention and intervention programs have been successfully implemented, and the WHO/UNAIDS recognized that the Cambodia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic appeared to have stabilized in 2002.

The estimated HIV prevalence in the general adult population declined to 0.5% in 2009, down from 1.2% in 2001. Among women visiting antenatal care clinics, the prevalence also declined from 2.1% in 1999 to 1.1% in 2006. There was also a gradual increase in the percentage of HIV-infected pregnant women who received antiretroviral therapy to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission, from 1.2% in 2003 to 11.2% in 2007, and finally to 32.3% in 2009.

Despite the decline of HIV prevalence in the general population, the prevalence remains high among high-risk groups such as commercial sex workers, men who have sex with men, and injection drug users. Furthermore, the so-called prevention-successful-country is also seeing the growing need for HIV/AIDS treatment and care.

This seminar will highlight the past and current features of Cambodia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, lessons learned from prevention and care policies, and future challenges that Cambodia may face in the battles against HIV/AIDS.  

Dr. Siyan Yi joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during the 2011–12 academic year from the National Center of Global Health and Medicine and the University of Tokyo, Japan, where he jointly served as a research fellow and lecturer. He has also served as an adjunct faculty member at Cambodia’s School of Public Health, the National Institute of Public Health, and the School of International Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Siyan Yi

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2011-12 Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow
YiSiyan_Profile.jpg MD, PhD

Dr. Siyan Yi joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as a 2011-12 Developing Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow from the National Center of Global Health and Medicine and the University of Tokyo, Japan, where he jointly served as a research fellow and lecturer. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at Cambodia’s School of Public Health, the National Institute of Public Health, and the School of International Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. He is currently an Associate Professor and UHS-SPH Integrated Research Programme Leader at NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (profile page here).

Yi’s research has centered largely on epidemiological methods. This has included, for example, work on surveys in Cambodia on adolescent risky sexual behaviors, substance abuse, and depression; a health promotion project in primary schools; sexual behaviors among people living with HIV/AIDS; and HIV risky behaviors among tuberculosis patients. Currently, he is involved in hospital- and community-based research projects in several developing countries as well as in Japan. He has published several papers in these research areas in international journals. His selected publications include:

  • Siyan Yi, Akiko Nanri, Kalpana Poudel, Daisuke Nonaka, Hori Ai, Tetsuya Mizoue. “Association between serum ferritin and depressive symptoms in Japanese municipal employees.” Psychiatry Research, 2011. 189: 368-372.
  • Siyan Yi, Daisuke Nonaka, Marino Nomoto, Jun Kobayashi, and Tetsuya Mizoue. “Predictors of the uptake of A (H1N1) influenza vaccine: Findings from a population-based longitudinal study in Tokyo.” PLoS One, 2011. 6: e18893.
  • Siyan Yi, Krishna C. Poudel, Junko Yasuoka, Paula H. Palmer, Songky Yi, and Masamine Jimba. “Risk vs. protective factors for substance use among adolescent students in Cambodia.” Journal of Substance Use, 2011. 16:14-26.
  • Siyan Yi, Krishna C. Poudel, Junko Yasuoka, Paula H. Palmer, Songky Yi, and Masamine Jimba. “Role of risk and protective factors for risky sexual behaviors among high school students in Cambodia.” BMC Public Health, 2010. 10: 477.
  • Siyan Yi, Krishna C. Poudel, Junko Yasuoka, Masao Ichikawa, Vutha Tan, and Masamine Jimba. “Influencing factors for seeking HIV voluntary counseling and testing among tuberculosis patients in Cambodia.” AIDS Care, 2009. 21: 529-534.

Yi holds an MHSc (2007) and a PhD (2010) in international health sciences from the School of International Health at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Medicine. He also earned an MD in general medicine from the University of Health Sciences, Cambodia (2001). Yi has won research awards, including: the Young Investigator Award from the Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health (2008), the Montreux Prize from the Swiss Association for Adolescent Health and the International Association for Adolescent Health (2009), and the Scientific Research Award from the University of Tokyo (2009).

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