Asked to summarize his biography and career, Donald K. Emmerson notes the legacy of an itinerant childhood: his curiosity about the world and his relish of difference, variety and surprise. A well-respected Southeast Asia scholar at Stanford since 1999, he admits to a contrarian streak and corresponding regard for Socratic discourse. His publications in 2014 include essays on epistemology, one forthcoming in Pacific Affairs, the other in Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies.

Emmerson is a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), an affiliated faculty member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, an affiliated scholar in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Recently he spoke with Shorenstein APARC about his life and career within and beyond academe.

Your father was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. Did that background affect your professional life?

Indeed it did. Thanks to my dad’s career, I grew up all over the world. We changed countries every two years. I was born in Japan, spent most of my childhood in Peru, the USSR, Pakistan, India and Lebanon, lived for various lengths of time in France, Nigeria, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the Netherlands, and traveled extensively in other countries. Constantly changing places fostered an appetite for novelty and surprise. Rotating through different cultures, languages, and schools bred empathy and curiosity. The vulnerability and ignorance of a newly arrived stranger gave rise to the pleasure of asking questions and, later, questioning the answers. Now I encourage my students to enjoy and learn from their own encounters with what is unfamiliar, in homework and fieldwork alike. 

Were you always focused on Southeast Asia? 

No. I had visited Southeast Asia earlier, but a fortuitous failure in grad school play a key role in my decision to concentrate on Southeast Asia. At Yale I planned a dissertation on African nationalism. I applied for fieldwork support to every funding source I could think of, but all of the envelopes I received in reply were thin. Fortunately, I had already developed an interest in Indonesia, and was offered last-minute funding from Yale to begin learning Indonesian. Two years of fieldwork in Jakarta yielded a dissertation that became my first book, Indonesia’s Elite: Political Culture and Cultural Politics. I sometimes think I should reimburse the African Studies Council for covering my tuition at Yale – doubtless among the worst investments they ever made. 

Indonesia stimulated my curiosity in several directions. Living in an archipelago led me to maritime studies and to writing on the rivalries in the South China Sea. Fieldwork among Madurese fishermen inspired Rethinking Artisanal Fisheries Development: Western Concepts, Asian Experiences. Experiences with Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia channeled my earlier impressions of Muslim societies into scholarship and motivated a debate with an anthropologist in the book Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam. 

What led you to Stanford?

In the early 1980s, I took two years of leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become a visiting scholar at Stanford, and later I returned to The Farm for shorter periods. At Stanford I enjoyed gaining fresh perspectives from colleagues in the wider contexts of East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. In 1999, I accepted an appointment as a senior fellow in FSI to start and run a program on Southeast Asia at Stanford with initial support from the Luce Foundation.

As a fellow, most of your time is focused on research, but you also proctor a fellowship program and have led student trips overseas. How have you found the experience advising younger scholars?

In 2006, I took a talented and motivated group of Stanford undergrads to Singapore for a Bing Overseas Seminar. I turned them loose to conduct original field research in the city-state, including focusing on sensitive topics such as Singapore’s use of laws and courts to punish political opposition. Despite the critical nature of some of their findings, a selection was published in a student journal at the National University of Singapore (NUS). NUS then sent a contingent of its own students to Stanford for a research seminar that I was pleased to host. I encouraged the NUS students to break out of the Stanford “bubble” and include in their projects not only the accomplishments of Silicon Valley but its problems as well, including those evident in East Palo Alto.

That exchange also helped lay the groundwork for an endowment whereby NUS and Stanford annually and jointly select a deserving applicant to receive the Lee Kong China NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia. The 2014 recipient is Lee Jones, a scholar from the University of London who will write on regional efforts to combat non-traditional security threats such as air pollution, money laundering and pandemic disease.

Where does the American “pivot to Asia” now stand, and how does it inform your work? 

Events in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and now in Crimea as well, have pulled American attention away from Southeast Asia. Yet the reasons for priority interest in the region have not gone away. East Asia remains the planet’s most consequential zone of economic growth. No other region is more directly exposed to the potentially clashing interests and actions of the world’s major states – China, Japan, India and the United States. The eleven countries of Southeast Asia – 630 million people – could become a concourse for peaceful trans-Pacific cooperation, or the locus of a new Sino-American cold war. It is in that hopeful yet risky context that I am presently researching China’s relations with Southeast Asia, especially regarding the South China Sea, and taking part in exchanges between Stanford scholars and our counterparts in Southeast Asia and China. 

Tell us something we don’t know about you.

Okay. Here are three instructive failures I experienced in 1999, the year I joined the Stanford faculty. I was evacuated from East Timor, along with other international observers, to escape massive violence by pro-Indonesian vigilantes bent on punishing the population for voting for independence. The press pass around my neck failed to protect me from the tear gas used to disperse demonstrators at that year’s meeting of the World Trade Organization – the “Battle of Seattle.” And in North Carolina in semifinal competition at the 1999 National Poetry Slam, performing as Mel Koronelos, I went down to well-deserved defeat at the hands of a terrific black rapper named DC Renegade, whose skit included the imaginary machine-gunning of Mel himself, who enjoyed toppling backward to complete the scene. 

The Faculty Spotlight Q&A series highlights a different faculty member at Shorenstein APARC each month giving a personal look at his or her teaching approaches and outlook on related topics and upcoming activities.

Recent public opinion polls in China and Japan expose a “striking degree of hostility,” highlighting a clash in narratives between the two countries. Phillip Lipscy says in an op-ed in AlJazeera America that Japan’s conservatives are “misguided in seeking to reinvigorate their country by revising history,” and instead should rally the country “around dreams of the future.”

Michelle Obama promoted study abroad programs during a speech at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing on Saturday, then encouraged Stanford and local high school students sitting in Palo Alto to be "citizen diplomats" during a high-tech videoconference.

In her remarks before the conversation with students, the first lady said that study abroad is a "vital part of our foreign policy."

"Study abroad is about shaping the future of your countries and the world we all share," she said.

Studying in a different country gives students the chance to immerse themselves in another culture, she said.

"That's how you realize that we all have a stake in each other's success – that cures discovered here in Beijing could save lives in America," she said. "That clean energy technologies from Silicon Valley in California could improve the environment here in China; that the architecture of an ancient temple in Xi'an could inspire the design of new buildings in Dallas or Detroit."

Obama spoke before an audience of 170 students, scholars, and alumni at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) in Beijing – her only scheduled public appearance during a trip to China with her daughters.

"Two great universities, two great countries. The symbolism behind this event is truly remarkable," said Xinkai Mao, MBA '14. "My wife went to PKU and I go to Stanford. What a connection!"

Mao attended the event with Stanford Graduate School of Business classmate Paul Chen, MBA '14. Both lead a China study trip for fellow students starting Sunday.

Max Baucus, Washington's ambassador to Beijing, and a graduate of Stanford and the university's law school, reinforced Obama's message of personal learning and diplomacy, recounting his own exchange studies in France.

"I am standing here because of my experience at a study abroad program," he said.

Thirty-five years after the normalization of relations with China, the U.S. is supporting more American students in China than in any other country in the world.

"We're sending high school, college and graduate students here to study Chinese," Obama said. "We're inviting teachers from China to teach Mandarin in American schools. We're providing free online advising for students in China who want to study in the U.S. and the U.S. China Fulbright program is still going strong with more than 3,000 alumni."

The largest group of foreign students enrolled at Stanford today are Chinese – 860 students, up from about 600 two years ago.

"You can't learn what the First Lady is talking about only through books," said Chien Lee, BSMS '75, MBA '79, a former Stanford trustee and SCPKU's lead donor. "You have to have an in-person experience. That's what helps you appreciate the subtleties and differences. The center provides a place for people to have that exchange."

Milestone for SCPKU

The first lady's visit came the day after the second anniversary of SCPKU's opening. The center made Stanford the first American university to construct a building for its own use on a major Chinese university campus. 

Obama's conversation with students sitting at Stanford's campus showcased the "highly immersive classrooms" at SCPKU and the Graduate School of Business. The rooms are identical, and use high-definition video technology to give participants in both locations the feeling that they are in the same room. The rooms will be used to conduct seminars between scholars at Stanford and PKU, and will also be used by the business school to expand the reach of its faculty.

Michelle Obama with Stanford students at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing.

Michelle Obama with Stanford students at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing. Photo Credit: Stanford University

The classroom features a curved wall of video screens and allows seamless conversation and real-time data sharing with participants on different continents.

"Through the wonders of modern technology, our world is more connected than ever before," Obama said. "Ideas can cross oceans with the click of a button. You don't need to get on a plane to be a citizen diplomat. If you have an Internet connection in your home, school or library, within seconds you can be transported anywhere in the world and meet people on every continent."

Sitting in the immersive classroom at SCPKU, Obama encouraged students to use all the resources at their disposal to become well-informed global citizens and decision makers, and to enrich the relationship between the U.S. and China.  

"The creation of a global citizen is a critical mission of the great universities in modern times," said alumnus David Chao, MBA '93, who manages a global venture capital firm and attended Obama's speech.  "When you have a global citizen with empathy, someone pushing the nuclear button is highly unlikely. It's especially relevant, when you see what's going on in Ukraine right now with people refusing to talk."

From neurology to energy and art

Stanford and Peking University have a long and growing collaboration that began with scholarly exchanges in the 1970s and student exchanges thereafter. 

In remarks welcoming the first lady, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, spoke of SCPKU's mission and its relationship to China's elite Peking University, also known as Beida.

"Stanford scholars – like their counterparts at Beida – are constantly seeking a deeper appreciation of different societies and their histories," Cuéllar said. "That leads to stronger relationships –geographically, politically and culturally. We are striving for a world that is ever more capable of transcending its differences. Stanford's special relationship with Beida is a shining example of these ideals."

Nine Stanford teaching and research programs, including the School of Medicine's Asian Liver Center, the Bing Overseas Studies Program, and the Graduate School of Business, have located operations at SCPKU. Seventeen faculty fellows from departments as diverse as neurology, art, bioengineering and music, have conducted research at the center. SCPKU has also hosted 32 workshops or seminars on topics as varied as "Leveraging PCs to Advance Learning in China's Rural Schools," "Energy in China," and "New Urban Formations: Comparative Urbanization."

The first cohort of 20 Stanford undergraduates to study at the center will arrive for their 10-week program March 31. The center already has been home to a meeting of U.S.-China officials discussing North Korea's nuclear program and a conference of electrical engineers reviewing Technology Standardization. China 2.0, a forum on venture capital and entrepreneurship organized by the Graduate School of Business, will be held at the center April 11.

The future

Looking ahead, SCPKU aspires to tackle intellectual questions that address not just the political economy and culture of China, but also the challenges that arise as China engages other parts of the world in trade. China's geopolitical interests and actions in Latin America, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia are all important questions that Stanford faculty want to address. "The center can and should be a research destination for Stanford faculty whose work touches on China but is not necessarily solely focused on the country or region," said Jean Oi, professor of political science, director of SCPKU, and a driving force behind the center's creation.

As SCPKU activity and scholarship continues to evolve, technology also will allow its intellectual content to reach a wider audience beyond the Beijing campus.

Barbara Buell is the communications director for Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

 

 

As the world is distracted by events in Crimea and the missing Malaysian jet, Donald K. Emmerson says that China could hardly have chosen a better time to blockade Phillipine ships and extend its hold over disputed territories. He argues that China is reinforcing its two-track approach: hosting futile discussions in ASEAN, while simultaneously, changing conditions in the South China Sea.