"The bigger vision of the AP Scholars Program is that the connections live on after the two years, and that they are fruitful because of the friendships and better understanding established during the discussions." 

-Thomas Fingar
Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI

Former President Gerhard Casper launched the Asia-Pacific Scholars Program (AP Scholars Program) in 1997 to strengthen and expand Stanford University's ties with Asia. The program was loosely modeled on Oxford University's Rhodes Scholarship. Led by renowned China scholar Michel Oksenberg of the Asia/Pacific Research Center (the predecessor organization of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), the first program brought together a highly diverse class of nineteen graduate students from the United Kingdom, the United States, and numerous countries in Asia. The AP Scholars Program thrived under Oksenberg's direction, but fell dormant for nearly a decade following his death in 2001.

Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, re-launched the AP Scholars Program in September 2010. "I am delighted to have been asked to revive it," states Fingar. In keeping with its original design, the two-year program is open to Stanford doctoral students from Asia-Pacific countries and to those studying issues related to the region. The twelve current participants come from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and the United States, and are studying disciplines ranging from art history to engineering. In the future, incoming students will be invited to participate in the program, creating a dynamic cohort of new and continuing students.

The AP Scholars Program serves as a forum for discussing significant and often-sensitive issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, and for building a strong academic and professional network linking Asia and Stanford. In its current format, it is designed to broaden students' understanding of how U.S. government officials think about and make policy decisions on Asia, and to provide insight into how American scholars study Asia in relation to global issues. Additionally, it offers the significant opportunity for students from different countries and academic disciplines to dialogue not only with one another, but also with leading academics and former senior-level U.S. government officials at Stanford. 

"This is really an incredible enrichment opportunity," emphasizes Fingar. Students meet once a month during the academic year for a two-hour dinner seminar featuring a presentation and a question-and-answer session with a guest speaker. These informal sessions offer a rare and a highly insightful window into the experience of individuals who have been involved in recent decades with key policy decisions about Asia and with major research shaping understanding of Asia in the United States. After each presentation, the speaker and students engage in candid dialogue.

During the 2010-2011 academic year, students will hear from academic experts on climate change, nuclear proliferation, and food and energy security, and from former senior U.S. government officials who served in the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the National Intelligence Council, and Congress. Fingar leads a wrap-up discussion after each presentation, during which the students provide their own perspectives on the issues presented. In this environment, difficult topics are discussed in an open, and thoughtful manner. There are no readings or other outside preparation required to participate in the AP Scholars Program.

Waraporn Tongprasit, a student with the Department of Management Science and Engineering who is originally from Thailand, appreciates the different issues discussed during the presentation sessions, and the opportunity for networking that the program offers. "Through the AP Scholars Program, I am learning about political, social, and economic issues in my home country and region, and about the perspective of U.S. scholars and the U.S. government on these issues," she says. "I also have an opportunity to establish connections with other students from the Asia-Pacific region who are experts in many different areas."

Yezhou Shi, a Materials Science and Engineering student from China, values the unique chance to speak so candidly with prominent scholars and former government officials, and to hear about their experience with major global issues and events. "These are stories that I could probably never know without attending the AP Scholar Program seminars—these are really inside stories," he says. Shi also enjoys the opportunity to speak with students from different countries on issues that he would not normally feel comfortable discussing. "In daily conversation, I would not bring up some of these issues unless it was with a really close friend," he stresses. "[In the program,] of course, I pay attention to what I say, but I think that everyone understands that we are there to discuss important issues."

Fingar is optimistic as he looks to the future of the program, and its continuing impact after the current class of students completes it in 2012. "The bigger vision of the AP Scholars Program is that the connections live on after the two years," he says, "and that they are fruitful because of the friendships and better understanding established during the discussions."

Pacific Vision: The inaugural AP Scholars class
 

The film Pacific Vision was released in 1998 to commemorate the AP Scholars Program's inaugural year. A clip from the film, featuring interviews with Casper and Oksenberg, is available here courtesy the Stanford University Archives. 
 

As the new academic year is about to get underway, the Corporate Affiliates Program of Shorenstein APARC welcomes its new class of fellows for the 2010-2011 academic year:

• Minoru Aosaki, Ministry of Finance, Japan; 
• Wataru Ishii, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan; 
• Earn Key Joo, Samsung Electronics, Republic of Korea; 
• Toshifumi Kadowaki, Sumitomo Corporation, Japan; 
• Takeshi Kondo, Mitsubishi Electric, Japan; 
• Yuichi Moronaga, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan; 
• Makoto Murata, Kansai Electric Power Company, Japan; 
• Pradnya Palande, Reliance Industries, India; 
• Seung Gun Park, Samsung Electronics, Republic of Korea; 
• Puangthong Pawakapan, the Asia Foundation / Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; 
• Oshie Sato, Sumitomo Corporation, Japan; 
• Naoki Takeuchi, Development Bank of Japan, Japan; 
• Hirofumi Takinami, Ministry of Finance, Japan; 
• Sonya Vasudeva, Reliance Industries, India; and 
• Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan Patent Office, Japan.

During their stay at Stanford University, the fellows will audit classes, study English, and conduct individual research projects, which they will then present about at the end of the year. They will have the opportunity to consult with Shorenstein APARC's scholars and attend events featuring visiting experts from around the world. The fellows will also participate in special events and site visits to gain a first-hand understanding of business, society, and culture in the United States.

The Corporate Affiliates website will feature interviews with of each of the 2010-2011 fellows throughout the coming year.

The Southeast Asia Forum experienced an embarrassment of riches in 2009-2010.  In no previous academic year had the Forum enjoyed the intellectual company of so many first-rate scholars working on Southeast Asia at Stanford.  They were six in all—Marshall Clark (Australia), James Hoesterey (US), Juliet Pietsch (Australia), Thitinan Pongsudhirak (Thailand), Sudarno Sumarto (Indonesia), and Christian von Luebke (Germany)—three for the full academic year and three for two months apiece.  All six visitors shared their findings and thoughts on Southeast Asia in talks hosted by SEAF.  Not least among the pleasures of having them at Stanford was a Spring 2010 seminar in which they read each other’s work in progress and shared ideas as to how it might be improved.  These conversations gave specific, heuristic, and collegial meaning to the abstract notion of “a community of scholars.”

Here are brief updates on all six as of the end of June 2010:  

Marshall Clark

A lecturer in Indonesian studies at Deakin University in Australia, Dr. Clark came to Stanford on sabbatical to spend two months at Stanford in Spring 2010 writing up and sharing his research findings with US-based colleagues.  Publications associated with his stay at APARC include two books, Maskulinitas:  Culture, Gender and Politics in Indonesia (Monash University Press, 2010) and Indonesia-Malaysia Relations:  Media Politics and Regionalism (co-authored with Juliet Pietsch and forthcoming in 2011), and two articles, “The Ramayana in Southeast Asia: Fostering Regionalism or the State?” in Ramayana in Focus, and (with Dr. Pietsch) “Generational Change:  Regional Security and Australian Engagement with Asia,” The Pacific Review  During his time with SEAF he presented papers at venues including the Association for Asian Studies convention in Philadelphia in March 2010.  In April at the University of California-Berkeley at the Islam Today Film Festival he moderated a discussion of the ins and outs of making movies in Indonesia and Malaysia. (2010).

He returns to his position on the faculty of Deakin University.

James Hoesterey

Dr. Hoesterey was awarded the Walter H. Shorenstein Fellowship to spend the academic year at APARC working on several projects, including revising his University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral dissertation into a book.  Based on anthropological research in Indonesia on media-savvy Muslim preachers, Sufi Gurus and Celebrity Scandal:  Islamic Piety on the Public Stage should be under review in 2010 for possible publication in 2011.  Also in the pipeline are an essay, “Shaming the State: Pop Preachers and the Politics of Pornography in Indonesia,” to appear in a volume he is co-editing with political scientist Michael Buehler, and chapters in Muslim Cosmopolitanisms and Digital Subjectivities:  Anthropology in the Age of Mass Media.  During his fellowship he spoke to audiences at several US universities.  In March 2010 he was elected incoming chair of the Indonesian and East-Timor Studies Committee of the Association for Asian Studies.

In Fall 2010 the BBC-Discovery Channel series “Human Planet” will feature Dr. Hoesterey’s work as a cultural consultant with documentary-film makers in West Papua.  He will spend AY 2010-11 in Illinois as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Studies at Lake Forest College.  

Juliet Pietsch

Dr. Pietsch is a senior lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University.  During her two-month sabbatical at Stanford in Spring 2010 she worked on two books:  Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: Media, Politics and Regionalism (with Dr. Clark) and (with two other co-authors) Dimensions of Australian Society (3rd ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).  In April, jointly with Dr. Clark, she spoke at the Berkeley APEC Study Center on “Indonesia-Malaysia Relations and Southeast Asian Regional Identity.”

Dr. Pietsch returns to her faculty position at the Australian National University.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Dr. Pongsudhirak is an associate professor in the Department of International Relations in the Faculty of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University, whose Institute of Security and International Studies he also heads.  He was selected to spend a month at Stanford in Spring 2010 as an FSI-Humanities Center international scholar, and was supported for a second month by FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.  During his time on campus he focused on the turbulent politics of Thailand—in an article drafted for the Journal of Democracy, in a number of shorter pieces, in lectures at various venues, and in interviews with media around the world.  (For a filmed interview on 4 June 2010, see http://absolutelybangkok.com/thitinan-on-continuity-change/.)

Dr. Pongsudhirak will briefly rejoin some of his Stanford colleagues at a conference on Asian regionalism to be hosted by APARC in Kyoto in September 2010.  Meanwhile he continues his scholarship and teaching at Chulalongkorn.

Sudarno Sumarto

An Indonesian economist specializing on poverty reduction, Dr. Sumarto spent AY 2009-2010 at APARC as an Asia Foundation fellow writing up research, lecturing on and off campus, and advising Indonesian officials on anti-poverty policy.  Notable among the publications resulting from his residence at Stanford is a book, Poverty and Social Protection in Indonesia (Singapore / Jakarta:  ISEAS / Smeru Institute, May 2010), which he co-edited and most of whose chapters he co-wrote.  Noteworthy, too, is a co-authored essay, “Targeting Social Protection Programs:  The Experience of Indonesia,” in Deficits and Trajectories: Rethinking Social Protection as Development Policy in the Asia Region (forthcoming, 2010).  Indonesia-related subjects of writing in progress include lessons from the cash transfer program, how such transfers have affected political participation, and the impacts of violent conflict on economic growth.  During his stay at Stanford, Dr. Sumarto was chosen to co-convene the September 2010 Indonesia Update conference in Canberra on “Employment, Living Standards, and Poverty in Contemporary Indonesia” and to co-edit the resulting book. 

Dr. Sumarto returns to Jakarta to become a senior research fellow at the Smeru Institute, which he co-founded and directed, and to continue his work on poverty alleviation in Indonesia.

Christian von Luebke

Former Shorenstein fellow Dr. von Luebke completed the first year of a two-year German Research Foundation fellowship at Stanford writing a book on democracy and governance in Southeast Asia.  Before the end of 2010, Gauging Governance:  The Mesopolitics of Democratic Change in Indonesia should be in the pipeline toward publication.  Other relevant work includes “Politics of Reform:  Political Scandals, Elite Resistance, and Presidential Leadership in Indonesia,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (2010), and a co-authored piece on current economics and politics in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (2010).  Pending revision and resubmission is an article on the political economy of investment climates in Indonesia.  In the course of the year he spoke on his research before audiences in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and co-organized a panel on Southeast Asian politics to be held at the annual conference of Oxford Analytica in the UK in September 2010.

Dr. von Luebke’s plans for AY 2010-11 at Stanford include research and writing on Indonesia and the Philippines and teaching a course on Southeast Asian politics