[3/26/2024] Myanmar in Crisis: Human Rights, Regional Impacts, and Future Prospects

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Chung-Wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Three years after the military seized power from Myanmar’s elected government, a wide range of armed resistance groups continue to challenge the regime’s power.  Many parts of the country are no longer under the regime’s control, while 2.7 million civilians have been displaced from their homes. Neighboring countries are confronting challenges of their own as ever more Myanmar citizens attempt to flee across borders. In conversation with Christina Fink, Wai Wai Nu will discuss the human rights implications of the regime’s and resistance groups’ policies and practices, neighboring countries’ responses, and the prospects for peace and a political settlement.
 
RSVP today! Free lunch will be provided.

Speaker

Wai Wai Nu is the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Peace Network (WPN) and a counselor at the National Unity Consultative Council in Myanmar. She spent seven years as a political prisoner in Burma. Since her release from prison in 2012, she has devoted herself to promoting democracy and human rights. Through WPN, Wai Wai works to build peace and mutual understanding between Myanmar’s ethnic communities and aims to empower and advocate for the rights of marginalized women throughout Myanmar. To engage youth in the peacebuilding process and promote democracy education, Wai Wai founded the Yangon Youth Center, where young people from diverse backgrounds can come together to learn, share, and explore their ideas and promote leadership in social justice, political movements, and peace-building. She organized the My Friend Campaign, which involved hundreds of youth from different communities, that aimed to promote tolerance and reduce discrimination among diverse groups.
 
Wai Wai has been recognized as a Champion of Prevention by the United Nations Office of the Prevention of Genocide and Responsibility to Protect. She is an Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University and a Bush Institute Liberty Leadership Scholar. Wai Wai is the recipient of various awards, including the N-Peace Awards (2014), Democracy Courage Tributes, World Movement for Democracy (2015), Hillary Rodham Clinton Award (2018), City of Athens Democracy Award (2021), and International DVF Award (2021). She was also named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; among “100 Top Women,” by BBC (2014); among 100 World Thinkers, by Foreign Policy Magazine (2015); Next Generation Leader, by Time Magazine (2017); Women of the Year, Financial Times (2018).
 
Wai Wai obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Yangon in Myanmar and her Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from UC Berkeley’s School of Law. In recent years, she was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center.
 

Discussant

A picture of Christina Fink smiling and looking at the camera

Christina Fink joined the Elliott School in 2011 as an associate professor in the International Development Studies Program. Since 2022, she has also been serving as the Director of the BA and BS in International Affairs Program.

She received her B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.

She has combined research, teaching, and international development work throughout her career. Primarily based in mainland Southeast Asia from 1995-2010, her full-time positions and program evaluation consultancies addressed civil society capacity building in Myanmar with particular attention to gender and social inclusion, and political, economic, and social reforms. During this time, she also wrote Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (Zed Books: 1st edition 2001, 2nd edition 2009) and served as a lecturer and program associate at the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Thailand.

In recent years she has contributed to the development of the GenderPro capacity-building and credentialing program run by GW’s Global Women’s Institute in partnership with UNICEF. She also served on the United States Institute of Peace senior study group on Myanmar which produced two reports: China’s Role in Burma’s Internal Conflicts (2018) and Anatomy of the Military Coup and Recommendations for the US Response (2022).Her latest publications have addressed the position of religious and ethnic minorities in Myanmar, anti-Muslim violence and the role of Facebook, and the many facets of civil society engagement in development in Myanmar. 

Moderator

A picture of William Wise

William M. Wise chairs the Southeast Asia Forum, a project to promote the study of Southeast Asia at colleges, universities and research centers in the Mid-Atlantic region. He is a former Non-Resident Fellow at the Stimson Center, affiliated with the Southeast Asia Program.

Professor Wise’s government and teaching career focused on defense, security and intelligence issues in Asia. From 2005 to 2019 he managed the Southeast Asia Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, and taught courses on Southeast Asia and intelligence problems in Asia. Prior to teaching at SAIS, he was Adjunct Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA), George Washington University. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington in 1999.

Professor Wise’s government experience spanned more than three decades. He was Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice-President; Chief of Policy at the U.S. Pacific Command (now U.S. Indo-Pacific Command); and Deputy Director, for Policy Planning, East Asia & Pacific Region, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Earlier, he served in various positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community in Washington and overseas. He retired from the U.S. Air Force as a Colonel in 1997.

Professor Wise received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and master’s degree from the University of Hawaii.

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[3/21/24] Taiwan’s Elections and Reflections: What Does the Transition Path to May 2024 Tell Us?

Thursday, March 21, 2024

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM ET

State Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won an unprecedented third term in January 2024 in a tight 3-way race. As President-elect Lai Ching-te readies the transition to inauguration on May 20, what are we learning about key policy issues at home and abroad?

What does the new political environment suggest for Taiwan’s democracy and identity? What lessons can we learn from Chinese tactics related to the elections? How are policies being shaped on Taiwan’s security front, especially on cross strait relations and what are the chances for improving Taiwan’s diplomatic reach?

Join the Sigur Center as top experts debate and discuss these looming questions.

Panel One: New Political Environment & Implications at Home (10:30 am-12:00 pm)

China’s Tactics and Taiwan’s Election Integrity, Kenton Thibaut, The Atlantic Council

Changing Party Politics, Chiaoning Su, Oakland University

Identity Politics and the Electorate, Shelley Rigger, Davidson College

Moderator, Alexa Alice Joubin, GWU

Lunch (12:00-12:30 pm)

Panel Two: New Political Environment & Foreign Policy Implications (12:30-2:00 pm)

Outlook on Cross Strait Relations, Jennifer Kavanagh, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Directions in US-Taiwan Ties, James Lee, Academia Sinica

Taiwan’s Prospects for Greater International Space, Jacques deLisle, The University of Pennsylvania

Moderator, Deepa Ollapally, GWU

Speakers

A picture of Yaqiu Wang smiling and looking at the camera

Yaqiu Wang (pronounced Ya-cho) is Research Director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House, leading the organization’s research on human rights issues within China and the Chinese government’s global influence.

Prior to joining Freedom House, Wang was Senior China Researcher at Human Rights Watch, working on issues including internet censorship, protection of human rights defenders, and women’s rights. She has also written extensively on the Chinese government’s role in undermining human rights globally and multinational corporations’ complicity in human rights violations in China.  Before Human Rights Watch, Wang worked on press freedom issues in China and other Asian countries for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Wang was born and grew up in China, and has a MA degree in International Affairs from George Washington University.  She has testified before US Congress, and is frequently quoted by major news outlets, including The New York TimesThe Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, and appeared on CNN, NBC, NPR, and BBC.

Chiaoning Su smiling and looking at the camera

Chiaoning Su is an associate professor in Communication, Journalism and Public Relations at Oakland University. She also serves as the director of the Public Relations program and the Klein Center for Culture and Globalization, as well as PRSSA’s academic advisor. Beyond OU, Su served as the 2018-2020 President of the Association for Chinese Communication Studies, and the non-resident fellow of the Taiwan NextGen Foundation. Su received her Ph.D. in media and communication from Temple University in 2015. Her research focuses on two distinct yet interconnected research lines: journalism of crisis and journalism in crisis. While the first line examines the representation and production of crisis news, the second focuses on journalism in public life during an era of waning democracy. Her work has been published in Media, Culture and SocietyInternational Journal of CommunicationAsian Journal of Communication, and Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and Communication Review. She is the recipient of the 2020 Honors College Inspiration Award and the 2021 Teaching Excellence Award at Oakland University. Prior to her academic career, Su worked as a communication specialist at Ogilvy Public Relations and for several political campaigns in Taiwan. Through these professional experiences she developed expertise in media pitches and crisis management. In recent years, her research attracted increasing international media attention. AlJazeeraDeutsche Welle, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America have interviewed her on U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, press freedom in East Asia, China’s wolf warrior diplomacy, and Taiwan’s nation branding. Additionally, she appeared on several Taiwanese radio programs to discuss strategic narratives to amplify Taiwan’s international visibility. In her leisure time, Su likes to travel and read. She is always in search for a good story and the hidden messages behind the narratives.

Shelley Rigger speaking at an event with hand gestures

Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of Asian Studies. She teaches courses on East Asian Politics, including domestic politics of East Asian countries and the international relations of the region. Rigger’s research and writing focuses on Taiwanese politics and on the relationships among the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan. In 2019-2020 she was a Fulbright scholar at National Taiwan University in Taipei, studying the political and social views of Taiwanese youth. She’s been a visiting professor at two universities in the People’s Republic of China: Fudan University (2006) and Shanghai Jiaotong University (2013 & 2015), and was a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan in 2005. Rigger is also non-resident fellow of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). She also interacts frequently with US government officials, especially in the Taiwan policy field. I’ve held a number of administrative posts at Davidson College; Rigger currently serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty. She is also a director of The Taiwan Fund, a closed-end investment fund specializing in Taiwan-listed companies. Rigger has written two academic books on Taiwan’s domestic politics — Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001) – as well as two books for general readers – Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (2011) and The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise (2021). She has published articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan-China relations, generational politics in Taiwan, and related topics. Rigger has also published items in the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog.

A headshot of Jennifer Kavanagh

Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A political scientist by training, she has spent her career studying national security threats and their consequences for U.S. foreign policy and defense strategy. At Carnegie, Kavanagh’s research explores dynamics in contemporary geopolitics, with a focus on relationships between major powers, including the United States, European Union, Russia, and China. In addition to examining the types of power and influence that matter most in international system, Kavanagh’s work considers the domestic political foundations of geopolitical trends and analyzes possible future trajectories and their implications.  Prior to joining Carnegie, Kavanagh was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where she led projects focused on deterrence, military interventions, and U.S. military posture for defense and national security clients. She was most recently director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program in RAND’s Arroyo Center, which supports the U.S. Army. Kavanagh also co-authored Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, and co-founded and led RAND’s Countering Truth Decay Initiative, a portfolio of projects focused on polarization, disinformation, and civic development in the United States. Kavanagh received an AB in government from Harvard University and a PhD in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan. She is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

A picture of James Lee, smiling and looking at the camera

James Lee is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, the national academy of Taiwan. He is also an affiliated researcher of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) of the University of California system and a collaborator of Canada’s Network for Strategic Analysis. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2018, and he has previously held research positions at the European University Institute in Florence, the University of California, San Diego, and the NATO Defense College in Rome. Lee’s research in strategic studies is at the intersection of political science and diplomatic history, with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the security of Taiwan. He is one of the principal investigators on the “American Portrait” project, an annual survey of public opinion in Taiwan on U.S.-Taiwan relations. His research has been published in Business and Politics, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science. Lee is also a policy analyst of U.S.-Taiwan relations, with publications in outlets such as Le Rubicon, Global Asia, the Network for Strategic Analysis, and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. His working languages are English, Mandarin, French, Italian, and German.

Jacques deLisle smiling at the camera

Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.  His research and teaching focus on contemporary Chinese law and politics, including: legal reform and its relationship to economic reform and political change in China, the international status of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations, China’s engagement with the international order, legal and political issues in Hong Kong under Chinese rule, and U.S.-China relations. His writings on these subjects appear in a variety of fora, including international relations journals, edited volumes of multidisciplinary scholarship, and Asian studies journals, as well as law reviews. DeLisle is also professor of political science and former Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Penn and director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He has served frequently as an expert witness on issues of P.R.C. law and government policies and is a consultant, lecturer and advisor to legal reform, development and education programs, primarily in China.

Moderators

Jacques deLisle smiling at the camera

Alexa Alice Joubin is Professor of English, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, International Affairs, East Asian Languages & Literatures, and Theatre. She co-directs the Taiwan Education & Research Program and is an affiliate faculty at the Institute for Korean Studies. She is the inaugural recipient of the bell hooks Legacy Award and holder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.

Jacques deLisle smiling at the camera

Deepa M. Ollapally is a political scientist specializing in Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, and Asian regional and maritime security. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center. She also directs the Rising Powers Initiative, a major research program that tracks and analyzes foreign policy debates in aspiring powers of Asia and Eurasia.

Dr. Ollapally is currently working on a funded book, Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indian Ocean Region, which assesses the shifting patterns of geopolitical influence by major powers in the region since 2005 and the drivers of these changes. She is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008). Her most recent books are two edited volumes, Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (Routledge, 2017), and Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Dr. Ollapally has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asia Foundation for projects related to India and Asia. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Swarthmore College and has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London and at Columbia University. Dr. Ollapally also held senior positions in the policy world including the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNNBBCCBSDiane Rehm Show, and Reuters TV. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Sigur Center logo with line art of Asian landmarks

[2/28/24] Southeast Asia’s Place in the US-China Competition

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Chung-Wen Shih Asian Studies Conference Room Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Many Southeast Asian nations have found themselves caught between the United States and China as tensions continue to increase between the two states. The region’s key military and economic positions have only served to intensify that pressure. The decisions that these countries will make will undoubtedly have global impacts felt around the world. Prof. William M. Wise, the Chair of the Southeast Asia Forum, and Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran from the Woodrow Wilson Center will discuss the complicated position that these countries face as well as the interests the United States and China have within the region.

Join the Sigur Center and the Southeast Asia Forum as we discuss the role that Southeast Asia will play and its impacts on US-China relations. RSVP today! Free lunch will be provided.

Speaker

Headshot of Wai Wai Nu smiling at the camera

Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a fellow with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, where he produces analysis on Southeast Asian political and security issues, Asian defense affairs, and U.S. foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific. He is also the CEO and Founder of ASEAN Wonk Global, a research hub that produces the weekly ASEAN Wonk BulletBrief newsletter; Senior Columnist at The Diplomat, one of Asia’s leading current affairs publications; and an Advisor at BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm focused on the Indo-Pacific region.

A political scientist by training, Dr. Parameswaran is a recognized expert on Asian affairs and U.S. foreign policy in the region, with a focus on Southeast Asia and politics and security issues. He has conducted grant-based field research across the region, consulted for companies and governments, and taught courses affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State. His policy insights, research and commentary have been published widely in the United States and across the region in leading publications and journals including CNN, The Washington Post, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Asia Policy and Contemporary Southeast Asia.

Moderator

A picture of William Wise

William M. Wise chairs the Southeast Asia Forum, a project to promote the study of Southeast Asia at colleges, universities and research centers in the Mid-Atlantic region. He is a former Non-Resident Fellow at the Stimson Center, affiliated with the Southeast Asia Program.

Professor Wise’s government and teaching career focused on defense, security and intelligence issues in Asia. From 2005 to 2019 he managed the Southeast Asia Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, and taught courses on Southeast Asia and intelligence problems in Asia. Prior to teaching at SAIS, he was Adjunct Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA), George Washington University. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington in 1999.

Professor Wise’s government experience spanned more than three decades. He was Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice-President; Chief of Policy at the U.S. Pacific Command (now U.S. Indo-Pacific Command); and Deputy Director, for Policy Planning, East Asia & Pacific Region, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Earlier, he served in various positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community in Washington and overseas. He retired from the U.S. Air Force as a Colonel in 1997.

Professor Wise received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and master’s degree from the University of Hawaii.

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[3/1/2024] New Books in Asian Studies: The Collapse of Nationalist China

Friday, March 1, 2024

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

When World War II ended Chiang Kai-shek seemed at the height of his power-the leader of Nationalist China, one of the victorious Allied Powers in 1945 and with the financial backing of the US. Yet less than four years later, he lost the China’s civil war against the communists. Offering an insightful chronological treatment of the years 1944–1949, Parks Coble addresses why Chiang was unable to win the war and control hyperinflation. Using newly available archival sources, he reveals the critical weakness of Chiang’s style of governing, the fundamental structural flaws in the Nationalist government, bitter personal rivalries and Chiang’s personal lack of interest in finance. This major work of revisionist scholarship will engage all those interested in the shaping of twentieth-century history.

Join the Sigur Center as we discuss this monumental work of scholarship with history Parks M. Coble. RSVP today!

Speaker

A picture of Larry Repeta smiling and looking at the camera

Parks M. Coble is the James S. Sellers Professor of History, having joined the department in August 1976. He teaches surveys of general East Asian history, covering China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and specialized courses on modern China and Japan.

Parks Coble’s research field is 20th century China with special emphasis on the political history of Republican China (1911-1949), the history of Chinese business in the 20th century, and Sino-Japanese interactions. Recent publications have included a study of Chinese businessmen living in occupied China during World War II, and of the anti-Japanese movement in China in the 1930s. His current project examines the collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek government in China in 1949 by analyzing the tragic consequences of hyperinflation in China during the period from 1944 until 1949. The Japanese conquest of East China had isolated the Chiang stronghold in the interior and left the Chinese government with few financial resources. Chiang chose to simply print money which lead to disastrous consequences. After Japanese surrender there was no “peace dividend” so the erosion of the currency simply accelerated. New archival sources permit an in depth analysis of the decision making process within Chiang’s government.

Moderator

portrait of Celeste Arrington posing with arms crossed in black outfit

Edward A. McCord is Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University, specializing in Chinese history. He is the author of The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (University of California Press) and Military Force and Elite Power in the Making of Modern China (Routhledge). He has published numerous articles, focusing mainly on the role and impact of the military in modern Chinese society, in journals such as Modern China, Twentieth-Century China, and Modern Asian Studies. Besides teaching graduate and undergraduate students in modern and pre-modern Chinese history at The George Washington University, Professor McCord lectures frequently on Chinese history at the Foreign Service Institute and the Smithsonian Institution’s Campus on the Mall program. He is also a member of the editorial board of Modern China.

Professor McCord received his Ph.D. in Chinese history from the University of Michigan in 1985. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California-Berkeley, he was an assistant professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville Florida, where he received several awards for undergraduate teaching. In 1994 he moved to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., as an associate professor, also serving as Director of the University’s East Asian Studies Program. In the period from January 1998 to June 2006 he served successively as the Associate Dean for Students and Curriculum, Faculty and Research, Faculty and Student Affairs, and Senior Associate Dean for Management and Planning for GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also the founder and Director of the Elliott School’s Taiwan Education and Research Program. From September 2011 to June 2014, he served as the Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

 
Sigur Center logo with line art of Asian landmarks

2/7/2024 Book Launch: Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia

Wednesday, February 7, 2023

12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST

Lindner Family Commons Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

And Online

The Elliott School Book Launch Series, School of Media and Public Affairs, and Sigur Center for Asian Studies invite you to the book launch for Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia, the newest book by GWU Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs Janet Steele.

This will be a hybrid, on the record, recorded event. Guests are welcome to join us in-person at the Elliott School of International Affairs or online via Zoom. Please register for more information on attending the event.

Light snacks will be provided.

About the Agenda:

  • 12:30pm, Welcoming Remarks from Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, Alyssa Ayres
  • 12:35pm, Book Talk by Author Janet Steele
  • 1:05pm, Q&A with the Audience

About the Book:

Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia, chronicles the success of Malaysia’s only truly independent media outlet. Founded in 1999 by Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, Malaysiakini was one of many online portals that sprung up in the wake of Reformasi, a period of public protests sparked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad’s 1998 firing of his deputy Anwar Ibrahim. At first, there was no reason to think that Malaysiakini would be anything momentous. However, Malaysiakini wanted to do something much more important than just reporting on Reformasi—its founders intended to bring independent journalism to Malaysia in hopes of changing the country for the better.

Based on more than fifteen years of observation of Malaysiakini’s newsroom practices, Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia is an intimate portrait of the people and issues behind Malaysia’s only truly independent media outlet. Steele illustrates Malaysiakini’s unique mix of idealism in action, studying how sensitive issues such as race, religion, politics, and citizenship are discussed in the newsroom. This attention to the inner workings of one of the most important media institutions in the region yields not only a deep newsroom ethnography but a nuanced, rich history of modern Malaysia.

About the Author:

Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs, and the interim director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media.

Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants to Indonesia and a third to Serbia, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Kosovo.

Steele is the author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice and multiple monographs. Her 2005 book, Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia, examines Tempo magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. In 2014 she authored, Email Dari Amerika, (Email from America), a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her 2018 book, Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia examines day-to-day reporting practices of Muslim professionals, from conservative scripturalists to pluralist cosmopolitans, at five exemplary news organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia.

 

 

Sigur Center logo with line art of Asian landmarks

[2/2/2024] Historical, Cultural, and Linguistic Approaches to Elections in Southeast Asia

Friday, February 2, 2024

3:00 – 5:30 PM ET

Lindner Family Commons, Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

As Benedict Anderson once observed, normal voting is in many ways a peculiar activity”:

One joins a queue of people whom one does not typically know, to take a turn to enter a solitary space, where one pulls levers or marks pieces of paper, and then leaves the site with the same calm discretion with which one enters it – without questions being asked. It is almost the only political act imaginable in perfect solitude, and it is completely symbolic.

With alarm bells ringing in recent years about democracy’s decline, the election experience is more closely watched than ever. But how just much can elections tell us? The panelists in this session consider historical, linguistic and cultural contexts as a means of exploring the diverse ways in which electoral practices are framed, interpreted and enacted in one of the most richly varied regions of the world: Southeast Asia. With experts presenting case studies from Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, scholars will not only ask how the elections are events that point to the future, but also how they presuppose cultural assumptions rooted in the past.

Day and time: Feb 2, 3-5:30, with a reception to follow.

“Sins of the Father: Elections and Accountability in the Philippines”  Sheila Coronel, Toni Stabile Professor of Practice in Investigative Journalism, Columbia University

“Religion and Gender in Myanmar’s 2015 and 2020 Elections” Khin Lay, Fouding Director, Triangle Women’s Association and Christina Fink, Professor of International Affairs, the George Washington University

“Fear and Survival: Cambodia’s Elections Since 1993” Sebastian Strangio, Southeast Asia Editor, The Diplomat

“Public Participation in Vietnam: Invited and Claimed Spaces” Andrew Wells-Dang, Senior Expert in Southeast Asia, the United States Institute of Peace

“Who’s Afraid of May 13? Malaysia and the ‘Ghost’ of the 1969 Race Riot” Janet E. Steele, Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the George Washington University

“Language Use and Voter Experience: Some Examples from Indonesia” Joel Kuipers, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, the George Washington University

Speakers

A picture of Sheila Coronel looking at the camera

Sheila Coronel began reporting in the Philippines during the twilight of the Marcos dictatorship, when she wrote for the underground opposition press and later for mainstream magazines and newspapers. As Marcos lost power and press restrictions eased, she reported on human rights abuses, the growing democratic movement and the election of Corazon Aquino as president.

In 1989, Coronel and her colleagues founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Under Coronel’s leadership, the Center became the leading investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia. In 2001, the Center’s reporting led to the fall of President Joseph Estrada. In 2003, Coronel won Asia’s premier prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Coronel has written and edited more than a dozen books on the Philippines, freedom of information and investigative journalism. She has trained journalists around the world and written investigative reporting textbooks for journalists in Southeast Asia and the Balkan region. She speaks frequently at international investigative reporting conferences and writes about global investigative journalism.

Coronel joined the faculty of the Journalism School in 2006, when she was named director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. In 2011, she received one of Columbia University’s highest honors, the Presidential Teaching Award.

Coronel believes we are in a pivotal moment for investigative reporting, one that is ripe with opportunity but also fraught with challenges and threats. Coronel’s work outside of the Journalism School reflects her desire to build strong institutions that support free and independent reporting in a turbulent media landscape. She is chair of the Media Development Investment Fund board. She also sits on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Columbia Journalism Review, ProPublica and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. She is also a member and former board chair of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Her recent work is on the populist Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and police abuses in the war on drugs.

A picture of Khin Lay smiling and looking at the camera

Khin Lay is a women’s rights activist and the founding director of Triangle Women Organization. She is dedicated to promoting the status of women in Myanmar through individual empowerment and legal and policy reforms. Her organization works to build women’s capacity to assume leadership roles in politics and public life. After the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, Khin Lay and her family went into hiding and eventually escaped Myanmar. Since then, she has worked to support the democracy movement and continues to provide direct support to women who face increased threats of sexual and gender-based violence under the military junta. In 2022, she was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, and she established the Women’s Advocacy Coalition-Myanmar together with other prominent women leaders. The coalition seeks to promote gender equity in the democracy movement and in the on-going political negotiations around Myanmar’s future. Before establishing Triangle Women Organization, Khin Lay was a prominent political activist and youth leader for the National League for Democracy. She has also held numerous other roles, including as an Eisenhower Fellow, a chair of the Access To Justice Initiative, a steering committee member of Women’s Organization Network, the Country Coordinator for Freedom House, and a Program Consultant on Gender and Land Rights for Landesa Rural Development Institute. She holds a BA and MSc from Yangon University.

A picture of Christina Fink smiling and looking at the camera

Christina Fink joined the Elliott School in 2011 as an associate professor in the International Development Studies Program. Since 2022, she has also been serving as the Director of the BA and BS in International Affairs Program.

She received her B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.

She has combined research, teaching, and international development work throughout her career. Primarily based in mainland Southeast Asia from 1995-2010, her full-time positions and program evaluation consultancies addressed civil society capacity building in Myanmar with particular attention to gender and social inclusion, and political, economic, and social reforms. During this time, she also wrote Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (Zed Books: 1st edition 2001, 2nd edition 2009) and served as a lecturer and program associate at the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Thailand.

In recent years she has contributed to the development of the GenderPro capacity-building and credentialling program run by GW’s Global Women’s Institute in partnership with UNICEF. She also served on the United States Institute of Peace senior study group on Myanmar which produced two reports: China’s Role in Burma’s Internal Conflicts (2018) and Anatomy of the Military Coup and Recommendations for the US Response (2022).Her latest publications have addressed the position of religious and ethnic minorities in Myanmar, anti-Muslim violence and the role of Facebook, and the many facets of civil society engagement in development in Myanmar.

Sebastian Strangio Headshot

Sebastian Strangio is Southeast Asia editor at The Diplomat.

In 2008, he began his career as a reporter at The Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia, and has since traveled and reported extensively across the 10 nations of ASEAN. Sebastian’s writing has appeared in leading publications including Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times, The Diplomat, and Nikkei Asian Review, among many others. He is the author of “Hun Sen’s Cambodia” (Yale, 2014), a path-breaking examination of Cambodia since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and “In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century“ (Yale, 2020).

Alongside his journalistic work, Sebastian has also consulted for a wide variety of economic risk firms and non-government organizations, and is quoted frequently in the international media on political developments in Southeast Asia. Sebastian holds a B.A. and Master’s degree in international politics from The University of Melbourne. He currently lives in Adelaide.

A picture of Andrew Wells Dang smiling and looking at the camera

Dr. Andrew Wells-Dang leads the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative at USIP and contributes to other projects on Southeast Asia. Dr. Wells-Dang joined USIP following over 15 years of experience with international nongovernmental organizations in Vietnam, including as Oxfam’s senior governance advisor and Catholic Relief Services’ country representative. He has also worked in China, Cambodia, and Laos. In these roles, he designed and led programs in education, disability rights, UXO/landmine risk reduction, environmental and health policy advocacy, and judicial reform with a range of Vietnamese governmental and non-state partners.

Dr. Wells-Dang’s Washington experience includes his most recent role as deputy director for advocacy strategy and learning at CARE USA and Washington representative for the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. His research interests include U.S.-Vietnam relations, war legacies, land rights, civil society and governance.

Dr. Wells-Dang holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Birmingham and a master’s in social change and development from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of Civil Society Networks in China and Vietnam (Palgrave Macmillan). He is fluent in Vietnamese and proficient in Mandarin, French, and German.

Janet Steele, smiling and looking at the camera

Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs, and the interim director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media.

Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Her book, “Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia,” focuses on Tempo magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. “Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia,” explores the relationship between journalism and Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants to Indonesia and a third to Serbia, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Kosovo. The author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice, her 2014 book, “Email Dari Amerika,” (Email from America), is a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her most recent book, forthcoming in October 2023, is called “Malaysiakini and the power of independent media in Malaysia.”

portrait of joel kuipers in black shirt

Dr. Kuipers is a linguistic anthropologist interested in the role of language in the description and interpretation of social life, particularly how authoritative discourse shapes institutionally defined activities in clinics, courtrooms, classrooms and religious settings. He is Director of GW’s Discourse Laboratory.

In 1978, Dr. Kuipers began nearly three years of ethnographic and linguistic research into a distinctive style of poetic ritual speech among the Weyewa people of the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba. Through intensive recording, transcription and analysis of ritual performances, he examined how the mastery and use of a parallelistic style of ceremonial discourse established the cultural authority of individuals, lineages and sacred spaces. Beginning in 1990’s, he analyzed the role of language ideologies in the rapid decline of ritual speech on Sumba, and the rise of the Indonesian national language as the language political and religious authority. Since 2000, he has carried out extensive video ethnographic analyses of the use of authoritative language in psychiatric clinics, Indonesian courtrooms, and U.S. science classrooms.

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[1/12/24] AI Technology for Tibetan Language Preservation: A Tibetan Monk’s Harnessing of AI for Advancing Tibetan Language Use

Friday, January 12, 2024

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Dr. Geshe Lobsang Monlam is a pioneer in Tibetan information technology. In this seminar, he will introduce the recently-launched and groundbreaking Monlam Artificial Intelligence. This will be set in the context of the broader work of the Monlam Information Technology Research Centre. Geshe Monlam will discuss recent changes in Tibetan language and education preservation, while providing insight into the future of Tibetan-language artificial intelligence. 

About the Speaker:

A picture of Geshe Monlam, smiling and looking at the camera
Geshe Lobsang Monlam, PhD, CEO and Founder of Monlam IT Research Centre
Geshe Lobsang Monlam is a Buddhist scholar, lexicologist and leading innovator of Tibetan information technology. Born in Trosig Ngaba, Tibet, Geshe Monlam completed his Buddhist studies at Sera Mey Monastery in India before becoming a renowned figure in the field of Tibetan lexicology. His Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary has 223 volumes in print version. He has developed and released over 37 Tibetan language applications, available on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS. His Monlam Dictionary App has been downloaded by millions worldwide. He earned a PhD in Library Science in 2023. In November 2023, Geshe Monlam launched the groundbreaking Monlam Tibetan AI. 

About the Moderator:

Tashi Rabgey, in black shirt against dark grey background

Tashi Rabgey is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School where she directs the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS) and the Tibet Governance Lab. Her primary research focuses on territorial politics, asymmetric governance and problems of contemporary statehood in the People’s Republic of China. Before joining the Elliott School, Professor Rabgey was a faculty member of the University of Virginia East Asia Center where she was co-director of the University of Virginia Tibet Center. She held a lectureship in contemporary Tibetan studies and taught in comparative politics and global development studies. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as law degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. Following her LL.M. in public international law, she pursued advanced studies in comparative Chinese law at the Center for Asian Legal Studies at Faculty of Law of University of British Columbia. She is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and was Visiting Professor at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

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GWCAL Xinjiang Dance

[1/11/24] Uyghur Heritage, Chinese Tourism, and the “Xinjiang Dance” Craze

Thursday, January 11, 2024

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM ET

Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

In parks and town squares across China in 2023, Chinese people engaged in a nationwide “Xinjiang dance” craze. For outside observers, this might seem a bizarre development following the discourses of terrorism and mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in recent years, but it aligned neatly with new initiatives across Chinese government, media and heritage to promote tourism in the Uyghur region. In this talk, Rachel Harris highlights the ways that Uyghur heritage, music and dance are now being used to rewrite the history of the region and the future of its peoples, thinking through the aesthetic formations and imaginaries of Uyghur heritage, and the links between tourism and territory, colonialism and desire.  

About the Speaker:

A picture of Rachel Harris, smiling and looking at the camera

Rachel Harris is Professor of Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on musical life, religious and expressive culture among the Uyghurs, and heritage and tourism in China. Her latest book Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam (Indiana University Press 2020) won the 2022 BFE book prize. Recent projects include a British Academy Sustainable Development Project to revitalize Uyghur cultural heritage in Kazakhstan, and the European Research Council Advanced Grant, Maqām Beyond Nation.

About the Moderator:

A picture of Eric Schluessel, smiling in glasses and lookin gat the camera

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians.

Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel is also completing a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

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12/4/2023 | Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire

Monday, December 4, 2023

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The talk puts the spotlight on the Asian elites who became integral to the functioning of the Indian Ocean in the age of Empire. It weaves the story of a family of Indian Ocean Sultans into the broader tapestry of world history.  Putting the micro-optic on the Omani Sultans and their century long saga it retells the story of the Ocean carved as a political space where Asian and European aspirations competed. It shows how the Sultans made the most of Europeans who made a bee line to the Western Indian Ocean hungry for slaves, cloves, and ivory.  They leveraged themselves to European economic concerns and politics, remained heeled in their own cultural tradition, and articulated their political ambitions. The talk forefronts these Asian imperial ambitions in the Ocean with important implications for the writing of global histories.

About the Speaker:

Seema Alavi specializes in early modern and modern South Asia, with an interest in the transformation of the region’s legacy from Indo-Persian to one heavily affected by British colonial rule. She has written books on the military, religious and medical cultures of the region from the early modern to modern times. Her most recent book is the Albert Hourani Award (Honorable Mention) winning, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the age of Empire from Harvard University Press, USA.

She has twice been a Fulbright Scholar and a Smuts Visiting Fellow at Cambridge. She was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard. In 2010 she was at the Radcliffe institute at Harvard as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow. She wrote Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India, 1770–1830 (Oxford University Press, 1995) and co-authored with Muzzafar Alam, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I‘jaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (Oxford University Press, 2001). Her book Eighteenth Century in Indian History in the Oxford Debates series is a popular reader in India and abroad. In 2009 she wrote Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600–1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK 2009). She serves on the editorial board of several national and international journals, including Modern Asian Studies UK, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, UK, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, UK and Biblio, New Delhi.

About the Moderator:

Headshot of Ben Hopkins with blue background

As senior associate dean of academic affairs, Professor Hopkins oversees the Elliott School’s Academic Programs, Graduate Admissions, International Exchanges, and Student Services. Benjamin D. Hopkins is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the history of Afghanistan and British imperialism on the Indian subcontinent. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous books on the region, including  The Making of Modern AfghanistanFragments of the Afghan Frontier, and Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier. His latest book,  Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State, which won the Association of Asian Studies Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize (2022), presents a global history of how the limits of today’s state-based political order were organized in the late nineteenth century, with lasting effects to the present day. He is currently working on a manuscript about the American war in Afghanistan provisionally entitled, The War that Destroyed America, as well as A Concise History of Afghanistan for Cambridge University Press.

Writing for the public, Professor Hopkins has been featured in The New York TimesThe National Interest, and the BBC. He regularly teaches courses on South Asian history, the geopolitics of South and Central Asia, as well as World history and the legacies of violence and memory in Asia. Professor Hopkins directed the Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 2016 until 2021. During the 2021-22 academic year, he worked in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict Stabilization Operations.

Professor Hopkins has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington DC, the National University of Singapore, as well as the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. His research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK), the British Academy, the American Institute of Iranian Studies, the Nuffield Foundation (UK), as well as Trinity College, Cambridge.

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11/15/2023 | Roundtable on “Taiwan’s Upcoming Elections and Foreign Policy Stakes”

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

12:00 – 2:00 PM EST

Lindner Family Commons, Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

The Taiwanese people will soon vote in presidential elections in January 2024. Taiwan’s vibrant democracy means that there is no certainty to electoral outcomes. Which players and parties should we be paying attention to this upcoming election season and what are the foreign policy stakes involved? The Sigur Center for Asian Studies is pleased to invite you to a discussion on these key questions: “Cross-Strait Relations and Policy Debates” and “Perspectives on Economic Strategies and Foreign Policy Implications.” This event features three esteemed guest speakers: Syaru Shirley Lin, Founder and Chair of the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation, Kevin Sheives, Deputy Director for the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, and Riley Walters, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute specializing in international economics and national security. The event will take place on Wednesday, November 15 from 12:00 to 2:00pm. There will be lunch from 12:00 to 12:30pm and the discussion will take place from 12:30 to 2:00pm. We hope you can join us for such an important discussion on the future of Taiwan and the region as a whole.

Lunch (12:00-12:30 pm)

Roundtable Discussion (12:30-2:00 pm)

“Cross-Strait Relations and Policy Debates”  Syaru Shirley Lin, Founder and Chair, The Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI)

“Responding to China’s Rising Threats to Information Integrity in Taiwan and Elsewhere” Kevin Sheives, Deputy Director, the International Forum for Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy

“Perspectives on Economic Strategies and Foreign Policy Implications” Riley Walters, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

Speakers

A picture of Shirley Lin, smiling and looking at the camera

Syaru Shirley Lin is Founder and Chair of the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation, Research Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Previously, she was a partner at Goldman Sachs, responsible for private equity investments in Asia, and led the first round of institutional investments in Alibaba and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. She currently serves as a director of Langham Hospitality Investments, Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, TE Connectivity, and MediaTek. Dr. Lin is the author of Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy (2016), which was also published in Chinese (2019). She is currently writing a book about economies in the Asia-Pacific caught in the high-income trap, facing problems such as inequality, demographic decline, financialization, climate change, political polarization, and inadequate policy and technological innovation. She earned an MA in international public affairs and a Ph.D. in politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong and graduated cum laude from Harvard College.

A picture of Lonnie Henley

Kevin Sheives is the Deputy Director for the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. He helps oversee the Forum’s staff and research on authoritarian influence, disinformation, emerging technologies, and transnational kleptocracy. Previously, Kevin served nearly fifteen years in the U.S. government with the State Department’s China Desk and the Global Engagement Center, and in positions at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Department of Defense, and the U.S. House of Representatives. Kevin received a Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in International Relations from Baylor University. He developed moderate proficiency in Mandarin as a regular summer English teacher in Xinjiang, China. His writings have appeared in War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, Asia Nikkei, and the International Forum’s platforms.

A picture of Bonnie S. Glaser, smiling and looking at the camera

Riley Walters is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in international economics and national security. His areas of expertise include international trade policy, investment regulations, technology and innovation, cybersecurity, and the intersection of economics and national security. He is also an expert on east Asian political affairs, primarily focusing on Japan and Taiwan. Mr. Walters is also a senior non-resident fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute. Prior to joining Hudson, he was a senior policy analyst and economist in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. Previously, he was a Penn Kemble fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy, a George C. Marshall fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a national security fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a Kim Koo fellow with the Korea Society.

Moderators

Deepa Ollapally, pictured in professional attire

Deepa M. Ollapally is a political scientist specializing in Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, and Asian regional and maritime security. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center. She also directs the Rising Powers Initiative, a major research program that tracks and analyzes foreign policy debates in aspiring powers of Asia and Eurasia.

Dr. Ollapally is currently working on a funded book, Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indian Ocean Region, which assesses the shifting patterns of geopolitical influence by major powers in the region since 2005 and the drivers of these changes. She is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008). Her most recent books are two edited volumes, Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (Routledge, 2017), and Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Dr. Ollapally has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asia Foundation for projects related to India and Asia. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Swarthmore College and has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London and at Columbia University. Dr. Ollapally also held senior positions in the policy world including the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNNBBCCBSDiane Rehm Show, and Reuters TV. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

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