Please join the Five University Symposium in a panel on China, the United States, and the future of conflict in East Asia.
Victor D. Cha is Distinguished University Professor, D.S. Song-KF Chairholder, and Professor of Government in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is also President of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999) (winner of the 2000 Ohira Book Prize), and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Harper Collins Ecco, 2012) selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.” He is co-author of Korea: A New History of South and North (Yale University Press, 2023) with Ramon Pardo. His other books are Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia (Columbia University Press, 2009); Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (Columbia University Press, 2003) with D. Kang; and Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). His latest book is The Black Box: Methods and Data in the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2024). His articles on international relations and Asian affairs have appeared in numerous journals including International Security, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Asian Studies, International Journal of the History of Sport, and Journal of Strategic Studies.
He was appointed in 2021 by Joseph R. Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the Secretary of Defense. He formerly served on the White House National Security Council where he was responsible primarily for Japan, the Korean peninsula, Australia/New Zealand and Pacific Island nation affairs. Dr. Cha was also the Deputy Head of Delegation for the United States at the Six Party Talks in Beijing.
Dr. Cha is a two-time Fulbright Scholar, former Olin Fellow at Harvard University, and former Hoover, CISAC, and Koret Fellow at Stanford University. He currently serves on ten editorial boards of academic journals and is co-editor of the Contemporary Asia Book Series at Columbia University Press. In 2022, he was elected to serve on the Board for the National Endowment for Democracy, and The Korea Society in New York. He remains a Senior Fellow in Human Freedom (non-resident) at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. He is a Foreign Affairs Contributor for MSNBC and NBC News. Dr. Cha has appeared in a variety of media including ESPN, The Colbert Report, and a cameo role (as himself) in the film Red Dawn. He co-hosts The Impossible State podcast and The Capital Cable YouTube show.
In 2023, he was named Distinguished University Professor, the highest honor bestowed upon a tenured faculty member at Georgetown. He is the recipient of the 2023 Hubert H. Humphrey award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for notable public service by a political scientist and the 2023 Joseph Kurzel Memorial Prize for excellence in scholarship and public service (also from APSA). According to ScholarGPS (2022), Dr. Cha is the highest ranked, living political scientist with Korea expertise in the world based on publication record, citation count, and impact (h-index).
Dr. Cha received his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University, MIA from Columbia, B.A. Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and A.B. in Economics from Columbia. His father was also a graduate of Columbia, and his mother was a harpist from the Juilliard School of Music. He was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
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Danny Quah is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics and Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. He works on world order, economic growth and development, and inequality and income mobility. In his research on world order, Quah analyses the supply and demand of international systems, contrasting the goals of the Great Powers and the needs of the global community. Quah's work on income mobility challenges conventional narratives on inequality, highlighting the broad diversity of economic experiences across nations. Through academic research, public commentary, and as a member of World Bank President's Economic Advisory Panel and other public commissions, as well as in advisory roles at World Economic Forum, UNDP, government ageencies and ministries, and elsewhere, Quah seeks to help shape global economic and geopolitical discourse.
He is the author of “The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity”.
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Kiichi Fujiwara is Professor of the Graduate School of International Liberal Arts at the Juntendo University, Guest Professor of the Institute for Future Initiatives and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, majoring in international politics, comparative politics, and Southeast Asian studies. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Professor Fujiwara studied as a Fulbright student at Yale University before he returned to Japan at the Institute of Social Science (ISS). He first joined the faculty at Chiba University, and then returned to ISS as an Associate Professor for seven years, and then taught International Politics at the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics until 2022. From 2022 to 2024 he was professor of Institute for Advanced Research (Special Advisor to the President) at Chiba University, and has moved to Juntendo University from April 2024. He also has taught at the Graduate School of Public Policy of the University of Tokyo since its inauguration. Professor Fujiwara founded the Institute for Future Initiatives, a university-wide think-tank that engages in multidisciplinary approaches to global challenges, and served as its director for two consecutive terms, where he remains as guest professor since 2022. He has held positions at the University of the Philippines, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Bristol, and was selected as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center at Washington D.C. from 1995 to 1996. He was the president of the Japanese Comparative Politics Association from 2008 to 2010. Prof. Fujiwara’s works include Remembering the War (2001, Korean translation 2003); A Democratic Empire (2002, Korean translation 2002); Is There Really a Just War? (2003, 2022); Peace for Realists (winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005), Constructing Peace (with Ryo Oshiba and Tetsuya Yamada, 2006), International Politics, 2007; War Unleashed, 2007, Conditions of War, 2013, A Destabilizing World, 2020, as well as a chapter in The Age of Hiroshima, edited by G. John Ikenberry and Michael Gordin, 2020, Professor Fujiwara is a commentator on international affairs and Japanese foreign policy in NHK, TBS, BBC, and CNN, and writes a monthly column for the Asahi. He is also a film buff, and serves as a film reviewer for NHK and the Mainichi. His writings on film have been published in America in Film (2006) and That’s a Movie! (2012).
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Jie Dalei is an associate professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University in Beijing, China. He is also affiliated with the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS) of Peking University as a senior research fellow. He is currently a visiting scholar at MIT’s Security Studies Program. His research focuses on security studies in general and the China-U.S. relations and cross-Taiwan Strait relations in particular. He has published on those topics in both English journals such as International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Asian Security, China International Strategy Review and Chinese journals such as World Economics and Politics and Journal of International Studies. He has also published commentaries at the Washington Post Money Cage, Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, and the Global Times. He received his B.A. degree in Law and Economics and his M.A. degree in Law at Peking University, and got his Ph.D. degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. At Peking University, he has won the Teaching Excellence Award in 2022 and Ng Teng Fong/Sino Outstanding Junior Scholar Award in 2018.
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Jae-Seung LEE is Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in College of International Studies and Director of the Ilmin International Relations Institute (IIRI) at Korea University. He previously served as the Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies where he also directed the Jean Monnet EU Centre of Excellence.
As a leading scholar in international political economy, he has authored a series of books and articles on Korea’s foreign policy, energy security and regional cooperation in Europe and Asia. His current research focuses on Korea’s relations with the EU and NATO, as well as economic security.
Prof. Lee sits in Policy Advisory Board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Unification of Korea. He is also a board member at the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and serves as Vice President at the Seoul Forum for International Affairs. In 2023, Prof. Lee served as President of Korean Society for Contemporary European Studies.
Prof. Lee holds a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He is also a SAIS Fellow at Johns Hopkins University.Prof. Lee has contributed regular op-ed articles to major Korean newspapers and has commented on international affairs for BBC, CNN and Korean broadcast stations.
Moderator
G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He is also Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies. Ikenberry is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. In 2018-19, Ikenberry was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University. In 2013-2014 Ikenberry was the 72nd Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. Ikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, Ikenberry was ranked in the top 10 in scholars who have produced the best work in the field of IR in the past 20 years, and ranked in the top 8 in scholars who have produced the most interesting work in the past 5 years.
Professor Ikenberry is the author of eight books, mostly recently A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order (Yale 2020), and Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American System (Princeton, 2011). His book, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, 2001), won the 2002 Schroeder-Jervis Award presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book in international history and politics. A collection of his essays, entitled Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition: American Power and International Order (Policy) appeared in 2006. Ikenberry is also co-author of Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the 21st Century (Princeton 2009), which explores the Wilsonian legacy in contemporary American foreign policy. Ikenberry has also the editor or co-editor of fourteen books, including America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Cornell, 2002), The End of the West? Crisis and Change in Atlantic Order (Cornell 2008) and Unipolarity and International Relations Theory (Cambridge, 2011). Ikenberry has authored 130 journal articles, essays, and book chapters.
Professor Ikenberry is the co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security, and he is the co-author, along with Anne-Marie Slaughter, of the final report, Forging a World of Liberty Under Law. Among his many activities, Professor Ikenberry served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in 1991-92, as a member of an advisory group at the State Department in 2003-04, and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, the so-called Kissinger-Summers commission. He is also a reviewer of books on political and legal affairs for Foreign Affairs.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.