The Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network receives guidance from our senior advisors:
• Dr. Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University
• Dr. Karl Jackson, C.V. Starr Distinguished Professor of Southeast Asia Studies, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University
• Dr. Richard Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Dr. Amy Searight, Senior Adviser and Director, Southeast Asia Program at the Center for International Studies (CSIS)
• Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, President and CEO, Korea Economic Institute (KEI)
Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.
From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Dr. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.
Dr. Fingar holds an AB in Government and History from Cornell University and an MA and PhD, both in political science, from Stanford University. His most recent books are Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford, 2016), and Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017).
Karl D. Jackson is the C.V. Starr Distinguished Professor of Southeast Asia Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Before joining the faculty in 1995, he served as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Dr. Jackson has also served as assistant to the vice president for National Security Affairs. From 1986 to 1989, he served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.
Dr. Jackson is the author of Traditional Authority, Islam and Rebellion: A Study of Indonesian Political Behavior and has edited and co-edited many books, including Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis.
Richard Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been head of the MIT Political Science Department, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Japan of the National Research Council, and chair of the Japan-US Friendship Commission. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was awarded an Imperial decoration, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Prime Minister.
His study of the political and policy consequences of the 2011 Tohoku catastrophe, 3:11: Disaster and Change in Japan, was published by Cornell University Press in 2013. Dr. Samuels’ Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book in international affairs in 2007. Machiavelli’s Children won the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the Jervis-Schroeder Prize from the International History and Politics section of American Political Science Association. Earlier books were awarded prizes from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association of American University Press, and the Ohira Memorial Foundation. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The National Interest, Journal of Japanese Studies, and Daedalus. In 2014 he was appointed Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, where he directs a research group on East Asian Security during the summer. His history of the Japanese intelligence community, Special Duty, will be published by Cornell University Press and in Japanese translation by Nikkei Publication in 2019.
Amy Searight serves as senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Dr. Searight has a wealth of experience on Asia policy—spanning defense, diplomacy, development, and economics — in both government and academia. Most recently, she served in the Department of Defense (DOD) as deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, from 2014 to 2016. Prior to that appointment, she served as principal director for East Asian security at DOD and as senior adviser for Asia in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She has also served on the policy planning staff and as special adviser for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the State Department as a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow.
Before entering government, Dr. Searight was an assistant professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where she taught international relations of Asia and directed the mid-career master’s program in international policy and practice. She was also an assistant professor at Northwestern University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She holds a PhD in political science and an MA in East Asian studies from Stanford University, and she graduated magna cum laude from Williams College with a BA in political economy.
Ambassador (retired) Kathleen Stephens assumed leadership of KEI as President and CEO in September 2018. Ambassador Stephens was a career diplomat in the United States Foreign Service, 1978-2015. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011, the first woman and first Korean-speaker to serve in that position. Other overseas assignments included postings to China, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge d’Affaires (2014-2015).
Ambassador Stephens also served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House.
Korea has been a leit motif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was in Korea 1983-1989, first as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reporting on Korea’s domestic political and human rights scene, and later leading the U.S. Consulate in Busan.
She was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, 2015-2018. She has also been Endowed Chair Professor for Language and Diplomacy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, and Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute board chairman, a trustee for The Asia Foundation, and on the board of The Korea Society. She is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Council on Foreign Relations.
She is a recipient of numerous U.S. government awards including the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009) and Linguist of the Year (2010). She holds the Kwanghwa Medal of Diplomatic Merit, the Sejong Cultural Award, the Korean-American Friendship Association Award, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, the Korea YWCA Special Prize for Leadership, and was Hangul Goodwill Ambassador as well as Korea National Museum Goodwill Ambassador. She holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Maryland and Chungnam National University.
Ambassador Stephens was an undergraduate at Prescott College, University of Hong Kong and Oxford University, and holds a BA Honors from Prescott. She holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School.