Connecting People & Ideas to Advance Mutual Interests in U.S.-Asia Relations

Advisory Committee

The U.S.-Japan Network for the Future program receives guidance from an advisory committee. For 2023-24, it is comprised of:

The advisory committee of the Network for the Future has previously included the late Dr. Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Research Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University, as well as Dr. Michael Green, Chief Executive Officer at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney.

Susan J. Pharr is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics Emerita at Harvard University. She is Senior Advisor of Harvard’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA); from 1987-2019 she was the Program’s director. At Harvard she has served as chair of the Government Department (1992-95); Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (1996-98); and Director of the Reischauer Institute, 2004-10. She was also member of the WCFIA Executive Committee and a Senior Scholar of the Harvard Academy of International and Area Studies.

Dr. Pharr received her PhD in 1975 from Columbia University in political science and her BA with high honors from Emory University. From 1974-76, she served as Staff Associate at the Social Sciences Research Council. Thereafter, until 1986, she was on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1985-87, on leave from Wisconsin, she held the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. She also has served as a Senior Social Scientist with the Agency for International Development. In 2008, she was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese Government for her contributions to Japanese studies.

Much of her research has explored the social basis for democracy with a particular focus on Japan and East Asia. Her research interests include comparative political behavior; comparative politics of industrialized nations; democratization and social change; Japanese politics; political development; civil society and nonprofit organizations; political ethics and corruption; environmental politics; the role of the media in politics; the role of Japan and the United States in development; and the international relations of East Asia. Her current research focuses on forces shaping civil societies, including war and reconstruction, and the changing nature of relations between citizens and states in Asia. She also has a project on the Harvard-Japan relationship. Among her works are Political Women in Japan (1981); Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (1990); (with Ellis S. Krauss) Media and Politics in Japan (1996); (with Robert D. Putnam) Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (2000); and (with Frank J. Schwartz) The State of Civil Society in Japan (2003).

Leonard Schoppa is a Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He joined the UVA faculty in 1990. From 2000-2001, he served as a Visiting Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science and the ICU Institute of Asian Cultural Studies in Tokyo. He also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University from 1993-1994. Dr. Schoppa received his BS from Georgetown University in 1984 and his PhD in Philosophy of Politics at Oxford University in 1989.

Dr. Schoppa’s research focuses on the politics and foreign relations of Japan and is comprised of several distinct projects. He is co-producer of the documentary film, “The Slow Way Home” (broadcast on PBS stations in 2016). He is the editor of two books: The Evolution of Japan’s Party System (Toronto University Press, 2011); and Social Contracts Under Stress (Russell Sage, 2002), and is the author of three books: Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (Cornell University Press, 2006); Bargaining with Japan: What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do (Columbia University Press, 1997); and Education Reform in Japan (Routledge, 1991).

Dr. Schoppa was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (1985-1988) and a Reischauer Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1989-1990).  He was the recipient of an Abe Fellowship (1993-1994), a Fulbright Research Grant (2000-2001), a Japan Foundation Short-term Research Grant (2002), and a Japan Foundation Book Grant (2004). He served as Associate Dean for the Social Sciences at UVA (2012-2018) and served earlier as Associate Chair of the Politics Department; Director of the East Asia Center at the University of Virginia; Academic Dean on a round-the-world educational voyage of the Semester at Sea in the Fall of 2008; and dean for a similar round-the-Mediterranean voyage in the Summer of 2011.

Sheila A. Smith is John E. Merow senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, she is the author of Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (released in Japanese as 日中 親愛なる宿敵: 変容する日本政治と対中政策), and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance. She is also the author of the CFR interactive guide Constitutional Change in Japan. Smith is a regular contributor to the CFR blog Asia Unbound and a frequent contributor to major media outlets in the United States and Asia.

Smith joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. She was a visiting scholar at Keio University in 2007-08, where she researched Japan’s foreign policy towards China, supported by the Abe Fellowship. Smith has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus.

Smith is chair of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) and the U.S. advisors to the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), a binational advisory panel of government officials and private-sector members. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the Asian studies department of Georgetown University and serves on the board of its Journal of Asian Affairs. She also serves on the advisory committee for the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future program of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.

Smith earned her MA and PhD from the political science department at Columbia University.

Machi Fukuyama Dilworth most recently served as the Vice President for Gender Equality and Human Resource Development at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, from 2015-2019. Prior to her role
at OIST, she had a 33-year-long career in the U.S. Federal Government as a science administrator, including 24 years at the National Science Foundation and 9 years at the USDA’s Competitive Research Grants Office.

At NSF, Dr. Dilworth’s assignments included Head of the Office of International Science and Engineering, Executive Officer (acting) for the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Director of the Division of Biological Infrastructure, and Head of the NSF Tokyo Office (concurrently serving as Science & Technology Attaché at the US Embassy in Tokyo). In 2002 she was awarded the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award from the White House, and in 2007 was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 2018 through 2020, she was a member of the U.S. National Academies’ Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

Dr. Dilworth earned a Ph.D. in Plant Biochemistry and Physiology from the University of California at Los Angeles and a BA in Natural Sciences from the International Christian University in Tokyo.

Phillip Y. Lipscy is professor of political science at the University of Toronto, where he is also Chair in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. In addition, he is cross-appointed as professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo.

His research addresses substantive topics such as international cooperation, international organizations, the politics of energy and climate change, international relations of East Asia, and the politics of financial crises. He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy. His book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations.

Before arriving at the University of Toronto, he was assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. Dr. Lipscy obtained his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University. He received his M.A. in international policy studies and B.A. in economics and political science at Stanford University. He is also affiliated with the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University, Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and the U.S.-Japan Council. He is a member of Cohort 1 of the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future.

Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Dr. Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

She is an expert on Japanese foreign economic policy, international trade policy, and U.S. economic statecraft in Asia. She is the author of Dilemmas of a Trading Nation: Japan and the United States in the Evolving Asia-Pacific Order (Brookings Press, 2017) and Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Her most recent book, Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific (Brookings Press, September 2023) addresses the question of why and how Japan has emerged from the “lost decades” unscathed from the populist wave and a far more consequential actor in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific. The book provides a sweeping look at Japan’s domestic economic and political evolution, its economic statecraft, and the array of geopolitical challenges that have triggered a gradual but substantial shift in the country’s security profile. This deep dive into Japan’s trajectory over the last three decades underscores Japan’s hidden strengths in its democratic resilience, social stability, and proactive diplomacy; while reckoning with the profound challenges the nation faces: depopulation, rising inequality, voter disengagement, and threats to Asia’s long peace.

She has offered expert commentary to The New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, The New Yorker, Nikkei, Kyodo News, Asahi Shimbun, Jiji Press, Japan Times, NHK World, Bloomberg, CNN, and BBC, among others. Dr. Solís earned a doctorate in government and a master’s in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s in international relations from El Colegio de México. She is a member of Cohort 1 of the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future.

In recognition of previous program advisors:

Ezra F. Vogel advised Cohorts 1-5 of the Network for the Future. Dr. Vogel was Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University and one of America’s foremost authorities on East Asia. In a career spanning sixty years, he published groundbreaking works on Japan and China based upon detailed fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and documentary research.. He received his BA at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1950 and his PhD in sociology at Harvard in 1958. He then spent two years in Japan conducting research. In 1960-61, he was assistant professor at Yale University and from 1961-62 through 1963-64 a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and professor in 1967. Professor Vogel succeeded John Fairbank as second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard’s East Asian Research Center and second Chairman of the Council for East Asian Studies (1977-1980). He was Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International Affairs (1980-1987) and, since 1987, Honorary Director. He was director of the Undergraduate Concentration in East Asian Studies from its inception in 1972 until 1989. In 1993 he took a two-year leave of absence, serving as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. He returned to Harvard in September 1995 to direct the Fairbank Center until 1999 and was head of the Asia Center from 1997 to 1999. He taught courses on communist Chinese society, Japanese society, and industrial East Asia. The Japanese edition of Professor Vogel’s book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) remains the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. He officially retired in 2000, and remained active in research and East Asia related activities until his death in 2020.

Michael Green advised Cohorts 1-3 of the Network for the Future. Currently, Dr. Green is chief executive officer at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. Previously, Dr. Green was senior vice president for Asia, Japan Chair, and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia, with responsibility for East Asia and South Asia. Before joining the NSC staff, he was a senior fellow for East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute and assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and senior adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a member of the National Diet.