The U.S.-Japan Network for the Future program receives guidance from an advisory committee comprised of:
- Dr. Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
- Dr. Leonard Schoppa, Professor, University of Virginia
- Dr. Sheila A. Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
- Dr. Machi Dilworth, former Vice President for Gender Equality and Human Resource Development, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
- Dr. Michael Green, Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
The first five cohorts of the Network for the Future also received guidance from the late Dr. Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Research Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University.
Susan J. Pharr is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, at Harvard University. From 2004 to 2011, she served as director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. At Harvard she is on the Executive Committees of the Asia Center, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Reischauer Institute. She is a Senior Scholar of the Harvard Academy of International and Area Studies. She served as chair of the Government Department from 1992-95, and as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1996-98.
Dr. Pharr is a commissioner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (a federal agency) and a member of the U.S. panel of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON). She is a trustee and secretary of the board of The Asia Foundation and serves on the boards of Give2Asia and the U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation. She is also on the International Advisory Committee of the East-West Center. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has been a visiting scholar of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and a visiting scholar or fellow in the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo and of Keio University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and The Brookings Institution.
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 the forces shaping civil societies, and the changing nature of relations between citizens and states in Asia. 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 senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is the author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Council on Foreign Relations, June 2014). Her current research focuses on how geostrategic change in Asia is shaping Japan’s strategic choices. In the fall of 2014, Smith began a new project on Northeast Asian Nationalisms and Alliance Management.
Dr. Smith is a regular contributor to the CFR blog Asia Unbound, and frequent contributor to major media outlets in the United States and Asia. She 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.
Dr. Smith is vice chair of the U.S. advisors to the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange (CULCON), a bi-national 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 earned her MA and PhD degrees from the department of political science 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.
Ezra F. Vogel was a student of both modern Japan and China. 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.
Professor Vogel’s writings include Japan’s New Middle Class (1963), Canton Under Communism (1969), Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979), One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform (1989), The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (1991), Is Japan Still Number One? (2000), Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011). At the age of 89, he published China and Japan: Facing History (2019), which reviews the history of political and cultural ties between the two nations over 1,500 years.
Michael Green is Senior Vice President for Asia and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) from January 2004 to December 2005. He joined the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. From 1997 to 2000, he was senior fellow for Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed the Independent Task Force on Korea and study groups on Japan and security policy in Asia. He served as senior adviser in the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of Defense in 1997 and as consultant to the same office until 2000. From 1995 to 1997, he was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and from 1994 to 1995, he was an assistant professor of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he remained a professorial lecturer until 2001. Dr. Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. businesses.
He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his PhD in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group and is vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue, and is a member of the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly.