I grew up with STEM as my backbone, my crutch. My parents met in engineering school, and the childhood they gifted me with was one filled with opportunities to get my hands dirty. The identity I built for myself was defined by asking questions about snail slime, aphids on roses, simply everything about the “hows” and “whys” of the biological world around me. And not once did I think to steer my gaze elsewhere in hopes of enriching my worldview. To an elementary school Mallika, understanding science and science alone would gift me the tools to solve the world’s greatest problems.

So, of course, it confused me to see my dad, an equity analyst focused on the semiconductor and green tech industries, travel so often to Japan, China, and Korea. Hands filled with stuffed animal pandas wearing qi paos, he would talk on and on about East Asia’s incomparable ability to merge the old with the new: cities at the forefront of tech innovation were sparkled with architecture and customs from lineages spanning thousands of years. My dad sold the intrigue. Not in an orientalist way, rather through a deep appreciation of recognizing the past in an effort to rebrand the future. I just had to get my peek.

I started learning Japanese in fourth grade, Chinese in seventh, and was in love with the languages. They were logical, pictographic, and simply scientific. But the classes were one-dimensional, one-epochical almost, if that’s even a word. What they were able to capture in unraveling the past did nothing in describing the translation to the future. I wanted to get a grasp of contemporary issues to eventually find ways to apply this newfound information to my STEM pursuits.

Fast forward a few years, a semester of SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program under my belt, I loved my experience with the SPICE program so much that I had to return for a second program. Naturally, I applied to SPICE’s China Scholars Program (CSP) my junior year of high school, and compounded with classes like AP U.S. History and Honors Chinese, my worldview felt interconnected. Everything I was studying added to an accumulated web of information, weaving connections between economics, public policy, technology, and culture. I wrote my final paper on how bureaucracy, educational equity, and green technology could help China establish itself as the (not a) global superpower, and it had quite honestly been my first exploration in drawing conclusions between seemingly disparate fields. For someone who had conducted many science research projects in the past, CSP and its instructor, Dr. Tanya Lee, challenged and stretched me in ways I never thought possible.

At MIT, we’re taught the merits of collaboration through group-based projects and exceedingly difficult problem sets. However, I often doubt the translatability of this approach in the real world. Students of similar academic backgrounds collaborate on similar projects with similar solutions. The web of information synthesized by students of different majors is undeniably extremely useful in developing real-world solutions. Completing CSP through a STEM lens was a unique way of doing just that. I met students from Virginia all the way to Hong Kong who were passionate about everything under the sun. The variation in perspectives livened discussion boards, and I could almost liken the completed responses to a mosaic: each student had their unique piece to offer, such that the image created was one of heightened clarity. Since then, I’ve taken classes on Chinese, on economics, and even on how to stage revolutions, all as a result of understanding the merits of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exploration. And who knows, I might even minor in Chinese to pay homage to the language that shaped my worldview.

China's future will be determined by how its leaders manage its myriad interconnected challenges. In Fateful Decisions (Stanford University Press, May 2020), editors Thomas Fingar, a center fellow at APARC, and Jean Oi, the director of APARC’s China Program, join other experts across multiple disciplines in providing close analyses of the most critical demographic, economic, social, political, and foreign policy challenges China’s leaders face today. They outline the options and opportunity costs entailed, providing an analytic framework for understanding the decisions that will determine China's trajectory.

Fingar and Oi discussed the main arguments in their edited volume at a virtual program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Watch here:

This interview was originally conducted and published by Melissa De Witte on behalf of the Stanford News Service.

September 2, 1945, is recognized in many American history books as the day World War II formally ended in Asia. But according to Stanford sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the conflict was never fully resolved in the region, leading to strains in diplomatic relations today.

On the 75th anniversary of this historic milestone, Shin discusses the legacy of World War II in the Asia-Pacific, specifically the failure among nations to fully address past wrongdoings and reach a mutual understanding of the conflict.

As a result, there is a “mismatch” in how Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and also Americans memorialize the war: China celebrates its victory against Japan while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Meanwhile, Japan honors the victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an atrocity many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about today, Shin points out.

Here, Shin discusses how these diverging perspectives of World War II have led to misgivings today and how, some 75 years later, relations can still be improved in the region.

Shin is a professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, director of the Korea Program and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has led a decade-long study on historical memory in wartime period in Asia called 'Divided Memories and Reconciliation.'

[Subscribe to our newsletters to get the latest updates from our scholars.]

As the world remembers 75 years of the war ending in Asia, what legacies from this period persist today?

War has not really ended in Asia. Even before war settlements were signed, another war broke out on the Korean peninsula and technically never ended. Furthermore, “history wars” that began in the 1980s have intensified in recent years, as Japan and its neighbors continue to fight over the unfortunate past and dispute over territories. Despite increased economic, cultural, and educational exchanges and interactions, war legacies persist to strain regional relations.

Is there anything in this history that you think has been largely forgotten, overlooked or misunderstood?

While U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender to allied forces aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay some 75 years ago, legacies from the war have persisted, straining regional relations to this very day, according to Shin. (Image credit: United States Navy/Wikimedia Commons)

America celebrates World War II victory in Europe (Victory in Europe Day) but remains relatively quiet on its victory in the Asia-Pacific war. In contrast to the moral clarity and nobility of purpose associated with the war in Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the path to war with Japan and its conclusion is far less clear and many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about the use of atomic weapons – even if it was militarily necessary but morally questionable. Also, it was during the war that about 120,000 people in the U.S. of Japanese ancestry (62 percent being U.S. citizens) were incarcerated in concentration camps.

Compared to Europe, U.S.-led post-war settlements in Asia such as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and San Francisco Peace Treaty were insufficient in addressing atrocities committed by Japan during wartime and the colonial period, sowing the seeds of current disputes and tensions between Japan and its neighbors. The Tokyo tribunal focused on Japanese actions that had most directly affected Western allies (the attack on Pearl Harbor and the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war) and thus failed to address the massive suffering of the Chinese and the Koreans. The 1951 Peace Treaty expunged Japan’s obligations to pay reparations for its wartime acts but neither the Republic of Korea nor the People’s Republic of China was party to the treaty.

You have written extensively about the repeated failure among Koreans, Chinese and Japanese to produce a shared, historical view of World War II. Can you briefly describe what are these conflicting, historical memories? 

For Koreans and Chinese, Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, sexual slavery and forced labor are key events that shape their historical memories. For Japanese, on the other hand, actions related to the U.S. such as the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor and American bombings (fire and atomic) on Japanese cities are most important to the formation of their memories of war, which led to a widely held view that they were also victims of American aggression and that post-war settlements were “victor’s justice.” These divergent memories are reflected in the ways that they commemorate the end of the war. China celebrates its victory against Japan in the war, while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Japan holds its annual ceremony to honor victims of atomic bombings.

According to your scholarship, what explains these divergent perspectives?

The divergence comes from the different weight each country places on historical events in their respective memory formation. Japanese actions figure prominently for Chinese and Korean, but China and Korea are not as significant to Japanese war memories as much as the U.S. is. This mismatch creates perception gaps and misgivings, hindering historical reconciliation.

How has this tension affected relations in the region? Do you think, some 75 years later, these tensions persist today?

Yes, they are very much alive. Look at the current Japanese-South Korean relations. They are two leading economies with liberal democracies in Asia and also key U.S. allies. They are important trade partners and are facing the same demographic crisis. They share strategic interests in the face of a rising China and North Korean aggression. Nonetheless, the resurfacing of the unresolved historical issues has continued to strain the bilateral relationship. For example, the relationship deteriorated since late 2018 when the South Korea supreme court ruled that Japanese companies should compensate Koreans who were conscripted as forced laborers during the war. In response to the ruling, the Japanese government removed Korea from a list of favored trade partners and the Korean government followed suit. These governmental actions are now fueled by populist nationalism (the rightist in Japan and the leftist in Korea), which has proven to be very effective in the politics of both nations.

Can the U.S. play any role to help achieve historical reconciliation?

The U.S. can take a more proactive role in encouraging Japan to work toward achieving regional reconciliation. As noted above, Japan does not seem to be taking its Asian neighbors as seriously as it should be when it comes to historical matters, but is rather predominantly focused on reconciling with the U.S. For example, Japan had been calling for the U.S. president to visit the sites of atomic bombings as a way of “removing a historical thorn” in the relationship and President Obama did make a historic visit to Hiroshima in 2016. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed suit soon after by visiting Pearl Harbor to pay respects to the victims of the 1941 attack. But the reconciliation efforts stopped there and did not expand to other victim countries of the war.

When you teach this history of World War II, what do you remind students about this period? How might the past shape students’ understanding of Northeast Asia or the U.S. in the present day?

To avoid repeating the unfortunate past (colonialism and war), I ask, what and how we can learn from history? For example, was the war with Japan necessary, or was it the result of a series of accidents and miscalculations or lack of political leadership? How does the war help us to understand the current tensions between the U.S. and China? What can we learn from the experience of the Japanese internment during the war? Even though President Reagan made an official apology of the internment in 1988, why do we still see similar racialist politics in American society? Addressing these questions requires a critical reflection of the history.

<< The original interview is available via Stanford News >>

The sports world has been dramatically affected by COVID-19. Not only has there been a significant decline of events for the spectator—both in person and on television—but the impact on the participants themselves has also been unprecedented. Due to social gathering restrictions, organized youth sports have been almost completely shuttered. High schools and colleges have been cancelling their practices and competitive seasons. The PAC-12 recently postponed its football season. The pandemic has also had a dramatic effect on sports at the highest level. Only fairly recently have there been abbreviated attempts to reinstitute professional sports seasons such as Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Even the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were postponed to 2021.

SPICE is helping to develop the CoviDB Speaker Series, a TeachAids initiative which provides free online videos to educate the general public about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For episode 4 of the CoviDB Speaker Series, TeachAids Founder and CEO Dr. Piya Sorcar decided to provide a glimpse into how the pandemic has impacted the lives of two of the world’s greatest athletes. Sorcar enlisted the support of Emmy Award-winning sportscaster Ted Robinson to interview three-time Olympic diver and gold medalist Laura Wilkinson and five-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and Stanford student Katie Ledecky.

The interview can be viewed here. Robinson drew out insightful perspectives from Ledecky and Wilkinson concerning the uncertainty that they lived with while awaiting the decision about whether the 2020 Olympics would be held, and also their feelings once the decision to postpone the Olympics was made. Wilkinson reflected, “What was frustrating at first, turned out to be really special” as she reflected upon things like spending extra time with her family, including four children. Ledecky added that being able to focus more on her studies at Stanford University definitely helped to create a little more balance in her life. In response to Robinson’s question about maintaining the discipline to train in light of the postponement, Ledecky responded

During a segment of the interview that focused on advice for youth, Ledecky noted, “The work that you put in doesn’t go away… It is always in the bank… At some point in the future, you are going to be able to compete again, have those opportunities to let that work show.” Wilkinson added, “When you want something, it doesn’t matter what people say about you or what they think of you. If you think you want to do this, if this is your goal, you have to go after it because you’re capable of more than you probably think you are. And other people’s opinions do not need to define you or what you’re capable of doing. You define that.”

For each of the first four episodes in the CoviDB Speaker Series, SPICE has developed a teacher’s guide to encourage the showing of the episodes in U.S. classrooms at the secondary school level. Each of the guides includes (1) a summary of the questions that were asked by the interviewer, including terms and definitions, (2) guiding questions for small-group work, and (3) debriefing activities. In the area of debriefing activities, writing prompts such as the following for episode 4 are offered to students.

• Laura and Katie commented on how their lives have been disrupted since the pandemic. Write a diary entry about how your life has been disrupted. What has been especially challenging? What lessons have you learned from the experience?
• Write about a time when you were disappointed with the cancellation of something. How did you cope with it? Did you learn something positive from the experience? Have you ever been in limbo about whether an event was going to happen or not? How did this make you feel?

Other suggested debriefing activities involve the designing of an artistic image, writing of a poem, or writing lyrics to a song that captures the significance of quotes from the interview such the following:

• Laura: The sun is a great healer in a lot of ways, both emotionally and physically.
• Katie: The Olympics is … an opportunity for the world to come together.
• Laura: I think that it [COVID-19] has reminded us of how connected we are as a world and how we all need to be doing our individual parts to combat this.
• Ted: I have been around athletes in team sports who at some point have said that they kept playing because they wanted their kids to see them.

As TeachAids and SPICE think about their work with youth, two statements from the interview were especially poignant to the staffs. Ledecky noted, “This is history [the time of COVID-19] but you don’t have to be afraid of it. Fear is really a mindset… so if you do everything that you can do, there is no point in worrying beyond that because worrying does not help you at all. It is not going to change anything. Do what you can control. Worry about the things that you can control and things that you cannot control, you have to let those go.” Wilkinson stated, “This [challenging time] could be that gift to you. This could be that opportunity to rise to a whole new level. Don’t look at this and be sad and upset. Look at this as an opportunity of how you can get ahead.” Though the statements were intended as advice for youth, in fact, the statements seem relevant today to all of us.

The CoviDB Speaker Series is a TeachAids initiative that is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, the University of California San Francisco’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).

[Subscribe to our newsletters to stay up-to-date with the latest from our researchers.]

Lee studies the impacts of AI and robotics across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail banking, and nursing homes. A trend he sees across most sectors following the adoption of robotics or AI is a positive increase in productivity. This has impacts for both the short-term and long-term relationships between humans and their robot coworkers, or “co-bots.” While it is true that the introduction of automation and robots initially replaces a significant number of workers in sectors such as manufacturing, over time, that impact reverses and there are job gains in many cases.

“The impact of robots often evolves over time from replacing human workers to augmenting them,” Lee explains, “and productivity gains [can] create opportunities for existing and new occupations.” This happens in a variety of ways. In some cases, the use of robotics and automation in one area frees up time, labor, and resources to employ more people in other, higher-skilled areas. In another situation, increases in productivity brought on by automation allow for greater company growth than would not have been possible otherwise. This, in turn, spurs the need to expand the workforce.

Alternatively, supplementing the labor of a small workforce with robotics and AI can also spread limited resources much farther. Lee and Eggleston’s studies of the impacts of robots on nursing home care in Japan repeatedly show that the use of robots positively increases the quality of service that oftentimes-understaffed care facilities can provide to the elderly and infirm. This can range from monitoring the physical condition of patients and reliably delivering medications to providing mental and emotional support to elderly residents through the use of robotic humanoid companions. Such innovative use of tech fills critical gaps that a human-only workforce would struggle to meet in a staffing shortage like Japan faces.

Looking to the future, Lee shares this perspective: “When the automobile was invented, we suddenly had a new demand for drivers. Now we’ll have to see if [automation] creates demand for other new occupations.” It’s an area of innovation and research he, Dr. Eggleston, and other Stanford researchers will be closely watching with their human eyes in the years to come.

Read the original article by Stanford HAI here >>