Symposium on "History of US-Japan Relations"

March 6, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Program

9:00am     Registration and Breakfast
 

9:30am     Welcome Remark
                 Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
 

9:40am  Session 1: From Perry to the War with China

Presenter:
Kaoru Iokibe (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Peter Duus (Stanford University)
 

10:40am  Break
 

11:00am  Session 2: Pacific War and Occupation

Presenter:
Fumiaki Kubo (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

12:00pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm   Session 3: Pax Americana and Japan's Postwar Resurgence

Presenter:
Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Discussant:
Tsuneo Akaha (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey)

2:00pm   Session 4: Neoliberalism and Redefinition of the US-Japan Alliance

Presenter:
Masayuki Tadokoro (Keio University)

Discussant:
Michael Armacost (Stanford University)

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   Session 5: US-Japan Leadership Today

Presenter:
Koji Murata (Doshisha University)

Discussant:
Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

4:20pm   Closing Remark
               Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

The “Baby Boomer” generation (dankai no sedai) has begun to reach the age of retirement en mass.  10,000 people turn 65 every day in the United States. In Japan, one-fifth of the population is over the age of 65 and is on track to increase to one-third of the population by 2050. In addition, people are living longer. Japan boasts the highest life expectancy in the world with an average of 84 years. As a result, we currently have a growing group of accomplished professionals contemplating spending their next 20-30 years doing something other than traditional work. According to the International Longevity Center (ILC) there is a great interest among this population to engage in activities that contribute back to society, but very few actually make the leap to do so. Nonprofits in the United States have developed a variety creative strategies to engage older adults; creating dynamic partnerships that provide opportunity and meaning to seniors while furthering social purpose missions. Lago will provide an overview of how nonprofits are leveraging the skills and experience of senior professionals for the social good.

SPEAKER:

Ulea Lago, Director of Consulting Empower Success Corp

BIO:

Ulea Grace Lago directs ESC’s consulting practice of 150 senior professionals, overseeing approximately $2.5M in pro bono services annually. An attorney and independent consultant, Ulea has over 17 years of experience working with nonprofits, religious organizations, and community groups. A veteran community organizer, she is the former director of the Truth and Reconciliation Project in Nashville, Tennessee, and previously served as Associate Director of Community Partnership and Service Learning at Sarah Lawrence College and Chair of the Political Action Network at Vanderbilt University, where she organized educational panels, forums, and fundraisers. She has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and a M.Div. and J.D. from Vanderbilt University

AGENDA:

4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

RSVP REQUIRED:

Register to attend at http://www.stanford-svnj.org/31218-public-forum

Abstract:

The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, Yascha Mounk shows, democracy itself may hang in the balance.

Using his own original research and on-the-ground reporting from countries around the world, Mounk makes clear in THE PEOPLE VS. DEMOCRACY what exactly is at risk if the current trends in America and Western Europe continue. Astounding numbers of people in all age, economic, and social groups are more open to military rule, media controls, and other hallmarks of authoritarianism than ever before.
    
“Under these radically changed circumstances, it would be foolhardy to assume that the stability of democracy is sure to persist,” Mounk writes in his introduction. “The first big assumption of the postwar era—the idea that rich countries in which the government had repeatedly changed hands through free and fair elections would forever remain democratic—has all along stood on shaky ground.”

Mounk shows that the two core components of liberal democracy—individual rights and the popular will—are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”

The consequence, Mounk writes, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.

Speaker Bio:

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A columnist at Slate and the host of The Good Fight podcast, he is a leading expert on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy.

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Using previously unexamined nationally representative data from the Philippines, this study employs detailed measures of children’s welfare and addresses biases related to endogeneity of parental migration to examine the wellbeing of left-behind children. The results are robust across several econometric methods (treatment effects, biprobit, PSM, PSM-IV). They suggest that migrants’ children have better educational outcomes and are less likely to work, but are more likely to be physically sick, which cognitive stress theory would attribute to parental migration as a stressor. Still, the positive impacts of parental migration, attributable to income effect, outweigh the negative effects attributable to parental absence. The results also show heterogeneity in the impacts of parental migration conditional on children’s gender.

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