The movement of people leaving and returning to China from the second half of the 19th century to the present is a vast and complex subject. Among scholars worldwide, none has contributed more to the study of these cycles of migration and settlement in Southeast Asian contexts than National University of Singapore Prof. Wang Gungwu. His extensive writings on the topic richly illustrate the conceptual difficulties involved. 

The very terms used to name the phenomenon are contested: “Greater China,” “Chinese Diaspora,” “Huaqiao,” and “Nanyang Chinese”? Are these migrants and settlers and their descendants “Overseas Chinese” or “Chinese Overseas”? Are they even “Chinese” at all?  Prof. Wang’s struggles with nomenclature will be used by Prof. Huang to discuss larger issues, including how language can bias thought and influence policy and how to navigate the troubled waters at the confluence of scholarship and policy.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006).

Koji Murata received his M.Phil in Political Science from the George Washington University, where he studied as a Fulbright student, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Kobe University, Kobe, Japan.

Dr. Murata's specialties include US foreign policy in East Asia, Japans foreign and
defense policy, and the history of U.S.-Japan alliance. Dr. Murata was a visiting fellow of the Henry L. Stimson Center and the Mike Mansfield Foundation in DC.

Dr. Murata is an author of many books, chapters and articles both in Japanese and English. He has testified in Japanese National Diet many times, and is a frequent commentator on Japanese TVs and newspapers. Professor Murata will assume the deanship of School of Law, Doshisha University beginning in April, 2011.

Lina Khatib is the manager and co-founder of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She is an expert on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, political media and conflict in the Arab world, and the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She is also a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School. She is currently writing a book titled Image Politics in the Middle East for IB Tauris, which examines the power struggles among states, political leaders, political parties, civil society groups, and citizens in the region. She has also recently led a research project on US public diplomacy towards the Arab world in the digital age. She is the author of two books, Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (2006), and Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond (2008) and has published widely on Middle East politics. 

In this seminar, she will talk about how Lebanon reached the political crisis it is in right now, the political strategy that has led to it, and what this means for Lebanon's political future.

Please join the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as we celebrate the publication of Francis Fukuyama's latest book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, which will be released in April by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This first of a major two-volume work provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. Professor's Morris and Weingast will provide commentary and reflections on the book to engage in a substantive conversation about the important insights that Fukuyama highlights tracing the evolution of human history through the 18th century.  

Book signing and reception to follow.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010.  He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy.  His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.