At the core of US-Taiwan-China relations, mistrust has long been, and remains today, the most difficult and elusive problem policy makers face. The danger is obvious given that the Taiwan Strait is the only place where the US could go to war with a nuclear armed great power.  In her talk, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker will examine the nature of US commitments, the intricacies of decision-making, the intentions of critical actors and the impact of Taiwan’s democratization.

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker is Professor of History at Georgetown University and the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service . She also holds an appointment as a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is the author of Strait Talk: US-Taiwan Relations and the China Crisis (Harvard, 2009), Uncertain Friendships: Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States (Columbia, 2006), Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949-50 (Columbia, 1983), and more than a dozen of book chapters, edited volumes and journal articles.

Professor Horrigan will be discussing recent developments in corporate governance, responsibility and sustainability under Anglo-american law. In particular, he will explain how Australia's embrace of the UK-Canadian institutional dialogue model will affect business, human rights, and corporate social responsibility. He will also be providing an update from the recent UN Secretary-General's Special Representative business and human rights session in Toronto.

Professor Bryan Horrigan is currently the Louis Waller Chair of Law and Associate Dean (Research) at Monash University’s Faculty of Law in Melbourne, Australia.  He is also a long-standing law firm consultant in business and governmental areas of law and practice.

Professor Horrigan completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland and holds a doctorate in law from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has held academic and research leadership positions previously at a number of Australian universities, including Director of the National Centre for Corporate Law and Policy Research, Deputy Director of the National Institute for Governance, and Foundation Co-Director of the Centre for Comparative Law, History, and Governance.

His most recent book in the area of corporate responsibility and governance, Corporate Social Responsibility in the 21st Century: Debates, Models, and Practices Across Government, Law, and Business, is to published internationally by UK-based Edward Elgar Publishing in the latter part of 2009.  The book was commenced during his time as a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton Business School.

Few topics provoke more heated debate than globalization. Globalization is considered essential for companies that want to survive in today's economy, but it is also blamed for job losses and the economic decline of the United States. Executives say they hire from abroad because of deficiencies in the U.S. workforce and skills shortages, while worker advocacy groups say it is all about cheap labor.

Wadhwa will discuss how the contentious public debates on globalization and outsourcing commonly use data that isn't grounded in reality. He will show why globalization and outsourcing are the new reality and how this trend will continue to build even more momentum. Finally, Wadhwa will provide concrete advice and ideas on how the United States can regain its edge in the global economy by understanding the new reality and focusing on its strengths such as entrepreneurship and innovation. By effectively harnessing its highly educated and skilled workforce, and balancing immigrant intellectual capital, the United States can continue to be the winner rather than the victim of globalization.

Vivek Wadhwa, currently a visiting scholar at UC-Berkeley, is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects. He advises several start-up companies, writes a column for BusinessWeek.com and contributes to several international publications. Since joining Duke in 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession and the sources of the United States' competitive advantage. Mr. Wadhwa holds an MBA from New York University and a BA in Computing Studies from the Canberra University in Australia.