Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker, and CISAC Senior Fellow Scott Sagan are part of a group of 80 national security experts included in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused on the prospects for peace and security in South Asia.

The MOOC, titled Nuclear South Asia: A Guide to India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, is an inaugural course in a series produced by the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. It is free to enroll and can be taken anytime and at any pace from a digital device.

Learn more about the MOOC.

Uncertainty about U.S. intentions in Northeast Asia has increased fear that events could spin out of control in the region due to American disengagement. That engagement cannot be taken for granted, Shorenstein Fellow Thomas Fingar writes on the Stanford University Press blog, and it remains to be seen just how well regional political leaders adjust to the Trump administration’s evolving foreign policy.

The blog post highlights themes from his book Uneasy Partnerships: China’s Engagement with Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, April 2017).

Protecting freedom of expression is essential to vibrant democracies and to meet the needs of people now and into the future, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha said at a Stanford event seeking to draw people together for policy-relevant discussions about India’s growth following 25 years of reforms.

Guha’s remarks were part of a colloquium titled “Eight Threats to Freedom of Expression in India,” and one in a series, co-hosted by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and Center for South Asia.

The colloquia, which continue this spring, are motivated by an opportunity to garner reflections and expertise from Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute, who served as chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy New Delhi in 2014.

“As I was preparing to go to India, I read Ram’s extraordinary book India after Gandhi, which provided much-needed historical, cultural and political context,” Stephens said. “When I visited Bangalore, we met and instantly clicked as we talked about U.S.-India relations. It’s a pleasure to welcome him back to Stanford.”

Guha, a renowned author and scholar, has written numerous critically acclaimed books about India’s history and culture as well as social ecology, and is a frequent commentary contributor to publications such as The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. In 2000, Guha was a visiting professor at Stanford, where he taught courses on the politics and culture of South Asia and cross-cultural perspectives on the global environmental debate.

India is often referred to as the world’s largest democracy for its population size of 1.3 billion and system of governance since partition and independence in 1947. Guha said that, while India is “solidly and certifiably democratic,” there are serious flaws, including growing threats to freedom of expression of Indian artists, filmmakers and writers.

Indian society, Guha said, has become too sensitive to criticism, wherein “somebody will take objection” to any message. This kind of environment has encouraged newspaper editors to self-censor, for example, and led public figures to, at times, neglect to protect artists, filmmakers and writers.

In total, Guha detailed eight threats to freedom of expression in contemporary India: 1) archaic colonial laws affecting the first amendment, 2) imperfections in the judicial system, 3) rising importance of identity politics, 4) complicity of the police force, 5) pusillanimity of politicians, 6) dependence of media on government-sponsored advertisements, 7) dependence of media on commercially-sponsored advertisements and 8) ideologically–driven writers.

Would an absence of those threats imply freedom of expression? Responding to the question from the audience, Guha lamented that the answer wasn’t simple. His task was to offer a diagnosis of the challenges, he said, and not provide instruction on how to solve them, but in general, focused efforts bear change.

“Building democracies is about quiet persistent work,” Guha said of next steps in the process to extinguish threats to freedom of expression. “I think quiet persistent work in repairing our institutions, modernizing our laws and improving civil society institutions can still mitigate some of the threats.”

Guha expressed optimism about India’s civil society, noting an expansion in the supply of non-governmental organizations working on social issues and private philanthropists funding projects in that sector. But he tempered: “we could do more.”

Stephens ended the event by thanking Guha for leading the discussion, and referenced America’s first president George Washington, who at the end of his term in office, called upon citizens to be “‘anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy.’”

“And, I see that today in Ram and in the many people here – very jealous, anxious and passionate guardians of our democracy – who we can learn a lot from,” she said.

Listen to an audio recording of the colloquium.

President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping last week at Mar-a-Lago for their first meeting which set out to address economic, trade and security challenges shared between the two countries. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) experts offered analysis of the summit to various media outlets.

In advance of the summit, Donald K. Emmerson, an FSI senior fellow emeritus and director of the Southeast Asia Program, wrote a commentary piece urging the two leaders to prioritize the territorial disputes in the South China Sea in their discussions. He also suggested they consider the idea of additional “cooperative missions” among China, the United States and other countries in that maritime area.

“A consensus to discuss the idea at that summit may be unreachable,” Emmerson recognized in The Diplomat Magazine. “But merely proposing it should trigger some reactions, pro or con. The airing of the idea would at least incentivize attention to the need for joint activities based on international law and discourage complacency in the face of unilateral coercion in violation of international law.”

Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, spoke to the Boston Herald about U.S. policy toward North Korea and a potential role for China in pressuring North Korea to hold talks about denuclearization. She addressed the purported reports that the National Security Council is considering as options placing nuclear weapons in South Korea and forcibly removing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from power.

“The two options have been on the long list of possible options for a long time and they have generally been found to have far too many downsides,” Stephens said in the interview.

Writing for Tokyo Business Today, Daniel Sneider, the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, offered an assessment of the summit. He argued that two events - the U.S. airstrike on an airbase in Syria following the regime's chemical weapons attack and the leaked reports about tensions between White House staff - shifted the summit agenda and sidelined, at least for now, talk of a trade war between China and the United States.

“Instead of a bang, the Mar-a-Lago summit ended with a whimper,” Sneider wrote in the analysis piece (available in English and Japanese). “On the economy, the summit conversation was remarkably business-as-usual, with President Trump calling for China to ‘level the playing field’ and a vague commitment to speed up the pace of trade talks. When it came to North Korea…the two leaders reiterated long-standing goals of denuclearization but ‘there was no kind of a package arrangement discussed to resolve this.”

Emerging technologies, stemming from the heart of Silicon Valley and extending to Asia and beyond, have pushed the bounds of how stories are told by journalists and the way in which readers interact with them. The Shorenstein Journalism Award, an annual prize given by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), celebrates 15 years of recognizing distinguished journalists for their innovative and responsible journalism amid social and technological change.

The prize began with “the idea of a media award for a person who has the most significant impact on the relationship with Asia-Pacific nations in the United States,” according to Walter H. Shorenstein, who spoke about his twin interests of Asia and the press in a 2010 oral history project interview and was the benefactor after whom the center is named.

Shorenstein APARC and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy jointly presented the award for six years. Shorenstein APARC has continued the initiative, and each year, brings the award winner to Stanford to talk with the broader campus community, and since 2011, has alternated between a recipient from the West, who has mainly addressed an American audience, and a recipient from Asia.

The prize seeks to inspire the next generation of U.S. journalists focused on Asia, as well as Asian journalists, who pave the way for press freedom in their countries.

Award winners have explored a multitude of topics over the years, from human rights in North Korea to the rise of democracy in Indonesia and from the U.S.-Japan alliance to gender equality in India. And this year adds an additional view on China; veteran journalist Ian Johnson will address religion and value systems in a panel discussion on May 1 with Xueguang Zhou, Stanford professor of sociology, and Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, moderated by Daniel C. Sneider, Shorenstein APARC associate director for research.

To mark the award’s tenure, Shorenstein APARC asked award alumni to answer the question, “What do you think the future holds for journalism in/about Asia?” Their responses are below.

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Barbara Crossette is the U.N. correspondent for The Nation and a columnist for India Abroad. She received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2010.

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Journalism in Asia has had a long history of covering revolutions and wars. However, peace has reigned over Asia for near on 40 years. Yet, the peace and stability in Asia looks increasingly precarious. Asia too is not immune to populist nationalism. In this climate, Asia could yet again become the battleground for dislocation, revolution and war. Journalism, on top of reacting to potential crises, will be critical for proactively finding ways to prevent and defuse crises in the region.

Yoichi Funabashi is the chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2015.

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Ian Buruma is a writer and the Paul W. Williams Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2008.

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Seth Mydans is a contributing writer for the New York Times. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2009.

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Barbara Demick is the Los Angeles Times’ bureau chief in New York and was formerly bureau chief in Beijing and in Seoul. She is the author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Logavina Street: Life and death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood. She received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2012.

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Aung Zaw is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Irrawaddy. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2013.

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Jacob Schlesinger is a senior Washington correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2014.

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Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, and former dean of the School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2003.

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John Pomfret was a foreign correspondent with the Washington Post for many years. He is the author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China from 1776 to the Present. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2007.