An edited version of this opinion piece first appeared in the 14 July 2022 issue of The Jakarta Post.

How preoccupied is America with its own domestic problems? To the point of impairing the ability of President Biden’s administration to give Indonesia and Southeast Asia the foreign-policy attention they deserve?

The Group of Twenty’s meetings are now at or near the top of the Indonesian foreign ministry’s list of things to do. Foreign minister Retno Marsudi has worried, amid talk of boycotts, that Moscow-Washington animosity over Ukraine could ruin the G20 summit in Bali this November, to the embarrassment of its Indonesian host and chair. Presumably to her relief, Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Indonesia to attend in person the preparatory G20 foreign ministers meeting that she hosted and chaired in Bali on 7-8 July 2022, and he did so despite the participation of his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.  In addition to holding a one-on-one session with Marsudi, Blinken also met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi for a discussion of US-China relations that reportedly lasted five hours. Indonesia can take pride in having made that lengthy interaction possible. 

The foreign ministers’ meeting was not without drama. Twice, in response to criticism of Russia, Lavrov walked out of the room, and he left the conference altogether before it ended. Perhaps he forgot that in democracies, praise is not required.  But things in Bali could have gotten much worse, and in that sense America’s presence throughout the event helped save Indonesia’s face.

Biden’s administration has not neglected Indonesia or Southeast Asia, as recent diplomacy shows. In May he accommodated the priority on economic development favored by Indonesia and other Asian states by traveling to Japan to announce the formation of an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). Its 14 founding partners, including Indonesia and six other ASEAN members, account for 40 percent of global GDP. Earlier in May, in Washington, DC, Biden hosted a special summit with Indonesia and other ASEAN states. Their Joint Vision Statement with the US, as in IPEF, emphasized economic cooperation.

None of this diplomacy, however, could temper the strident political polarization that continues to disrupt America. Understandably, that frenzy of distrust and dissension has led some Indonesians to wonder how reliable a partner the US will turn out to be in years to come.    

The splitting of many Americans into rival partisan camps is in part structural. For example, compared with better-educated urban and suburban dwellers, less well-educated rural and small-town Americans are more likely to hold right-wing Republican views. The reasons why those views have become more extreme include the popularity of Donald Trump and his anti-democratic if not proto-fascistic campaign to re-install himself in the White House after losing the free and fair election of 2020.  His effort, Republican complicity in it, and the backlash against it have widened the separation of often coastal or near-coastal Democratic states from Republican ones more or less clustered in middle and southern America. Political scientist and statistician Simon Jackman goes so far as to argue that the US has not been this divided politically since the Great Depression of the 1930s—or possibly even since the 1860s Civil War.

The Vanderbilt University Project on Unity and American Democracy chooses the longer timeline. “Not since the Civil War,” it concludes, “have so many Americans held such radically opposed views not just of politics but of reality itself.” The project’s own findings, however, undermine the caricature of a country fatally hobbled by national schizophrenia and group delusions. 

The Vanderbilt Unity Index combines quarterly data from 1981 to 2021 on five variables—presidential disapproval, congressional polarization, ideological extremism, social mistrust, and civil unrest—to calculate changes in American national unity across those four decades on a 0-to-100 scale, from least to most unified. Over that period of time, the index has fluctuated in a close to middling zone between 50 and 70 on that 100-point scale. 

The index shows deep plunges in unity only twice since 1981, and both of those dives were linked to the uniquely calamitous presidency of President Trump. In contrast, the average score during the first five quarters of the Biden administration has been 58, a sharp improvement from the average of 51 under Trump. Heartened by that betterment, two of the Vanderbilt scholars surmise that America’s “disharmony may be dissipating.”

That could be an overoptimistic guess. Unity is one thing, victory another. Legislative elections will be held on 8 November this year. As of the end of June, prominent forecaster Nate Silver gave the still largely Trump-beholden Republican Party an 87 percent chance — a near-certainty — of replacing Biden’s Democrats as the majority party in the House of Representatives. The race for a majority in the Senate was too close to call. But even if Republicans control only the House, they will likely use that platform to undermine Biden’s administration during his final two years in office.      

As if likely losses of legislative power were not enough for Biden to worry about, maneuvers by Republicans to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing partisans have tilted that juridical balance steeply in their favor. The court’s new reactionary 6-to-3 majority has already made two shocking decisions. They have, in effect, denied women their long-standing right to abortion and made it easier to carry a concealed gun in public. Republicans claim to support individual rights. But they and their court appointees have deleted the long-standing constitutional right of a pregnant woman to decide whether to give birth or not, thereby depriving her of assured responsibility over her physical body and personal future. 

Regarding gun violence, in barely five months from 1 January through 5 June of this year, America has experienced 246 mass shootings — incidents that kill or wound four or more people. That puts the US on track in 2022 to match or exceed its record of 692 mass shootings in 2021, more than in any year since the Gun Violence Archive began counting them. The Republican-majority court’s unconscionable impulses seem to be to make women make more babies, wanted or not, and to make murders more likely as well.

There is good news. First, a massive popular backlash against these Republican decisions has either begun or is likely. Second, a nationally televised Congressional investigation of the violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 has displayed the complicity of Trump, and by association the Trump-infected Republican Party, in an insurrection that killed at least seven people and injured roughly 150 more. Third, although Trump may not end up where he belongs, namely, in jail, at least he faces Republican rivals for the party’s nomination to run for president in 2024. Conceivably those rivals could come to include a candidate who is politically more moderate and personally less criminal, corrupt, and narcissistic than he. 

President Joko Widodo will host the G20 leaders in Indonesia merely one week after the 8 November 2022 midterm legislative election takes place in the US. Will Biden go again to Bali? Not if at that time right-wing fanatics claiming election fraud are destabilizing America. For long-term interactions between Jakarta and Washington relations, however, what will matter is not who will attend the 2022 G20 summit in Bali. It will be the names and plans of the Indonesians and Americans who will run and win in the national elections to be held in their respective countries in 2024.

Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. His recent publications include an edited volume, The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21^st Century.

Applications opened recently for the Fall 2022 session of the Stanford University Scholars Program for Japanese High School Students (also known as “Stanford e-Japan”), which will run from the end of September 2022 through the end of February 2023. The deadline to apply is August 12, 2022.

Stanford e-Japan
Fall 2022 session (September 2022 to February 2023)
Application period: July 1 to August 12, 2022

All applications must be submitted at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/prog/stanford_e-japan/ via the SurveyMonkey Apply platform. Applicants and recommenders will need to create a SurveyMonkey Apply account to proceed. Students who are interested in applying to the online course are encouraged to begin their applications early.

Accepted applicants will engage in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. Government officials, top scholars, and experts from Stanford University and throughout the United States provide web-based lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions.

Stanford e-Japan is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University. Stanford e-Japan is generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan.

For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

To stay informed of news about Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s other student programs, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPICE offers separate courses for U.S. high school students. For more information, please visit the Reischauer Scholars Program (online course about Japan), the Sejong Korea Scholars Program (online course about Korea), and the China Scholars Program (online course about China).

This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.

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The numbers tell part of the story. While US merchandise trade with the Southeast Asian region grew by a respectable 62.4% from 2010 to 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year), China’s trade increased by an impressive 115% during the same period, according to the statistics of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Over a longer period, the US share of the region’s total merchandise trade fell from 16.1% in 2000 to 11.6% in 2020, while China’s share rose from 4.3% to 19.4%. Although infrastructure investment numbers are harder to come by, there is no question that China is playing a much more significant role in Southeast Asian infrastructure development than the US.

Some of the relative decline in the US economic role in the region is the inevitable result of China’s dramatic economic growth and the resulting increased trade and investment. That trend, however, only partly explains the US predicament. Over the past 10–20 years, Beijing has been much more aggressive in its economic statecraft than Washington. Beijing signed a Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN, then joined a new multilateral trade agreement—the Regional Cooperation and Economic Partnership (RCEP)—and more recently asked to join the high-standard Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) free trade accord. On infrastructure, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the high-profile Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to funnel billions of dollars into infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

The BRI initiative generally has been welcomed in the region for one simple reason: Southeast Asia has huge and urgent infrastructure needs—estimated by the Asian Development Bank to be $210 billion per year through 2030—that it cannot meet by mobilizing domestic resources. Through BRI, Beijing is offering to meet a portion of those needs with greater speed and fewer conditions than other would-be partners. Southeast Asian governments have lined up for BRI projects, with outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razaq having signed on for more than $20 billion of BRI-funded infrastructure projects in the 2015–2018 period. Although the BRI has been the subject of substantial criticism for overpromising, project delays, quality problems, employing Chinese rather than local labor, and raising the host government’s debt obligations, the initiative still dominates the discussion of infrastructure in the region.

The US, meanwhile, has underperformed in terms of its economic diplomacy. Most importantly, in 2017 it summarily withdrew from its primary economic initiative in the region, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. President Trump’s decision to pull out of that accord was a severe geostrategic and economic blunder, as TPP would have bound the US into the broader region for a generation or more, as well as facilitated greater US trade with a number of fast-growing economies. With the US out of the TPP and China joining RCEP, the prospects are for a growing percentage of ASEAN trade to be with China (and other RCEP partners) and for the US and American businesses to lose further ground.

The US also has struggled to compete on infrastructure. The US is not going to match China, particularly in areas such as road, rail, and port development, but it could do more. The Trump administration launched several initiatives—including the Blue Dot Network, Clean EDGE Asia, and the establishment of the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a larger, more ambitious version of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal entity that helps insure US ventures abroad—all of which sought to leverage private sector funding to offer high-quality projects. The Biden administration has followed up with the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, announced in June in coordination with G-7 partners, and promised via the Quad $50 billion in infrastructure funding. To date, however, these initiatives generally have not significantly changed the overall infrastructure picture in the region.

The US failure to engage in the region’s burgeoning free trade networks—combined with the big splash that China’s BRI initiative is making and the lack of a countervailing American initiative—is fueling the perception in the region that the US is a declining economic player. In an ASEAN 2021 survey of regional opinion leaders, 76% believed China was the most influential economic partner in the region, compared to less than 10% who felt that way about the US. Even more telling, I recall asking a senior Myanmar economic minister in 2017 why he had led private-sector roadshows to China, Japan, and South Korea but not the US, and he replied: “We didn’t even think of the US.”

Thus, the US faces a problem of both reality and perception. To address this, the US does not need to match Chinese numbers. It does, however, need to find a way to re-energize its trade engagement and to become a more significant player in Southeast Asian infrastructure, and to do so in ways that change the narrative in the region.

Recognizing this reality, the Biden administration recently launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which is expected to result in negotiations on trade, supply chains, clean energy, and decarbonization, as well as on tax and corruption issues. The administration touted this initiative as reflecting the needs and realities of the 21st-century global economy. The good news is that seven of the ten ASEAN member nations signed onto IPEF, presumably reflecting their interest in greater US economic engagement and their hope that IPEF can produce just that. Skeptics say the initiative does not offer the promise of greater access to the US market via tariff reductions, which normally would be the carrot to entice other governments into adopting the high standards Washington wants. Also, as Matthew Goodman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out, the fact that the administration is unwilling to take any negotiated agreement to Congress for ratification is likely to raise doubts in the minds of Asian partners about the IPEF’s durability, since a future administration can easily toss it aside.

Despite or maybe because of these doubts, the US needs to do all it can to turn the IPEF into something that is economically meaningful. Can it produce a digital trade agreement, real substance on strengthening supply chains, or can it possibly even use trade facilitation tools to enhance market access as former senior US trade official Wendy Cutler has suggested in a recent podcast hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies? It is too early to say, but the bottom line is that many in the region—and indeed even in the US—will remain privately doubtful until and unless the IPEF shows that it can result in tangible business and economic benefits.

The White House put the IPEF forward because it believes it lacks the political support either to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership or to launch another significant trade initiative. The domestic politics of trade might be tough right now, but that is not an excuse that is going to go very far in Southeast Asia. The region is not going to say “no problem, we understand.” Instead, it will go ahead without the US. If Washington wants to maintain influence, it needs to find a way to make the domestic politics on trade work. That almost certainly will entail appealing to bipartisan concern about Chinese geostrategic dominance, as trade alone probably will not sell.

On infrastructure, the various US initiatives to date have disappointed to some extent, although the Development Finance Corporation has been a step in the right direction. They do little other than offer the prospect of quality to give the US a competitive edge over Chinese-funded projects. The Chinese offer relatively speedy approval processes, low or zero conditionality deals, and complete project packages, including financing. Chinese state companies often are willing to undertake projects that do not appear to be commercially viable. Plus, Chinese political leaders weigh in personally to push the projects forward. I have seen this on the ground, in Indonesia and Myanmar, countless times. The Chinese pull out all of the stops, with intensive lobbying and full financing, and they often win.

Economic officials in the region complain that the multilateral development banks and Japan, which also offer substantial infrastructure deals, move much more slowly and laboriously than China. The design, discussion, and approval process often takes many years. With the US, it is almost always the private sector taking the lead, and private American companies have a hard time finding well-developed, “bankable” infrastructure projects in the region. Plus, US companies often come to the table without full financing or even all the pieces of the project. Government lobbying and financing usually lags, if it is there at all.

If the US is going to compete effectively for infrastructure projects in the region, it is going to have to change the way it does business. To begin with, the US will have to make it easier for Southeast Asian governments to say “yes” to deals. That means offering the full project package, including financing, and accelerating the project preparation and approval timeline to come closer to matching that of the Chinese. It also means more government funding for project development along with heavy US government lobbying, including by the president when appropriate, for major projects. The US is not going to engage in bribery or support projects that destroy communities or the environment, nor should it. But it needs to use just about all the other available tools to compete.

The US should consider establishing an overseas infrastructure czar in Washington who can lead and oversee government-business teams that identify potential projects where the US can compete, put together a full project package, including private and public financing, and then aggressively lobby the host government for approval. I often hear that the US does not work that way on overseas business. Perhaps, but if Washington wants to win some victories—and more significant projects—it needs to be willing to adopt new thinking.

Re-engaging on trade and winning more infrastructure deals are essential, but there is one more thing the US needs to do to reverse the perception that it is a declining economic player in Southeast Asia. It needs to do a much better job of telling its economic story. For example, the US remains the largest foreign investor in Southeast Asia, but I am willing to bet few people in the region know that. Similarly, America remains a huge market for Southeast Asian exports, just slightly smaller than China, but again that is not well known or much talked about in the region. The US should devote more resources and time to telling this story and to reminding the region of the incredible power of American private sector innovation and the US commitment to quality investment. Better communications alone will not solve the problem, but combined with trade and infrastructure initiatives it can help the US persuade the governments and people of Southeast Asia that it remains a major economic partner.

Just days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Dmitri Medvedev, the former president and prime minister of Russia, took to social media to post a chilling message. He raged against Western sanctions on his country and suggested darkly that Russia could rip up some of its most important agreements with the West. He mentioned the New START treaty, the nuclear arms reduction agreement signed with the United States over a decade ago, but the threat was broader still: the sundering of all diplomatic ties with Western countries. “It’s time to hang huge padlocks on the embassies,” he wrote.

Read the rest at Foreign Affairs

After months of watching hundreds of new nuclear missile silos being dug in the dirt northwest of Beijing, it is welcome news that President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping seemingly agreed at last week’s summit on the need for strategic stability talks. Strategic stability — the idea that nuclear-armed countries should not be able to gain decisive advantage over one another — has taken on new importance as China expands and modernizes its nuclear arsenal.

China is expected to quadruple its number of warheads in the next decade, and is upgrading its nuclear capabilities with new missiles, submarines and bombers. Over the summer, it reportedly fired a missile from a hypersonic glide vehicle while testing its fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) — a technical advance that, if true, means the Chinese can attack targets from space with nuclear weapons. Although China insists it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons, this claim has less credence than in the past, when the country’s nuclear force was much smaller.

Read the rest at Politico 

In March 2022, SPICE released Introduction to Issues in International Security, an online lecture series that was developed in consultation with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Four CISAC scholars are featured in accessible video lectures that aim to introduce high school students to various global security issues.

Dr. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, high school educator, historian, and researcher, was an advisor to the first cohort of high school students to engage with the lectures. Ornelas guided students from San Jose and Salinas through the video lectures and accompanying curriculum. Students took the initiative to complete the series and assignments on top of their regular schoolwork.

Ornelas’s efforts culminated in the inaugural International Security Symposium that was held on May 26, 2022. The four CISAC scholars gathered online with the first cohort of students. The objectives of the symposium were to offer students a chance to interact with leading scholars in the field of international security and to learn from the scholars about careers in the field.

The scholars, who are featured in the lecture series and who were present during the symposium, are:

Dr. Martha Crenshaw, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Terrorism and Counterterrorism)

The Honorable Rose Gottemoeller, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (International Security and North Korea’s Nuclear Program)

Dr. Norman Naimark, Professor of History and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide)

Dr. Megan J. Palmer, Executive Director of Bio Policy and Leadership Initiatives at Stanford University, Adjunct Professor in the department of Bioengineering, and Affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (Biosecurity)

During the symposium, the scholars shared key turning points in their careers and how they came to be in their fields of expertise. This was followed by student presentations in breakout sessions, where the students were given the opportunity to present on one of the four topics covered in Introduction to Issues in International Security.

In the breakout session on ethnic cleansing and genocide, Professor Naimark was impressed by how the students had absorbed the most important lessons of the material on mass atrocities: 1) that ethnic cleansing and genocide are an important part of human history, and 2) that these are phenomena that need to be studied and understood in order to prevent them from repeating in the future.

The student participants from Salinas were recently featured in an article in The Salinas Californian. Alisal High School student Ashley Corral commented that the series “brought awareness to COVID, mass atrocities and weapons,” and “it was really helpful that students from Salinas Valley could have that opportunity.” Another student, Bilha Piceno said, “It lets me see if this is something that I’m interested in."

The lecture series encourages students to think about international security not only on a broader level, but also how they can contribute to the safety of the world as global citizens starting with their own communities. Given the success of the first symposium, CISAC and SPICE hope to expand on the lecture series, which is part of their DEI-focused efforts, and reach more underrepresented minority students.

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) is pleased to announce that Or Rabinowitz will come to Stanford for the 2022-23 academic year as part of the institute’s new Visiting Fellowship in Israel Studies. Dr. Rabinowitz is currently a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

During her time at Stanford as a visiting fellow in Israel Studies, Dr. Rabinowitz will teach a one quarter long undergraduate course on “Israel: National Security and Nuclear Policy.” She will also organize and run an international workshop on “Deterrence and Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East” in the spring or summer quarters of 2023, and engage with Stanford pre- and postdoctoral fellows and FSI faculty.

Dr. Rabinowitz’s appointment will be based at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

“Or Rabinowitz is one of Israel’s finest scholars writing about nuclear proliferation, deterrence, and national security policy,” said Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC.  “Stanford is really fortunate to be able to bring her to campus for a year under this program.”

Dr. Rabinowitz’s current research lies at the intersection of nuclear and intelligence studies, with a focus on Israel’s nuclear program and the role of science and technology in its national security doctrine. Her book, “Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and its Cold War Deals” was published in April 2014 by Oxford University Press, and she has since published articles in International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, The International History Review and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, among others.

She holds a PhD degree from the War Studies Department of King’s College London, an MA degree in Security Studies and an LLB degree in Law, both from Tel-Aviv University. She is currently conducting a study on intelligence collaboration between allies in the realm of counter-proliferation operations, funded by the Israel Science Foundation.

“I am honored to be joining Stanford this coming academic year, and to share my knowledge about Israel with Stanford’s undergraduates,” said Dr. Rabinowitz. “CISAC is a global leader when it comes to producing new knowledge and insight about the challenges of nuclear proliferation, and being chosen as an Israel Studies Fellow is a true privilege.”

Dr. Rabinowitz’s many awards and honors include being named an Israeli Chevening Scholar by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and receiving The Scouloudi Award from the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. In 2018 she also won the Professor Ya’acov Barsimantov Best Article Award from the Israeli Association for International Studies.

The Visiting Fellowship in Israel Studies was launched in September 2021 with the generous support of Stanford alumni and donors. The search committee included senior fellows from throughout the institute. In addition to bringing to Dr. Rabinowitz to Stanford, the committee selected Dr. Amichai Magen, a scholar of law, government and international relations, as the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies. Dr. Magen will also arrive at Stanford in the 2022-2023 academic year.

Following an impromptu video shoot of the audience and brief introduction, Dr. Fukuyama turned the time over to FSI Director Michael McFaul, who delivered the keynote remarks to the graduating class.

Dr. McFaul reflected on the unique journey the 2022 class, from beginning with Zoom classes and remote learning to finally reconvening in-person for projects like the Policy Change Studio capstones and events like former president Barack Obama’s visit to FSI in April 2022.

“You all look better in three dimensions compared to two dimensions,” McFaul assured everyone. He went on to share four lessons he hopes will resonate with the newest FSI alumni:

1. Do Something, Don’t Be Something

The first lesson Dr. McFaul imparted to the graduates was to frame their goals and careers in terms of actions, not titles.

“Don’t think of your career as a place to be,” he said. “Think of your career as an action verb. Figure out what you want to do, then fit the jobs, the companies, and future degrees around those action verbs, not the other way around.” He stressed that any particular job title matters much less than a commitment to a mission, a set of values, or clear, concrete policy things you want to do.

2. Embrace both Uncertainty and Rejection

Speaking from his personal experience, Dr. McFaul shared how his first career plan following his DPhil degree from Oxford ended as a complete bust. As a fresh, young academic, he applied to 22 jobs, and was rejected from all of them. But while his immediate plans may have stalled, the rejections gave him a front row seat to the 1990-91 protests in Moscow, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the burgeoning calls for democratic change in Russia, all which altered the course of his academic, professional, and political life.

“From uncertainty can come opportunity, and from setbacks can come second — and dare I say, better  — chances,” he reminded the graduates.

3. Continue to Invest in Connections

McFaul’s third piece of advice was a cautionary story of what not to do. “After my time at Stanford and Oxford, I didn’t invest time in maintaining friendships, and I regret that,” he candidly told the audience.

He stressed that these connections are not only for the purpose of networking and professional development, though those kinds of connections can lead to instrumental things. But more importantly, McFaul advised the students to develop and nurture relationships with fantastic, interesting people for the sake of allowing those connections to enrich and deepen the well-being and richness of their lives.

4. Keep in Touch with Stanford

Looking across the crowd, Dr. McFaul said, “Most of you are second years. Some of you are fifth years. I am a forty-first year student here at Stanford. I really love learning, and there’s no better place to learn than Stanford.”

He urged the graduates to remain active and invested in the community they have been a part of the last two years. “You have access to some of the most talented professors in the world. Use it! Don’t forget about it,” counseled McFaul.

On to the Future

Building on Dr. McFaul’s remarks, Soomin Jun, the student speaker at the diploma ceremony, asked her fellow classmates to look to the future with a determination to stand up for values and rights, and to not lose the compassion and empathy that have bonded them together as a cohort.

“Let’s not forget to humble ourselves and do good for those next to us and in our communities,” she said. Jun continued, “Let’s not forget that we are far more capable of achieving anything beyond anyone’s imagination. Voice up and stand up for your values and ideas.”

As the 2022 class moves on from their time as MIP students at FSI, five will be staying at Stanford to pursue further studies in political science, environment and resources, public policy, and journalism. Others will remain in the greater Bay Area working on technology policy, energy policy, digital privacy, and statistical programming. Others are heading from the West Coast to the East to work in government, international development, and policy analysis, while four of the class members will be continuing their military careers in Texas, Washington State, Kentucky, and Kosovo.

Wherever they’re bound, the Master’s of International Policy Class of 2022 will not soon be forgotten.

“This class is special to me,” Michael McFaul said. “We here at FSI and MIP have tried to lean into you, and you have repeatedly shown that you are a special class and special group of people together at a special time, and we all feel bonded with you.”

SPICE continues to expand its regional programs for high school students in Japan. This year marked the launch of the Stanford e-Kobe program, which joins the previously established programs, Stanford e-Hiroshima, Stanford e-Kawasaki, Stanford e-Oita, and Stanford e-Tottori.

These online courses are a collaboration between SPICE and local government and school officials in Japan and challenge students to think critically about global themes related to U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations.

All five courses have now finished their 2021–2022 term. This summer, two top students from each program will present their final research projects and be honored at a virtual event hosted by SPICE, Stanford University. Congratulations to the ten honorees below on their excellent academic achievement!

Stanford e-Hiroshima (Instructor Rylan Sekiguchi)

Student Honoree: Minori Imai
School: Hiroshima Prefectural Kuremitsuta High School
Project Title: All Lives Are Important

Student Honoree: Yui Miyake
School: Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima High School
Project Title: U.S. Prison System: How the Country’s History of Racial Inequality Drives the High Rate of Incarceration in America

Stanford e-Kawasaki (Instructor Maiko Tamagawa Bacha)

Student Honoree: Sayaka Kiyotomo
School: Kawasaki High School
Project Title: How Can We Improve Junior and Senior High School English Education in Japan?

Student Honoree: Anne Fukushima
School: Tachibana High School
Project Title: How Are Invisible Disorders Accepted in the United States and Japan?

Stanford e-Kobe (Instructor Alison Harsch)

Student Honoree: Nonoha Toji
School: Kobe University Secondary School
Project Title: How to Foster Entrepreneurship in School Days: Between U.S. and Japan

Student Honoree: Cullen Hiroki Morita
School: Kobe Municipal Fukiai High School
Project Title: The Different Work-Life Balance in Japan and America

Stanford e-Oita (Instructor Kasumi Yamashita)

Student Honoree: Rina Imai
School: Usa High School
Project Title: Learn About War and Peace Through the Naval Air Base Bunkers in Oita

Student Honoree: Yuki Nojiri
School: Hofu High School
Project Title: I Want to Live in the Second House of the Three Little Pigs

Stanford e-Tottori (Instructor Jonas Edman)

Student Honoree: Sakurako Kano
School: Tottori Keiai High School
Project Title: Being Proactive

Student Honoree: Yuki Yamane
School: Tottori Nishi High School
Project Title: The Effect of Collectivism and Individualism on Education

The SPICE staff is looking forward to honoring these ten students in a virtual ceremony on August 9, 2022 (August 10 in Japan). Each student will be given the opportunity to make a formal presentation to members of the Stanford community, the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, and the Japanese community in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SPICE also offers online courses to U.S. high school students on Japan (Reischauer Scholars Program), China (China Scholars Program), and Korea (Sejong Korea Scholars Program), and online courses to Chinese high school students on the United States (Stanford e-China) and to Japanese high school students on the United States and U.S.–Japan relations (Stanford e-Japan).

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