Scholars Corner is an ongoing SPICE initiative to share FSI’s cutting-edge social science research with high school and college classrooms nationwide and international schools abroad.

This Scholars Corner video features New York Times bestselling author Francis Fukuyama discussing the recent rise of identity politics, both in the United States and around the world. “In the 20th century we had a politics that was organized around an economic axis, primarily. You had a left that worried about inequality…and you had a right that was in favor of the greatest amount of freedom,” summarizes Fukuyama. “[N]ow we are seeing a shift in many countries away from this focus on economic issues to a polarization based on identity.”

According to Fukuyama, this shift in politics is reflected in such domestic social movements as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, as well as in international movements like the Catalan independence movement, white nationalism, and even the Islamic State.

To hear more of Dr. Fukuyama’s analysis, view the video here: “The Rise and Implications of Identity Politics.” For other Scholars Corner episodes, visit our Scholars Corner webpage. Past videos have covered topics such as cybersecurity, immigration and integration, and climate change.

"Identity" hardcover book by Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama is a Senior Fellow at FSI and the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. This video is based on his recent book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, which was recognized as The Times (UK) Best Books of 2018, Politics, and Financial Times Best Books of 2018.

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• Learning from experts

 

On January 18, 2019, Stanford Global Studies and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) hosted a book talk by Professor Michael McFaul. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council (2009–2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012–2014). He is also one of several contributing scholars to Inside the Kremlin, SPICE’s lesson plan on Soviet and Russian history. McFaul’s talk was given to approximately 30 community college and secondary school educators from the San Francisco Bay Area. Three of the educators—Nancy Willet, Phillip Tran, Don Uy-Barreta—are 2018–19 Stanford Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) Fellows, and this article highlights their reflections.

Ambassador McFaul has described From Cold War to Hot Peace as “three books in one.” First, it is a book that explains the arc of U.S.–Russia relations since the end of the Cold War. Second, it a book that describes the “reset” in U.S.–Russia relations and its aftermath during the Obama presidency. Third, it is a book about McFaul’s life that describes how his involvement with the debate team at Bozeman High School, Montana, sparked his interest in Russia and led to his subsequent study of Russia at Stanford University, Oxford University, and in Russia itself. During his talk, he touched upon all three.

McFaul’s reflections not only provided the educators with important content on U.S.–Russia relations and insights from his youth to his ambassadorship, but also prompted the educators to consider effective teaching and pedagogical strategies. McFaul’s use of storytelling, presentation of multiple perspectives, emphasis on interdisciplinarity, and sharing of first-hand accounts gave the educators a glimpse into McFaul not only as an academic and diplomat but as a teacher.

EPIC Fellow Nancy Willet, Co-chair of the Business & Information Systems Department, College of Marin, noted, “I was most impressed with Ambassador McFaul’s engaging storytelling. His first-hand insights of his time spent studying and working in Russia challenged some of my misguided assumptions and helped expand my understanding of the complexities of U.S.–Russia relations. I grew up during the Cold War and the Ambassador disrupted some of my deep-rooted misconceptions about the former Soviet Union and further opened my mind for a more nuanced understanding.” In a follow-up communication, Willet said that she is devouring From Cold War to Hot Peace and plans to share McFaul’s scholarly insights with her law students—particularly when discussing democracy and rule of law—here and abroad.

EPIC Fellow Philip Tran, Instructor of Business, San Jose City College, remarked that “Ambassador McFaul’s talk reinforced the complicated notion of human relations and the importance of an interdisciplinary study of it—including political science, business, economics, etc. Interdisciplinarity is a key to grasping a better understanding of human relations.” He continued by noting that the biggest take-away from McFaul’s talk was that it cautioned him as a teacher to “refrain from the natural ‘knee-jerk’ reactions and to seek a deeper understanding of the situation from all sides…. Even though Ambassador McFaul is a subject matter expert on U.S.–Russian relations, he displayed humility and acceptance of ambiguity in his responses to some of the toughest questions regarding the U.S. relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin.”

EPIC Fellow Don Uy-Barreta, Instructor of Economics, De Anza College, reflected upon the significance of sharing first-hand experiences with students. He noted that “Reading about Ambassador McFaul’s experience is very informative, but being able to ask questions and hearing it from the source is a whole different level of experience. As he was telling us about his days in Russia, it felt like I was right next to him, and it gave me goosebumps.” Uy-Barreta found inspiration in McFaul’s talk as he prepares for his presentation on global economics at the EPIC Symposium on May 18, 2019 during which the 2018–19 EPIC Fellows will present their research at Stanford.

McFaul has given numerous talks on From Cold War to Hot Peace but this was the first geared to an audience of educators. As I observed his talk, I was primarily attentive to the pedagogical strategies that he utilized to engage the educators. For me, his effective teaching made the history and insights in From Cold War to Hot Peace come alive and feel more like “four books in one.”

This book talk was made possible by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant that provides professional development opportunities for K–12 teachers and community college instructors. Among these opportunities is EPIC, a program that provides one-year fellowships to community college instructors. Title VI grant collaborators include Stanford Global Studies (SGS), SPICE, Lacuna Stories, and the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching. SGS’s Denise Geraci and SPICE’s Jonas Edman organized and facilitated the talk by Ambassador McFaul.

SPICE also offers professional development opportunities for middle school teachers and high school teachers. To stay informed of SPICE news, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Why does cellist Yo-Yo Ma refer to the Silk Road as the ‘Internet of antiquity’? What is globalization? What is economic interdependence? What are diversity and inclusion? These are some of the questions that high school students from Yokohama Science Frontier High School (YSFH) considered during a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area in January 2019. Alumni of the U.S.-Japan Council’s TOMODACHI Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) and SPICE staff encouraged the students to critically consider the questions during their visits to Facebook, Apple, and Stanford University.

Prior to their arrival, YSFH students shared their goals for the trip. YSFH student Ken Horikoshi, who aspires to become a robotics engineer, noted, “I will need communication skills, skills of thinking deeply, and of course, knowledge about space or robotics to make my dreams come true. So, I’d like to make an effort to improve these skills.” With the students’ goals in mind, ELP Chair and SPICE’s Rylan Sekiguchi organized visits to Apple and Facebook and assisted with a one-day seminar at Stanford.

Derek Kenmotsu talks with students and teachers on Apple campus.

Mana Nakagawa gives students and teachers a tour around Facebook headquarters.

During the seminar at Stanford, SPICE staff introduced the YSFH students to SPICE lessons from Along the Silk Road to illustrate that globalization is not just a modern phenomenon. The staff noted that in some ways, the ancient Silk Road was the first real conduit of globalization, as it connected vast lands into a trade network that spread goods, beliefs, and technologies far from their areas of origin. ELP alumna Naomi Funahashi, instructor of SPICE’s online course on Japan, illustrated this by showing how musical instruments were carried along the Silk Road and gradually adapted to cultural and geographic features of local environments. She mentioned, for example, similarities and differences of lutes that can be found in Europe, China, Korea, and Japan. She also noted a description of the Silk Road by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, founder of Silkroad, who has described the Silk Road as the “Internet of antiquity”; expounding upon this notion, Sekiguchi and SPICE’s Jonas Edman noted that by studying about the Silk Road, we can gain historical insights into how the contemporary stage of globalization is changing our world and our lives.

A highlight of the seminar featured the YSFH students giving presentations on their science-related research to the SPICE staff and visiting scholars at Stanford from Japan. YSFH student Kazuhiro Okada’s presentation on his ambition to design underwater cities stretched the audience’s notions of globalization and interconnectedness. One commented, “It would be interesting if you could someday design a subway stop under the ocean between Aomori Prefecture and Hokkaido.”

The ELP identifies, cultivates, and empowers a new generation of leaders in the U.S.–Japan relationship. Chair Sekiguchi, other ELP alumni, and SPICE staff extended this mission to the generation behind them. YSFH teacher Nobuyo Uchimura described the experiences that they provided her students as very precious ones that expanded their learning beyond the confines of a classroom, and YSFH teacher Yukimasa Uekusa noted his desire to prioritize programs such as this into the future.

Stanford e-Japan is an online course that teaches Japanese high school students about American society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. The course introduces students to both American and Japanese perspectives on many historical and contemporary issues. It is offered biannually by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). The Fall 2018 cohort was the seventh group of students to complete Stanford e-Japan.

In August 2019, three of the top students of the Fall 2018 Stanford e-Japan distance-learning course will be honored at an event at Stanford University. The three Stanford e-Japan Day honorees—Sakura Hayakawa (Katoh Gakuen Gyoshu Senior High School), Ryotaro Homma (Kaisei Senior High School), and Taiki Yamamoto (Ritsumeikan Uji Senior High School)—will be recognized for their coursework and exceptional research essays that focused respectively on “Importance of Youth Political Participation and Citizenship Education,” “The Abolition of the Electoral College: A Synthesis of the Positive Aspects,” and “The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Is a New Framework Necessary?”

Mayu Fujinami (Keio Girls Senior High School) and Tatsuya Sugiyama (Saitama Prefectural Urawa High School) received Honorable Mentions for their research papers on “The Importance of Paternity Leave for Gender Equality” and “Design Thinking: Lessons from the U.S.,” respectively.

Applications for the next session of Stanford e-Japan (Spring 2019) are currently being accepted through February 24, 2019. More information is available at stanfordejapan.org.

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Stanford e-Japan is currently accepting applications for the Spring 2019 session, which runs from April 22 to August 23, 2019. The deadline to apply is February 24, 2019.

Now in its eighth session, Stanford e-Japan is SPICE’s online course for high school students in Japan. Accepted students engage in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts throughout the United States provide web-based lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions.

The Spring 2019 session is generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan.

This year, Stanford e-Japan has moved to an online application system. 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 program are encouraged to begin their application early.

For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit http://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 and Twitter.

SPICE offers separate courses for U.S. high school students. For more information on those, please visit http://reischauerscholars.org (online course on Japan), http://sejongscholars.org (Korea), and http://chinascholars.org (China).

Related articles:

• Winners announced for the Spring 2018 Stanford e-Japan Award
• Japan Day 2018: Recognizing future leaders in the U.S.–Japan relationship

Anna Oura (Tokyo Gakugei University International Secondary School) received Honorable Mention for her research paper on “A Comparative Study on Japanese and U.S. History Textbooks.”

Applications for the Spring 2019 session of Stanford e-Japan will be accepted online from January 10 to February 24, 2019.

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

• Japan Day 2018: Recognizing future leaders in the U.S.–Japan relationship
• Winners announced for the Fall 2017 Stanford e-Japan Award

During the U.S.-Japan Council annual conference that was held in Tokyo on November 8 and 9, 2018, Rylan Sekiguchi was elected chair of the TOMODACHI Emerging Leaders Program (ELP). The ELP identifies, cultivates, and empowers a new generation of leaders in the U.S.–Japan relationship. Emerging Leaders participate in leadership education, design and implement original USJC programming, and develop powerful, lifelong personal and professional friendships. A new cohort of leaders aged 24–35 is selected annually through a highly competitive process. USJC Senior Vice President Kaz Maniwa, who oversees the ELP, commented, “We are delighted that Rylan Sekiguchi will lead the Emerging Leaders Program next year as the chair of the Steering Committee. Rylan has shown great passion, dedication, and commitment to the Emerging Leaders Program and we look forward to his leadership.”

Secretary Norman Mineta and Rylan Sekiguchi

During the conference, Sekiguchi gave an overview of the ELP and shared reflections of how his professional and personal lives have embraced the mission of the ELP. Sekiguchi spoke specifically about his current work at SPICE with USJC Vice Chair Norman Mineta, former Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton and Secretary of Transportation under President George W. Bush. Mineta is the subject of a new documentary—An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy—co-produced by Dianne Fukami and Debra Nakatomi, and Sekiguchi is finalizing web-based lesson plans that focus on the film’s key themes, including immigration, civil liberties, and leadership. The documentary was screened at the conference and is anticipated to air on PBS.

A short video that Sekiguchi shared during his speech brought applause from the audience. The video captured a snippet of a performance that he and other members of San Jose Taiko presented last year. The performance celebrated “swing music and the role it played in lifting people’s spirits amid the harsh reality of the Japanese-American internment,” shared Sekiguchi. “Through music and theater, we transported people back to a 1940s-era ‘camp dance’ to educate audiences about the painful, agonizing choices that incarcerees faced.” Mineta was a young boy when his family was uprooted from San Jose, California, and incarcerated in a camp for Japanese Americans in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Mineta later became mayor of San Jose in 1971.

Through Sekiguchi’s reflections, audience members from both sides of the Pacific were prompted to reflect upon civil liberties during times of crisis—in this case, the incarceration of Japanese Americans following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. My father was a high school student in a camp in Poston, Arizona, and the video prompted me to recall one of the few things that he shared with me about his life behind barbed wire—that camp dances and baseball brought some sense of normalcy to the lives of Japanese-American youth. By showing the video, Sekiguchi’s implicit message was clear: young Americans today—including of course, ELP members—must be aware of the sometimes fragile nature of civil liberties. I have the good fortune of working with another ELP member, Naomi Funahashi, and during the conference, it was rewarding for me to meet many ELP alumni and members of the newest cohort and to witness the beginnings of personal and professional friendships amongst them. Sekiguchi’s speech set the tone for the year ahead—like a “camp dance,” he wants the ELP members to have fun but to always remember the serious nature of what the ELP represents.

In 1972, after years of frozen relations between China and the United States, President Richard Nixon met with Chairman Mao Zedong and set the two countries on a mutually interdependent path. Only a year later, Stanford University established the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP) in 1973. In 1976, three other projects (on Africa, Latin America, and Japan) were added to BAYCEP, and SPICE was established as the umbrella program of the four projects. In a 1978 paper, Dr. David Grossman, the founding director of BAYCEP and SPICE, noted the following:

Long before we knew or used the term globalization, the origins of SPICE can be traced to the growing awareness that there was a huge gap or lag between the work of scholars and the knowledge and awareness of the general public. The original impetus was the Nixon visit to China in 1972, and the realization that the general public and students were not prepared for this radical shift in geopolitics. The problem was how to bridge this profound knowledge gap… This underlying theme of making recent scholarship more accessible to the public, and particularly to K–12 teachers and schools, became the heart of the SPICE initiative, and has remained so to this day.

For 45 years, SPICE has worked to bring Stanford’s world-class scholarship on China to K–12 schools nationwide through two primary avenues: supplementary curricular materials on China and U.S.–China relations; and seminars on China and U.S.–China relations for educators in the United States. In both of these areas, SPICE has worked in collaboration with Stanford scholars, including Professor Emeritus Albert Dien, who was instrumental in the creation of BAYCEP and remains engaged with SPICE.

In 2017, SPICE added a third branch to its work on China and K–12 schools, the China Scholars Program (CSP). An online course on contemporary China and U.S.–China relations, the China Scholars Program offers high school students across the United States unique access to cutting-edge research on China. Designed and instructed by Dr. Tanya Lee, each module addresses a different theme—such as “U.S.–China political relations” or “urban/rural inequality”—and features a real-time discussion with a scholar from Stanford or another institution.

“My students amaze me with the enthusiasm and rigor they bring to the course. They understand that a comprehensive understanding of China will be essential to navigating the international careers they want to pursue,” Lee explained. In addition to keeping up with (and sometimes surpassing) rigorous reading and discussion assignments, students spend much of the term researching and writing final papers on topics of personal interest. “We challenge each other,” Lee says. “I push them to explore areas they might not otherwise have considered, and to do so critically—but they are so curious and motivated, I have to be quick on my feet to stay ahead of them!”

One of the course’s two required texts is Stanford Professor Gordon Chang’s Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (Harvard University Press, 2015). “I assign Fateful Ties because I love the ‘big picture’ it gives us to frame all of the particular, current issues we explore—not just for its historical breadth, but for the way it integrates cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical influences the U.S. and China have had on each other along with the political and economic. And then for the students to have the opportunity to actually question Professor Chang directly is extraordinary.” Other Stanford faculty who regularly participate in CSP include political scientist Professor Thomas Fingar, economist Professor Scott Rozelle, and sociologist Professor Andrew Walder.  

The China Scholars Program runs twice a year. Applications for the spring 2019 CSP course are currently being accepted. Teachers should encourage highly motivated, advanced students to apply for the opportunity to learn directly from Stanford scholars. Lee remarked, “I am honored to be a part of the legacy of SPICE’s founders in extending Stanford scholarship on China beyond the walls of the university, to equip the next generation to build new bridges.”

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