Donald Emmerson joined KQED’s radioshow “Forum” to discuss U.S. President Barack Obama’s final trip to Asia, where the president met with world leaders in various forums including the G-20 in Hangzhou and, in Vientiane, the East Asia Summit among other meetings related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Emmerson, who directs the Southeast Asia Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said the tour represented Obama’s commitment to a vision of U.S. engagement in the region and to supporting multilateral institutions—cornerstones of the administration’s “pivot to Asia” strategy.

“No American president has ever had the kind of interaction with Southeast Asia that President Obama has,” said Emmerson, noting the president’s frequent visits to the region and many sessions with its leaders.

Along with three other guests on the show, Emmerson also responded to questions on North Korea and the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Listen to the full program here.

The number of obese and overweight people continues to rise in developing countries – Cambodia is no exception. Obesity and being overweight are in turn associated with a higher risk of chronic non-communicable diseases like diabetes. However, the relationship between body weight and disease risk may not be the same in different countries. If Asian populations show an elevated risk of disease at a lower body weight than in the west, policy recommendations based on western body mass index (BMI) standards may not be appropriate.

How should healthcare providers counsel patients and policymakers design policies to reduce risk and create prevention strategies in Cambodia, as well as elsewhere across the Asia-Pacific?

Former Developing Asia Heath Policy Fellow Siyan Yi, joined by other global health experts, considered these questions and recently published his findings in “Appropriate Body Mass Index and Waist Circumference Cutoff for Overweight and Central Obesity among Adults in Cambodia” in PLOSOne, Vol. 8, Issue 10, (October 2013).

Using cross-sectional data from a national survey conducted by the World Health Organization and Ministry of Health in Cambodia, the study aimed to identify the appropriate BMI and waist circumference (WC) cutoff to understand which individuals are considered overweight and thus have an elevated risk of disease.

For both men and women, significant associations were found between individuals who had diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol and a WC of greater than/equal to 80.0 cm and a BMI of greater than/equal to 23.0 kg/m2. Therefore, the study suggests that relevant cutoff to determine obesity designation is a WC 80.0 cm and a BMI 23.0 kg/m2, which is lower than the standard cut-off in the west.

The article findings may be particularly helpful to health policymakers in Cambodia. It is the first study of its kind – using nationwide data to suggest specific WC and BMI cutoff among Cambodian adults. The cutoff can act as a benchmark for health care providers to administer proper diagnosis. Furthermore, national public health programs could be developed to better target this population for health improvement.

Yi is now the Research Director of Population Health & Development at Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA), an NGO in Cambodia that provides integrative HIV/AIDS prevention and support services.

At a CDDRL event on February 3, human rights activist Virak Ou, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, discussed the recent protests in Cambodia, addressing the potential conditions for revolution.

Mark Peattie, Ph.D., noted scholar of Japanese Imperial history, died peacefully, surrounded by family on January 22, 2014 in San Rafael, California; he was 83. 

Peattie was born in Nice, France, to expatriate writers Donald Culross and Louise Redfield Peattie on May 3, 1930. He returned to the United States with his parents and his two brothers, Malcom R. Peattie and Noel R. Peattie. He grew up in Santa Barbara, where he graduated from Laguna Blanca School. He went on to get a B.A. in history at Pomona College. He served in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1954, including an assignment in counter-intelligence in Europe.

In 1955, after completing his M.A. in history at Stanford University, Peattie began his career as an American cultural diplomat with the U.S. Information Agency. He began his stint in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he served for two years. His nine years in Japan started in Sendai; in Tokyo he trained intensively in Japanese language before serving as director of the American Cultural Center in Kyoto.

In 1967, after serving a final year in diplomacy in Washington, D.C., his love of history called him to the world of academia. After earning his Ph.D. in modern Japanese history from Princeton University, he taught at Pennsylvania State University, the University of California – Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For many years, Peattie was a research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He was also a senior research staff member of the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace, before becoming a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

His publications include The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, Stanford University Press; Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909 –1941, Naval Institute Press; Nan'yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945, University of Hawaii Press; Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (with David C. Evans), U.S. Naval Institute Press; The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945 (with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers), Princeton University Press;The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton University Press; and Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West, Princeton University Press.                                                                 

Peattie was married to the late Alice Richmond Peattie for 52 years and is survived by his daughters Victoria Peattie Helm of Mercer Island, Washington; Caroline Peattie of Mill Valley, California; son David Peattie of Berkeley, California; nieces Dana VanderMey and Hilary Peattie, both of Santa Barbara; and grandchildren, Brendan Shuichi, Marcus Takeshi, Kylie Max, Kai Schorske, and Jessica Susan.

Mark Peattie passionately believed in sensible handgun control laws to reduce deaths and injuries.  In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be directed to www.bradycampaign.org.

Services will be held at a later date. Please sign the online guestbook to see updated service information at www.cusimanocolonial.com.

Larry Diamond, director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), received the 2013 Richard W. Lyman Award at a ceremony on January 22.

The Stanford Alumni Association (SAA) presents the annual Lyman Award to a faculty member who has gone "above and beyond" to engage alumni through volunteer activities that further the SAA's goal of lifelong learning.  

Stanford Provost John Etchemendy presented the Lyman award to Diamond, recognizing him as "a university citizen of the highest degree," noting his willingness to engage Stanford alumni "whenever and wherever around the globe."

Along with his academic and administrative roles at Stanford, Diamond has dedicated time and enthusiasm to engaging Stanford's alumni community through events and travel study trips.

Diamond, a senior fellow at FSI, also is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and serves as the faculty co-director of the Haas Center for Public Service. He earned three degrees at Stanford: a bachelor's degree in political organization and behavior in 1974; a master's degree at the Food Research Institute in 1978; and a doctorate in sociology in 1980.

In accepting the award, Diamond described his first visit to Stanford as a high school debate student where his eyes were as big as saucers when he first saw the campus. From that moment forward he set his sights on doing everything he could to study at Stanford.

"My smartest decision was to turn down Harvard to come to Stanford," said Diamond. "It has been a gift to be at Stanford for the most of the past 45 years and to witness the remarkable growth of the university."

Diamond also recognized the leadership of Stanford's seventh president, Richard Lyman, who Diamond got to know when he was a student leader on campus during the turbulence of the early 1970's.

Since 1991, Diamond has presented talks at regional alumni meetings in cities across the country, including Honolulu, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. He also spoke at Leading Matters, a series of events that shared Stanford's vision for the future with nearly 13,000 alumni, family members and friends around the world during the five-year Stanford Challenge fundraising campaign.  

Diamond recently returned from a two-week Stanford Travel-Study trip to Burma. He also has served as the faculty leader on alumni trips to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Korea, South Africa, and the Middle East.

On campus, Diamond has presented "Classes Without Quizzes" at Reunion Homecoming. During last year's Commencement weekend, he gave the Class Day Lecture. In 2007 Diamond received Stanford's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.

The award was established in 1983 in honor of the late Richard W. Lyman, Stanford’s seventh president, who died in 2012. In addition to the award, the prize includes funding toward books and materials designated by the recipient for the Stanford University Libraries.

Recent Lyman Award winners include Hank Greely, a law professor; Lyman P. Van Slyke, professor emeritus of history; and Al Camarillo, professor of history and special assistant to the provost for faculty diversity.

Many resource dependent states have to varying degrees, failed to provide for the welfare of their own populations, could threaten global energy markets, and could pose security risks for the United States and other countries.  Many are in Africa, but also Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Burma, East Timor), and South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador) Some have only recently become – or are about to become – significant resource exporters.  Many have histories of conflict and poor governance.  The recent boom and decline in commodity prices – the largest price shock since the 1970s – will almost certainly cause them special difficulties.  The growing role of India and China, as commodity importers and investors, makes the policy landscape even more challenging.

We believe there is much the new administration can learn from both academic research, and recent global initiatives, about how to address the challenge of poorly governed states that are dependent on oil, gas, and mineral exports.  Over the last eight years there has been a wealth of new research on the special problems that resource dependence can cause in low-income countries – including violent conflict, authoritarian rule, economic volatility, and disappointing growth.  The better we understand the causes of these problems, the more we can learn about how to mitigate them.

There has also been a new set of policy initiatives to address these issues: the Kimberley Process, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the World Bank’s new “EITI plus plus,” Norway’s Oil for Development initiative, and the incipient Resource Charter.  NGOs have played an important role in most of these initiatives; key players include Global Witness, the Publish What You Pay campaign, the Revenue Watch Institute, Oxfam America, and an extensive network of civil society organizations in the resource-rich countries themselves.

Some of these initiatives have been remarkably successful.  The campaign against ‘blood diamonds,’ through the Kimberley Process, has reduced the trade in illicit diamonds to a fraction of its former level, and may have helped curtail conflicts in Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.  Many other initiatives are so new they have not been have not been carefully evaluated.

This workshop is designed to bring together people in the academic and policy worlds to identify lessons from this research, and from these policy initiatives, that can inform US policy towards resource-dependent poorly states in the new administration.