On March 22, 2022, APARC's Japan Program welcomed a delegation from the Embassy of Japan in the United States and the Consulate-General of Japan in San Francisco, including Ambassador Koji Tomita and Consul-General Hiroshi Kawamura, who met with a joint panel of scholars and administrators from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley for a discussion about fostering a greater understanding of Japan studies in the United States.

APARC Deputy Director and Japan Program Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui presented data on enrollment and employment statistics for Japanese studies in higher education. According to the report, Japanese studies have been in a slow state of decline since the late 1980s, when many in the United States viewed Japan as an economic threat and the country was not as well-understood as it is today. Despite this decline, students today are still very interested in studying Japan and are eager to visit the country.

Naomi Funahashi, Manager of the Reischauer Scholars Program and Teacher Professional Development at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), presented outcomes from SPICE's outreach efforts and promotion of Japanese studies in the K-14 context. Funahashi indicated strong interest in and engagement with SPICE curricular units focused on Japan and with its local student programs in six regions, one university, and two high schools in Japan.

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Professor Junko Habu, Chair of the Center for Japanese Studies (CJS) and Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, along with Kumi Sawada Hadler, Program Director of CJS, described logistical challenges Japan scholars have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the inability to access the country under lockdown, and indicated that, across the board, universities are not providing as much support for Japanese studies as they used to, especially in terms of endowed faculty positions and departmental "slots" specifically for Japan specialists.

Ambassador Tomita and Consul-General Kawamura agreed that more support was needed to bolster scholarships of Japan. Ambassador Tomita stated that over his long career, he has seen the theoretical focus of Japan studies in the United States shift away from bilateral relations between the two countries toward the region at large. He noted that the public discussion is increasingly directed at Japan as part of a broader complex of nations in East Asia. Consul-General Kawamura indicated that the pandemic has posed a host of challenges for his office but that Japan will continue to open its doors to scholars in the future. 

The meeting concluded with a reaffirmation of the longstanding and crucial relationship between the two nations and of the importance of Japan studies in the United States in fostering fruitful collaboration between the two nations. 

A week before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, unleashing the biggest military operation in Europe since World War II, three experts on Russia—Rose Gottemoeller, chief U.S. negotiator for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and former NATO deputy secretary-general; Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia for the International Crisis Group; and Thomas Graham, distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. presidential adviser on Russia—were interviewed on Zoom and email by Carol Giacomo, chief editor of Arms Control Today, about the origins of the crisis and what an eventual solution might involve. Their comments, made as U.S. and European leaders were still working for a diplomatic solution, have been edited for clarity and length.

Read the rest at Arms Control Today

Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy lecturer at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, leads a conversation on international security and cooperation.

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China and the United States are the two biggest carbon-emitting countries in the world. Decarbonization in these two countries will have material impacts on a global scale and is timelier than ever, according to a recent report from Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford Center at Peking University, APARC's China Program, and Peking University’s Institute of Energy.

The report is the product of a roundtable series, held in October 2021 that brought together leading American and Chinese current and former officials, and experts in the public and private sectors working on energy, climate, the environment, industry, transportation, and finance. The roundtables promoted discussion around how China and the United States can accelerate decarbonization and cooperate with one another to meet their carbon neutrality goals by mid-century.

The thematic areas of the roundtables included U.S.- China collaboration on climate change, global sustainable finance, corporate climate pledges, and the opportunities and challenges for the acceleration of decarbonization in both countries in general, as well as specifically for the power, transportation, and industry sectors.

The resultant report reviews the key themes and takeaways that emerged from the closed-door discussions. It builds on the “U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis” released by the U.S. Department of State on April 17, 2021 and shares some common themes with the “U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s” released on November 10, 2021. Shiran Victoria Shen of the Hoover Institution authored the report, with contributions by Yi Cui of the Precourt Institute for Energy, Zhijun Jin of the Institute of Energy and Jean Oi, Director of APARC's China Program. 

The report suggests that tensions in U.S.-China relations have hindered the acceleration of decarbonization and that open science in fundamental research areas must be encouraged. Universities can educate future leaders, advance knowledge, and foster U.S.-China collaboration on open-science R&D, regardless of the political environment. The report argues that the most promising strategy to decarbonize energy is to electrify consumption now served by fossil fuels as much as possible while decarbonizing electricity generation. 

The roundtables identified six areas where the U.S. and China could collaborate: global green finance, carbon capture and storage, low-carbon agriculture and food processing, methane leak reduction, grid integration and greater use of intermittent renewables, and governance, including at the subnational level. The report further identifies more concrete and additional promising areas for accelerated decarbonization and bilateral collaboration, as well as the obstacles to be tackled, including institutional, political, and financial constraints.