At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), the director of APARC and of the Japan Program at APARC, co-director of the Southeast Asia Program at APARC, executive director of the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, co-director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and professor of sociology, all at Stanford University.

Prior to his appointment at Stanford in July 2020, Tsutsui was professor of sociology, director of the Center for Japanese Studies, and director of the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. More specifically, he has conducted (1) cross-national quantitative analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and (2) qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. His current projects examine (a) changing conceptions of nationhood and minority rights in national constitutions and in practice, (b) populism and the future of democracy, (c) experimental surveys on public understanding about human rights, (d) campus policies and practices around human rights, (e) global expansion of corporate social responsibility and its impact on corporate behavior, and (f) Japan’s public diplomacy and perceptions about Japan in the world.

His research on the globalization of human rights and its impact on local politics has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and other social science journals. His book publications include Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press 2018), and two co-edited volumes Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (with Alwyn Lim, Cambridge University Press 2015) and The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (with John Ciorciari, University of Michigan Press forthcoming). He has been a recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, National Science Foundation grants, the SSRC/CGP Abe Fellowship, Stanford Japan Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, and other grants as well as awards from American Sociological Association sections on Global and Transnational Sociology (2010, 2013, 2019), Human Rights (2017, 2019), Asia and Asian America (2018, 2019), Collective Behavior and Social Movements (2018), and Political Sociology (2019). 

Tsutsui received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kyoto University and earned an additional master’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford’s sociology department in 2002.