Stanford University

The Israeli Economic Phenomenon

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The Israeli economy is in an age of change. It is changing at a fundamental level from labor-intensive, low technology industries to cutting edge high technology products aimed for export markets. Now that Israel is a major source of innovation, technology has become a source of significant connections with Silicon Valley. Major activities between the US and Israel are growing, and the trend, particularly with Silicon Valley, is now stronger than ever. What are the major kinds of ties between Israel and Silicon Valley? And what factors are driving the economic activities in Israel? Yishai Laks holds the position of the Government of Israel's Consul for Economic Affairs for the United States Northwest region (including Northern California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana). From his headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Mr. Laks directs all aspects of economics relationships between the region and Israel, assisting US companies in establishing investments, joint ventures, and trade relationships with Israel and Israeli companies. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Laks served as Economic Advisor to the Director General in Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade from 1994 to 1997. During his tenure, he advised the Director General on all aspects of the Ministry tasks and work. From 1992 to 1994 Mr. Laks was in charge of the trade between Israel and the East European and EFTA countries at the Foreign Trade Administration. Mr. Laks received his B.A. and M.B.A. from Tel-Aviv University, Israel emphasizing in Marketing and International Management.

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor

Yishai Laks Consul for Economic Affairs Speaker Government of Israel

The Chinese Revolution and U.S.-China Relations: International Perspectives on 50 Years of the People's Republic of China

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Zi Zhongyun is one of China's leading scholars on international relations. She is the author of The Origin and Evolution of U.S. Policy Towards China, 1945-1950; On the Shore of the Sea of Learning; Forty Years of U.S.-Taiwan Relations, 1949-1989; and the forthcoming Looking at the World with Cold Eyes: Revelations of the Ups and Downs in the 20th Century. Her edited volumes include, A History of Postwar U.S. Foreign Relations, from Truman to Reagan; Building up a Bridge of Understanding: American Studies in China, 1979-1992; and Initial Contributions to Theories on International Politics in China. She has served as Director of the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Studies in China, and was the Founder & first President of the Society for Chinese Scholars of Sino-American Relations. Madame Zi was also Visiting Fellow, Institute of International Studies, Princeton University, and Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C.

Bechtel Conference Center, Encina Hall

Zi Zhongyun Director of the Institute of American Studies
Lectures

In Quest of Sony: Mapping the Sentimental Empire

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Trinitron color TV, the Walkman, the CD. Sony, the company responsible for these and countless other products, has set the standard for consumer electronics. The Japanese company has also become the brand name best known and most highly esteemed by Americans. But how much do we really know about Sony, the company? For the first time in any language, John Nathan takes us behind the scenes at Sony in his groundbreaking book, SONY: The Private Life (Houghton Mifflin; Sept. 28, 1999). Nathan gives us a rare inside look at the makings and workings of this modern business wonder. He portrays the remarkable individuals who built the company as well as the interpersonal relationships that have shaped it. John Nathan has been engaged with Japan for forty years and has been accused more than once of thinking like a Japanese. In 1963, he entered the Department of Japanese Literature and linguistics as the first American to be admitted as a regular student at Tokyo University. In 1964, he published the first of many translations for Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. In 1967, he introduced Kenzaburo Oe to Western readers with his translation of A Personal Matter. Nathan returned to Japan in 1972 to write and co-direct, with Hiroshi Teshigahara, a feature film about American deserters from Vietnam in the Japanese peace underground. In 1974, Nathan received his Ph.D. from Harvard and published, Mishima: A Biography. Thereafter, Nathan devoted himself to making films. He has since written and produced forty documentaries. In 1994, Nathan became the first Takashima Professor Japanese Cultural Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara. Currently, he teaches courses on Japanese film and literature, consults for Japanese and Asian corporations, and continues to translate Japan's Nobel Laureate in Literature for 1994, Kenzaburo Oe.

AP Scholars Lounge, Encina Hall, South Wing, Third Floor

John Nathan Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies University of California, Santa Barbara

Comparative Health Care Policy Research Project

The Comparative Health Care Policy Research Project was initiated by APARC in 1990 to examine issues related to the structure and delivery of health care in Japan by utilizing contemporary social science. Further, the project was designed to make the study of Japan an integral part of international comparative health policy research. Yumiko Nishimura, the associate director, under the supervision of Daniel I. Okimoto, the principal investigator, leads the project.

Industrial Restructuring and the Political Economy in Russia

The nuclear cities have been isolated for security reasons for many decades, and this has also resulted in economic isolation. Their sole output has been research, materials, and hardware for nuclear weapons. As Russian government funding for these activities decreases, it is strongly in the interest of the United States to find productive civilian activities for the weapon scientists and technicians to discourage proliferation to aspiring nuclear weapon states. The best chance of doing this in a sustainable fashion is to help build the civilian economies of these isolated cities.

Gary Mukai

616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C331
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

(650) 723-1116 (650) 723-6784
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Dr. Gary Mukai is Director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Prior to joining SPICE in 1988, he was a teacher in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and in California public schools for ten years.

Gary’s academic interests include curriculum and instruction, educational equity, and teacher professional development. He received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from U.C. Berkeley; a multiple subjects teaching credential from the Black, Asian, Chicano Urban Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education; a master of arts in international comparative education from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education; and a doctorate of education from the Leadership in Educational Equity Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. 

In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Gary has also written for other publishers, including Newsweek, Calliope Magazine, Media & Methods: Education Products, Technologies & Programs for Schools and Universities, Social Studies Review, Asia Alive, Education About Asia, ACCESS Journal: Information on Global, International, and Foreign Language Education, San Jose Mercury News, and ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies; and organizations, including NBC New York, the Silk Road Project at Harvard University, the Japanese American National Memorial to Patriotism in Washington, DC, the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco, the Laurasian Institution in Seattle, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and the Asia Society in New York.

He has developed teacher guides for films such as The Road to Beijing (a film on the Beijing Olympics narrated by Yo-Yo Ma and co-produced by SPICE and the Silk Road Project), Nuclear Tipping Point (a film developed by the Nuclear Security Project featuring former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former Senator Sam Nunn, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell), Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo (an Academy Award-winning film about Japanese-American internment by Steven Okazaki), Doubles: Japan and America’s Intercultural Children (a film by Regge Life), A State of Mind (a film on North Korea by Daniel Gordon), Wings of Defeat (a film about kamikaze pilots by Risa Morimoto), Makiko’s New World (a film on life in Meiji Japan by David W. Plath), Diamonds in the Rough: Baseball and Japanese-American Internment (a film by Kerry Y. Nakagawa), Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties (a film about Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II by Gayle Yamada), Citizen Tanouye (a film about a Medal of Honor recipient during World War II by Robert Horsting), Mrs. Judo (a film about 10th degree black belt Keiko Fukuda by Yuriko Gamo Romer), and Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story (a film by Regge Life about a woman who lost her life in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami). 

He has conducted numerous professional development seminars nationally (including extensive work with the Chicago Public Schools, Hawaii Department of Education, New York City Department of Education, and school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County) and internationally (including in China, France, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey).

In 1997, Gary was the first regular recipient of the Franklin Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2004, SPICE received the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for its promotion of Japanese studies in schools; and Gary received recognition from the Fresno County Office of Education, California, for his work with students of Fresno County. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, especially in the field of education. At the invitation of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea, San Francisco, Gary participated in the Republic of Korea-sponsored 2010 Revisit Korea Program, which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. At the invitation of the Nanjing Foreign Languages School, China, he participated in an international educational forum in 2013 that commemorated the 50th anniversary of NFLS’s founding. In 2015 he received the Stanford Alumni Award from the Asian American Activities Center Advisory Board, and in 2017 he was awarded the Alumni Excellence in Education Award by the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Most recently, the government of Japan named him a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays.

He is an editorial board member of the journal, Education About Asia; advisory board member for Asian Educational Media Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; board member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Alumni Association of Northern California; and selection committee member of the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, U.S.–Japan Foundation. 

Director
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Russell A. Berman

Department of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
Building 260, Room 201
Stanford, CA 94305-2030

(650) 723-1069 (650) 725-8421
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, by courtesy
Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities
Professor of Comparative Literature
Professor of German Studies
Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution
Faculty affiliate at The Europe Center
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Russell Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where he co-directs the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He holds a courtesy appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute. He formerly served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State and has been awarded a Mellon Faculty Fellowship at Harvard and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for research in Berlin; he has also been honored with the Bundesverdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany.

His books include The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (1988) and Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1998), both of which won the Outstanding Book Award of the German Studies Association. Some of his other books include Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem (2004), Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007) and Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad (2010). In his books and many articles Berman has written widely on the cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, critical theory, and cultural dimensions of trans-Atlantic relations, as well as on topics between Europe and the Middle East. His commentary on current events has appeared in The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times Internationale Politik, Telos, Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Review Books, die Welt, die Neue Zuercher Zeitung, die Weltwoche,  and American Greatness and elsewhere.

Faculty affiliate at The Europe Center
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