Daniel C. Sneider is a lecturer in international policy at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford. His own research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea.  Since 2017, he has been based partly in Tokyo as a Visiting Researcher at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, where he is working on a diplomatic history of the creation and management of the U.S. security alliances with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Sneider contributes regularly to the leading Japanese publication Toyo Keizai as well as to the Nelson Report on Asia policy issues.

Sneider is the former Associate Director for Research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. At Shorenstein APARC, Sneider directed the center’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory in East Asia. He is the co-author of a book on wartime memory and elite opinion, Divergent Memories, from Stanford University Press. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, of Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, from Routledge and of Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, from University of Washington Press.

Sneider was named a National Asia Research Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2010. He is the co-editor of Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, distributed by Brookings Institution Press, 2007; of First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier, 2009; as well as of Does South Asia Exist?: Prospects for Regional Integration, 2010. Sneider’s path-breaking study “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan” appeared in the July 2011 issue of Asia Policy. He has also contributed to other volumes, including “Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era” in Towards Sustainable Economic and Security Relations in East Asia: U.S. and ROK Policy Options, Korea Economic Institute, 2008; “The History and Meaning of Denuclearization,” in William H. Overholt, editor, North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2019; and “Evolution or new Doctrine? Japanese security policy in the era of collective self-defense,” in James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston, eds, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, December 2017.

Sneider’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, National Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Oriental Economist, Newsweek, Time, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Yale Global. He is frequently cited in such publications.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Sneider was a long-time foreign correspondent. His twice-weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News looking at international issues and national security from a West Coast perspective was syndicated nationally on the Knight Ridder Tribune wire service. Previously, Sneider served as national/foreign editor of the Mercury News. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, covering the end of Soviet Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1985 to 1990, he was Tokyo correspondent for the Monitor, covering Japan and Korea. Prior to that he was a correspondent in India, covering South and Southeast Asia. He also wrote widely on defense issues, including as a contributor and correspondent for Defense News, the national defense weekly.

Sneider has a BA in East Asian history from Columbia University and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

David Straub was named associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) on July 1, 2008. Prior to that he was a 2007–08 Pantech Fellow at the Center. Straub is the author of the book, Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, published in 2015.

An educator and commentator on current Northeast Asian affairs, Straub retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. Department of State senior foreign service officer after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.

Straub served as head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 during popular protests against the United States, and he played a key working-level role in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program as the State Department's Korea country desk director from 2002 to 2004. He also served eight years at the U.S. embassy in Japan. His final assignment was as the State Department's Japan country desk director from 2004 to 2006, when he was co-leader of the U.S. delegation to talks with Japan on the realignment of the U.S.-Japan alliance and of U.S. military bases in Japan.

After leaving the Department of State, Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in the fall of 2006 and at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University in spring 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations. His foreign languages are Korean, Japanese, and German.

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. 

Naomi Funahashi is the Manager of the Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and Teacher Professional Development for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). In addition to her work as the instructor of the RSP, she also develops curricula at SPICE. Prior to joining SPICE in 2005, she was a project coordinator at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California and worked in technology publishing in San Francisco.

Naomi's academic interests lie in global education, online education pedagogy, teacher professional development, and curriculum design. She attended high school at the American School in Japan, received her Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Brown University, her teaching credential in social science from San Francisco State University, and her Ed.M. in Global Studies in Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

She has authored or co-authored the following curriculum units for SPICE: Storytelling of Indigenous Peoples in the United States, Immigration to the United States, Along the Silk Road, Central Asia: Between Peril and Promise, and Sadako's Paper Cranes and Lessons of Peace.

Naomi has presented teacher seminars nationally at Teachers College, Columbia University, the annual Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning Conference, the National Council for Social Studies and California Council for Social Studies annual conferences, and other venues. She has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and for the European Council of International Schools in France, Portugal, and the Netherlands.

In 2008, the Asia Society in New York awarded the 2007 Goldman Sachs Foundation Media and Technology Prize to the Reischauer Scholars Program. In 2017, the United States–Japan Foundation presented Naomi with the Elgin Heinz Teacher Award, an honor that recognizes pre-college teachers who have made significant contributions to promoting mutual understanding between Americans and Japanese. Naomi has taught over 300 students in the RSP from 35 U.S. states.