Ian Buruma was born in the Netherlands, where he studied Chinese at Leyden University. From 1975 to 1978 he was a research fellow in Japanese cinema at Nihon University College of Arts. He lived in Tokyo until 1980, and worked as a translator, actor, photographer, documentary filmmaker and journalist.

From 1982 to 1986, he was cultural editor for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. During that time he traveled to most parts of Asia. He moved to London in 1990, where he worked for one year as foreign editor for the Spectator. In 1991, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. In 1990 he spent a year in Washington, D.C. at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and in 1991 he was the Alistair Horne Fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford.

Buruma is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and other publications in the United States and Europe. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian in London.

Buruma's book The Wages of Guilt analyzes the collective memory of Germany and Japan in the post-war years. Delving into their emotions, thoughts and anger, Buruma tries to uncover how people in both countries dealt with, and are still dealing with, the stigma of being the war aggressors in very different ways.

Join us for a panel discussion of the issues raised in Buruma's book. The panel discussants are Professor's Daniel Okimoto, Shorenstein APARC and Political Science and James Sheehan, History. Professor Thomas Rohlen of Shorenstein APARC will be the moderator.

Drell Lecture Recording: NA

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

Speaker's Biography: Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, has advocated elevating the position of space on the national security agenda throughout her career. She is President and CEO of Imaginary Lines and the Ingrid and Joseph Hibben Professor of Space Science at the University of California, San Diego.

The United States' strategic interests in Asia must account for the concerns of its two rising powers, China and India. Each has a population of over a billion people, nuclear weapons, and among the fastest growing economies in the world. Clearly, relations among these three countries will to a large extent influence the course of events within Asia in the 21st century. This seminar seeks to explore some aspects of the India - China - U.S. triangle and identify the broad direction in which relations appear to be moving. Venu Rajamony is currently the Counselor at the Embassy of India in Beijing, China. He is a member of the Indian delegation to the Commission on Human Rights and was Chairman/Coordinator of informal consultations during sessions of the Working Group in Human Rights Defenders in 1996 and 1997. Now on sabbatical with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, he has been working on India and Pakistan, and on their relations with the U.S. and China.

Democracy in South Korea has gone through four decades of transition and is finally at a consolidation stage. Democratic constitutionalism is slowly being accepted as a new guiding principle in the public life in the country which is still a predominantly collectivity- or person-oriented society. Democracy as a political ideal and institution came from the West and, is, by virtue of its origins, individualist in that the individual conscience is the ultimate source of decision about what is right and wrong (E.H. Carr). Will constitutionalism, then, eventually replace collectivism-personalism (which puts emphasis on group and person over and against the individual) and establish an individualist democracy in South Korea? Or, since the traditional collectivist-personalist ethic survived democratic encroachment and accommodated itself to the democratic polity, will there be a new form of democracy? If so, how different it will be from Western democracy? The aim of this paper is to explore these issues.