REAP Director Scott Rozelle gave a talk to investment group Dodge and Cox Investments entitled "China’s Shifting Economy, the Plight of Migrant Workers and Shaping the Hope for China’s Recovery/Future Development: China’s Education Challenge."

CDDRL faculty members Francisco Ramirez, John Meyer, and Christine Min Wotipka have been awarded a major grant from the Spencer Foundation for their research on "Globalization, Citizenship, and Education: A Cross-National Study of Curricula, 1995-2005."

Since World War II, cultural, political, and economic globalization have undercut an earlier educational model that only emphasizes the nation state and national citizenship. Increasingly, the student is to be prepared to function as a responsible rights-bearing human person in a global society, relating to people regardless of national citizenship status. Increasingly, this global society is seen as legitimately very diverse and multicultural in character. Diversity within national society is also recognized as legitimate and central. At the individual level students are to learn to express and to respect all sorts of unique values and cultural materials.

This project raises questions surrounding two relevant core changes:

1. the degree to which national curricula in the social sciences move in the broad direction of globalization and multiculturalism, as opposed to retaining their more nationally oriented postures and
2. the ways in which national curricula resolve the tensions between building the nation and its citizenry and preparing students as individual human participants in a diverse national and global society.

The study proposes to code and analyze social science textbooks from about seventy countries around the world through the last half-century. These studies will trace worldwide, regional, and national trends in textbook emphases. These studies will examine national and transnational factors that influence the likelihood of the rise and spread of cosmopolitan, multicultural, and individual empowerment frames. These studies will also examine ways in which social studies curricula seek to resolve tensions between national unity and both supra-national and sub-national legitimated diversity.

Daniel C. Sneider: Since the Democratic Party of Japan won in the country's August national election, Japan watchers have worried that the new government might try to upset the status quo and ease away from the United States. The DPJ is implementing a new paradigm -- but not the one people think.

In a new policy paper from the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, Steven Pifer outlines Ukraine's competing geopolitical options as Russia and the West compete for influence with the incoming administration, and assesses foreign policy options for the United States should the next Ukranian president decide to pursue stronger ties with Russia.

Steven Pifer is former ambassador to Ukraine.  Steven Pifer’s career as a Foreign Service officer centered on Europe, the former Soviet Union and arms control. In addition to Kyiv, he had postings in London, Moscow, Geneva and Warsaw as well as on the National Security Council.  He is currently at Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, focusing on Ukraine and Russia issues.  He is a frequent invited expert speaker at the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Last month, on October 23, the Nishimatsu Construction Company reached an agreement in the Tokyo Summary Court to set up a trust fund for Chinese who had been forced into labor in Japan during World War II. According to the Asahi Shimbun, the trust fund—worth ¥250 million—will compensate 360 Chinese citizens who were compelled to work at a hydroelectric power plant in Hiroshima Prefecture. Under the terms of the summary settlement, Nishimatsu acknowledged that these Chinese workers were forcibly brought to Japan and apologized for their suffering.This outcome was both overdue and unexpected, particularly since Japan's Supreme Court in 2007 rejected the original lawsuit that five Chinese plaintiffs brought against the construction company in 1998.  Nishimatsu officials maintain that they want to set a new precedent for "social responsibility" in the wake of the corporation's recent scandal involving political donations.  The timing of Nishimatsu's decision coincides with the rise of the new Hatoyama administration, which has promised to improve Japan's relations with China and other Asian neighbors.

Former forced laborers and their bereaved families have pursued litigation against the Japanese government and the corporations that employed them, not only in Japan but also in the United States. The Hayden Bill, which passed the California State Senate in July 1999, opened the door for Chinese and Korean victims to sue Japanese corporations and demand compensation for their hard labor in inhumane working conditions. Although the U.S. Supreme Court thus far has rejected such cases, the unresolved issue of Asian forced labor redress has now been introduced into the U.S. legal system, indicating that the United States has become involved in Japan’s historical disputes.

In fact, the United States was intimately involved in the issue of Asian forced laborers during the Allied Occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952. U.S. Occupation forces initially attempted to retain Korean coal miners until Japanese repatriates replaced them, but riots in Hokkaido and elsewhere forced authorities to abandon this policy in November 1945. Responding to strong Korean demands, in May 1946 a military government team in Hokkaido gathered over ¥3 million worth of wages, bonuses, and death benefits owed to Korean miners. This amount was but a small fraction of the more than ¥215 million that corporations throughout Japan deposited into an account at the Bank of Japan by 1948. Occupation authorities made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade unwilling Japanese officials to pay back the financial assets owed to Koreans, while U.S. policy gradually changed to oppose reparations demands against Japan. Article 14(b) of the American-drafted San Francisco Peace Treaty signed in September 1951 waived all reparations claims, and the unpaid wage deposits of forced laborers remained a well-kept secret of the Japanese government.

When former forced laborers from South Korea and China began appearing in Japanese courts in the 1990s, their lawsuits helped to clarify the historical record of wartime abuse and postwar cover-up. Lawyers, journalists, and researchers supporting the redress movement dug up hidden official documents, such as the voluminous reports by the Foreign Ministry on Chinese forced labor and by the Welfare Ministry on the unpaid financial deposits of Korean laborers, both compiled in 1946. Although the Japanese government refuses to make such ministry reports public, the Tokyo High Court in 2005 confirmed that the state continues to hold the ¥215 million deposits, which have never been disbursed. While Japanese records remain largely closed, declassified American records can help to answer important questions, including how closely the United States was involved in the process of postwar Japan’s forgetting and neglecting Asian victims of forced labor.

An Asahi Shimbun editorial on October 24, 2009 admonished the Japanese state to take action in the wake of Nishimatsu settlement, since other corporations facing litigation have vowed not to pay reparations unless the government becomes involved. The new Hatoyama administration should first make an unambiguous apology, the editorial contends, then propose a new framework whereby the government and corporations can establish a joint trust fund to compensate former forced laborers and bereaved families. The United States can support this reconciliation process by revisiting the unresolved issue of forced labor—which also included Allied POWs—and reinterpreting the San Francisco Peace Treaty to enable these victims to file legal claims in American and international courts. Proactive U.S. involvement at the government level should also be matched by an enhanced effort toward nongovernmental cooperation between researchers in the United States and Northeast Asia. Shorenstein APARC has been contributing to this effort through its Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project, now in its third year. The Center will also host a colloquium series titled “The American Role in Northeast Asian Reconciliation” during the 2010 winter quarter.

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Shorenstein APARC Dispatches are regular bulletins designed exclusively for our friends and supporters. Written by center faculty and scholars, Shorenstein APARC Dispatches deliver timely, succinct analysis on current events and trends in Asia, often discussing their potential implications for business.

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is to be nominated U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House announced Nov. 9

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, an affiliated scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House reported Nov. 9.

Donahoe must appear in a hearing before a Senate subcommittee before the Senate votes on the nomination, a process that could take several weeks. If confirmed, Donahoe would be responsible for advancing U.S. policies on the council to ensure protection of universally agreed human rights standards.

"I'm really pleased that President Obama has chosen Eileen Donahoe to be the ambassador to the Human Rights Council in Geneva," CISAC Co-Director Scott Sagan said. "Her scholarly research and work has focused on the ethical and legal dilemmas involving the political uses of military force in human intervention. I can't think of anyone more qualified to help reinvigorate the Human Rights Council to meet the challenges it must face today."

Donahoe, 50, was a CISAC visiting scholar in 2006-07 after earning a doctorate in ethics from the University of California's Graduate Theological Union. Her dissertation, "Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Moral Imperative Versus the Rule of Law," addressed the sometimes conflicting ethical and legal justifications for humanitarian military intervention, as well as the basis for authorization of the use of force by the UN Security Council. Her research has also focused on U.N. reform and the international rule of law.

Donahoe has worked with various human rights organizations, including The Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights, where she did research on the connection between U.S. foreign policy and human rights, and Amnesty International's Ginetta Sagan Fund, where she did strategy work related to human rights concerns of women and children.

Donahoe, a resident of Portola Valley, chaired the National Women for Obama Finance Committee during Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Previously, Donahoe was a litigation associate at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, where she served technology clients in intellectual property and commercial disputes. Prior to that, she was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School and a law clerk to the Hon. William H. Orrick in San Francisco.

In addition to her doctorate, Donahoe earned a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, a master's in theology from Harvard, and both a law degree and master's in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.