Donald K. Emmerson

Donald Emmerson "is director of the Southeast Asia Forum (SEAF) at Shorenstein APARC, a senior fellow at FSI, and an affiliated scholar with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. He has taught courses on Southeast Asia in International Relations and International Policy Studies and for the Bing Overseas Studies Program.

"Publications by Emmerson in 2005-2006 include: "Shocks of Recognition: Leifer, Realism, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia" in Order and Security in Southeast Asia (2006); "Garuda and Eagle: Do Birds of A (Democratic) Feather Fly Together?" The Indonesian Quarterly (2006); "One Nation under God? History, Faith, and Identity in Indonesia" in Religion and Religiosity in the Philippines and Indonesia (2006); "Security, Community, and Democracy in Southeast Asia: Analyzing ASEAN," Japanese Journal of Political Science (August 2005); "What Do the Blind-sided See? Reapproaching Regionalism in Southeast Asia," The Pacific Review (March 2005); and "What Is Indonesia?" in Indonesia: The Great Transition (2005). Earlier publications, authored or edited, include upwards of a dozen monographs and a hundred articles or book chapters.

"Emmerson serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Democracy and the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. In 2005-2006 he was a member of two study groups focused on ASEAN and regionalism in Southeast Asia - a Task Force on East Asia Community-Building and U.S. Policy (Asia Foundation), and a Strategic Dialogue on New Power Dynamics in Southeast Asia (Stanley Foundation). In 2002-2004 he took part in two other working groups on U.S.-Asian relations and served on a SEAF-cosponsored National Commission on U.S.-Indonesian Relations. The Commission's report led to Congressional hearings and an executive-branch initiative to assist Indonesian education. He has testified before Congress on Asian affairs on several occasions.

"In September 2006 Emmerson taught a Stanford undergraduate seminar in Singapore on "Southeast Asia and the Singapore 'Exception.'" In 2006 he was interviewed on Southeast Asian topics by Bloomberg News, The Chicago Tribune, the Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org), The New York Times, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, VietnamNet, and the Washington Observer Weekly, among other sources. Speaking venues in 2003-2006 included the American University of Beirut, the Asia Society (Hong Kong, New York), Cornell University, the Institute for International Relations (Hanoi), the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (Singapore), the National University of Singapore, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of California-Berkeley. In 2001 a lecture tour of Australia took him to nine campuses in that country. In 1999 he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center.

"Emmerson 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. Places where he has held positions in residence include the Australian National University, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where he won a campus-wide teaching award). He has a PhD in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. Born in Japan the son of a U.S. foreign service officer, he grew up outside the United States. He met his wife Carolyn while they attended the American Community School in Beirut. They have two children."


 * Executive Committee, Freeman-Spogli Institute