Speakers:
Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Mark Caprio, Professor Emeritus, Rikkyo University, Tokyo; Kim Koo Visiting Professor of Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School

Moderator: Christina Davis, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government and Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University

The 80^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War marks a significant occasion for critical reflections on its legacies in East Asia. China and Taiwan and the two Koreas are still divided and remain major flashpoints with security and political tensions. In the aftermath of WWII, Japan emerged as a peaceful state, but its imperial and war legacies have been politically contested. In China, growing pride and nationalism are driving public discourse about WWII. Leaders in South Korea and Japan, in the context of China’s rise and the second Trump administration, have been rethinking their global role and seeking more bilateral cooperation. Our distinguished panel of historians and political scientists will examine how the legacies of WWII still shape the global order among China, South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. today.

Thomas Berger is a Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Division of International Relations at Boston University. .He is the author of Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) and War, Guilt and World Politics after World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2012), co-author with Ellis Krauss, Kerstin Luckner, Hanns Maull and Alexandra Sakaki ofReluctant Warriors, Conflicted Allies: Germany, Japan and the International Security Order (Brookings Institution Press, 2019)  co-author of  as well as co-editor of  Japan in International Politics: Beyond the Reactive State (Lynne Rienner, 2007). He has published extensively on East Asian and European security, German and Japanese foreign policy, and the politics of historical memory. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.

Mark E. Caprio is professor emeritus at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910—1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009). Additionally, he has co-edited a number of volumes, the most recent being a volume titled Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). He has also contributed academic articles on colonial-era issues and Korea’s wartime and immediate postwar history that include colonial-era collaboration, Japan-based Korean repatriation, Korean attitudes toward the trusteeship plan that the Allied powers wished to impose on Korea, and Japan’s role in the Korean War to academic journals, as well as to edited volumes. Presently, he is working on a monograph that considers overseas Korean efforts during the Pacific War years (1941-1945) to gain favor with the Allied forces (the US, UK, Nationalist China, and the Soviet Union). 

Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013) which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020). His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian.  He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics “Meanwhile in Beijing” is available on BBC Sounds.  He is co-author, with Sophia Gaston, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group, 2020). He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association.  He previously taught at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Christina L. Davis is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics in the Department of Government and Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her research interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and the study of international organizations with a focus on trade policy. Her research has been published in leading political science journals. She is the author of Food Fights Over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton University Press 2003), and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press 2012, winner of the International Law Best Book award of the International Studies Association, Ohira Memorial Prize, and co-winner of Chadwick Alger Prize). Her latest book, Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations, was released by Princeton University Press in July 2023. Currently, she is working on several projects on the evolving trade order and economic sanctions. Education: AB in East Asian Studies, Harvard 1993; Ph.D. in Political Science, Harvard 2001.

Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Korea Institute, Harvard University Asia Center, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ Program on US-Japan Relations