East-West Views

By Scott Kroeker

Casually ask somebody what they know about Micronesia and most likely you’ll either get a blank stare or a vague description of some strange islands out there in the vast Pacific Ocean.

But probe and you’ll also hear stories, especially from social service providers in Hawai‘i, about the increasing number of Micronesians residing in the Islands and how too many are homeless, struggling in school, getting in trouble with the law, overcrowding and abusing public housing, suffering from poor health, and increasingly costing the state more and more of our tax dollars.

A conference organized by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i which I recently attended was groundbreaking in that it sought to illuminate the diversity of the Micronesian immigrant experience — not in the usual way academic conferences do (i.e., convening a group of respected, learned, and well-meaning scholars who gravely discuss the results of their research on the issue) — but by turning the podium over to Micronesians and carefully listening to their stories. Continue Reading »

There’s an interesting conversation underway about the recent elections on Taiwan.

Check it out under comments on Denny Roy’s post “Looking Back at Taiwan’s Election”…

Over the weekend, the prestigious English-language news channel NHK World interviewed the Center’s Dr. Choong-Nam Kim on the implications of the visits by new South Korean President Lee Myung Bak to Japan and the United States.

Dr. Kim, who served in the administrations of several South Korean presidents, recently authored the book The Korean Presidents: Leadership for Nation Building.

NHK World television is broadcast by satellite to a world audience. You can hear what Dr. Kim had to say by going HERE. Be quick, the link will only be up for a week or so.

By Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka

The author, at home in more tropical surroundings.

What in the world was this Solomon island village boy doing half a world away, in a tidy Norwegian city just south of the Arctic Circle?

Besides the obvious (shivering) and the unthinkable to many (eating whale meat, which tastes like beef) I was part of a team from the East-West Center and the University of Hawai‘i who were hashing out the details of a significant island-based research proposal with colleagues from the University of Bergen. Continue Reading »

by Linda Kay Quintana

EWC students (Teguh Santosa, Bobby Lambrix) at the Hawaii Public Radio pledge drive.

There’s just nothing like going outside of your normal work environment and going under fire for a few hours doing something that you know almost nothing about to make you feel you suddenly dropped a whole lot of IQ points.

This was how I felt as I joined eleven other East-West Center students and staff when we volunteered for a shift of the on-air pledge drive for our local public radio, Hawaii Public Radio (HPR). Continue Reading »

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, an old Asia hand if ever there was one ( ambassador to the Philippines, Vietnam Paris Peace talks, etc.) is upbeat about the region these days.

In a speech to the 5th annual conference of the Center-backed Asia-Pacific Council in Washington, Negroponte notes that Asian nations today are more stable, prosperous and (with a few exceptions) more democratic than ever before. But these new “global winners,” have additional responsibility to take a leadership role in resolving inernational challenges —
from global warming to the spread of nuclear weapons, he says.

Suppose anyone is listening?

To read the full text of Negroponte’s speech, go HERE.

The Presidential candidates have been out there this week debating mightily about the U.S. economy, trade and jobs.

While a lot of the talk has been about manufacturing jobs and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, there is also discussion of the gradual export of “knowledge” or innovation work overseas.

Dieter Ernst, a senior fellow in Economics Study at the Center, has been thinking and publishing on the issue of “innovation offshoring” for some time. For a look at his recent opinion piece on the topic as well as his proposals to deal with the “brain drain,” go HERE.

Are the candidates listening? Should they be talking more about this important topic?