Wearing a striped gray suit and a red tie, Professor Michael Yahuda transformed room 505 in the Elliott School into a time machine. With a British accent and a slightly muffled tone, Yahuda described Chinese-Japanese-American relations spanning the 1940s to mid 1990s to celebrate the release of the third edition to his textbook “The International Politics of the Asia Pacific.”
Yahuda retired from the London School of Economics in 2003 after 30 years of teaching. He later came to George Washington University in 2008 as a visiting scholar for the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. The Sigur Center hosted the book release event on Tuesday in the Elliott School of International Affairs. Along with the President of the Sigur Center and a small audience, there was an atmosphere of academic excitement.
Following the introduction, Yahuda began to discuss the challenges and successes within the Asian Pacific amongst struggles for independence and civil war. He explained the main premise of the book is to “show under what circumstances a junction of local, global, and legal affairs and how they interacted with each other.”
Within the hour and fifteen minutes, Yahuda touched on domestic affairs, the spread of globalization, AIPEC, and China’s current economic model and how it affects the world market. A history lesson mixed with personal research, anecdotes, and jokes, Yahuda gave an informative presentation that gave the audience a scholarly perspective on Asian affairs.
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