A Learning Community Committed to International Understanding,
Academic Excellence, and Public Service

Faculty News

Summer of 2007 Yanmin Yu

    Yanmin Yu received the Freeman Fellowship for Japan Studies in summer 2007. She spent three weeks in Hawaii at Tokai University and East-West Center to study Japanese history, religion, culture, politics, and Japanese relations with the United States and other countries.

    She also received the Philip S. Weld Fellowship from the American Press Institute in February 2007 to study newsroom transition from traditional media to 24/7 media.

    Her article, “China: U.S. Partner, Competitor, or Threat—What Do the Americans Think?” is published in the book Challenges Facing Chinese Political Development edited by S. Guo and B. Guo by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in 2007. Another article, “Market Economy and Social Justice: The Predicament of the Underprivileged,” is published in The Journal of Comparative Asian Development. 5(1): 131-148, 2006.

    She attended the International Symposium on Media Development and Media Policy in a Global World in Shanghai, China in June 15-17, 2007 and presented a paper titled “American Public Opinion of China Rise and Media’s Role in Sino-U.S. Relations.”

Yanmin Yu heads down-under on a Fulbright-Hays grant

Dr. Yanmin Yu was selected into the Fulbright Hays Seminar Abroad Program and recently travelled down-under to Australia to participate in the 2005 Australian Program: “New Country, Old History.” A professor of Mass Communication at University of Bridgeport, Dr. Yu is a graduate of Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University.  The Australian seminar is an intellectual, physical, and metaphorical journey that offers participants a unique understanding of Australian culture and its peoples.

Through presentations, tours, workshops and study at Australian National University and Macquarie University along with visits to the Centre for Appropriate Technology, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Tropical North Queensland Institute of TAFE, national museums and galleries the participants acquired a broad understanding of the history, geography, environment and cultural development of Australia.

The current challenges of indigenous communities and multiculturalism were addressed as the participants talked candidly with indigenous presenters and key-note speakers at selected centres and research facilities throughout the Northern Territory including Kakadu, Uluru and Alice Springs.

The seminar included visits to the Alexandria Park Community School and Sydney Girls High School to show the diversity of teaching and learning styles found in Australia, along with how the education system was attending to issues of multiculturalism.  “This valuable opportunity has inspired many fresh ideas for professional and curriculum development,” said Dr. Yu.

Dr. Yu will be developing a curriculum that integrates the Australian experience into her own subject matter and teaching.  Dr. Yu’s follow-on actions include creating a segment on Australian media’s role in covering Indigenous people and their affairs for International Journalism course; developing workshops for educators on the Australian system of education and culture; and sharing the information gained with students and professors via different venues.  These outcomes will be available on the Australian-American Fulbright Commission website in October.

The seminar was conducted over four weeks including an orientation in Austin, Texas and visits to Canberra, Sydney, Uluru, Alice Springs, Kakadu and Darwin, along with Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr. Mark Setton: In the Footsteps of the Chinese Philosophers

May 30 – June 15, 2005 Dr. Mark Setton led a group of students and professors on a tour of China entitled, “In the Footsteps of the Chinese Philosophers.” The tour, which was offered for three credits, covered the hometowns of the great Chinese thinkers as well as key Daoist sights. The tour included the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, a Daoist hermitage at the peak of Mt. Tai as well as the home-towns of Confucius and other philosophers that he inspired.

Dr. Thomas J. Ward: Development, Social Justice, and Civil Society: An Introduction to the Political Economy of NGOs

This book is an introduction to the political economy of NGOs. Today NGOs are recognized as vital partners for government and industry. They address social and environmental problems with greater efficiency and cost effectiveness than government agencies. Multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank increasingly rely on NGOs to assist in the oversight of the projects and programs they support.

This text reviews the historical evolution that has led to the mainstreaming of NGOs and in some cases, to corruption, graft, and deviation from their founding principles. It also describes the challenges that NGOs face in less developed countries. While NGOs are applauded by international organizations and by the governments of developed countries, they are still viewed as a political threat in many developing countries where they are marginalized by legal by legal constraints and bureaucracies that make their survival almost impossible.

Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein: The Cunning of History being translated into French

There is general agreement among theologians that Rubenstein’s first book, After Auschwitz, (Bobbs-Merrill:1966) initiated the contemporary debate on the meaning of the Holocaust in religious thought, both Jewish and Christian. A revised, expanded edition was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1992. Among his other books are The Cunning of History (Harper and Row: 1975), The Age of Triage (Beacon Press: 1983), and Approaches to Auschwitz (1986), co-authored with John K. Roth. An enlarged second edition will be published in June 2003 by Westminster/John Knox Press and in England by SCM Press. Writing in The New York Review of Books (June 28, 1978) about The Cunning of History, novelist William Styron commented: "Few books possess the power to leave the reader with that feeling of awareness which we call a sense of revelation. Richard L. Rubenstein's The Cunning of History seems to me to be one of these."   "The Cunning of History" is now being translated into French.

Yanmin Yu recently contributed a book chapter entitled “Politics in Taiwan’s Broadcasting and Television” in Taiwan in the Eyes of Chinese-American Scholars: Critical Analyses of Taiwanese Society in the 21st Century. This book is edited by S. Lu and X. Tian and published by Showwe Information Co. in Taipei, Taiwan, December 2004. 

In the chapter, Dr. Yu examined the unique relationship between the electronic media in Taiwan and the Taiwanese government in the areas of ownership, operation, and editorial decisionmaking. When government officials can own electronic media, participate in their operation, and make editorial decisions, the consequences cannot be overlooked, especially when the electronic media market is not completely open and when the advertising market is dominated by the three major electronic media giants that were established by the Taiwanese government in the early times of the industry.

(London: Routledge, 2006)

International relations scholars have identified peaceful power transfer as a central dilemma in world politics, since historically power transition from a dominant nation to a challenger used to be associated with large-scale wars in the international system. Can China and the United States learn from history and manage a potential power transition peacefully? This book engages in a thorough theoretical, historical and policy exploration on this important security issue. The book examizes two important cases of power transitions in history: power rivalry between Great Britain and Germany (1871-1914) that led to a major war, and power transition from Great Britain to the United States (1865-1945) that ended peacefully between them. Drawing inferences from history, the book focuses on U.S.-China relations (1990-2005) as the main case for analysis.

As a contribution to international relations theory, this book proposes a new analytical model on global power transition and provides policy recommendations for peacefully handling a potential power transition from the United States to China in the future. The book will not only promote the study of and interest in U.S.-China relations, but also advance research on peaceful conflict resolution in international relations at both the global and regional levels.