Institute for Corean-American Studies

 



Robert A. Scalapino
 ICAS Distinguished Fellow 

Biographic Sketch

Robert A Scalapino was born in Leavenworth, Kansas. He received his B.A. degree from Santa Barbara College and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. From 1949 to 1990 he taught in the Political Science Department at the University of California at Berkeley. He was department chairman from 1962 to 1965 and Robson Research Professor of Government from 1977 until 1990. In 1978 he founded the Institute of East Asian Studies and remained its director until his retirement in 1990. He is currently Robson Research Professor of Government Emeritus.

Professor Scalapino has been the recipient of a number of research grants under such auspices as the Guggenheim Foundation, Social Science Research Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and numerous others. He has been awarded the Medal of Highest Honor from the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University; the Order of Diplomatic Service Merit, Heung-In Medal from the Government of Korea; and the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the government of Japan. In 1990, he received the Berkeley Citation for Distinguished Service to the University of California. In 1997, he was conferred the title of Honorary Professor of both the Center on Northeast Asian Studies in Mongolia and Peking University in Beijing. Most recently, he was the recipient of the 1998 Japan Foundation Award.

He has published some 500 articles and 38 books or monographs on Asian politics and U.S. Asian policy. These include Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (1962), The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920-1966 (1967), Communism in Korea (two volumes, with Chong-Sik Lee, 1972, for which they received the American Political Science Associations' 1974 Woodrow Wilson Award), Asia and the Road Ahead (1975), The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan (editor and contributor, 1977), The United States and Korea--Looking Ahead (1979), The Early Japanese Labor Movement (1984), Modern China and Its Revolutionary Process (with George T. Yu, 1985), Major Power Relations in Northeast Asia (1987), The Politics of Development: Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Asia (1989), The Last Leninists: The Uncertain Future of Asia's Communist States (1992). He was editor of Asian Survey, a scholarly publication, from 1962 to January, 1996.

Travelling extensively in Asia, he has made 36 trips to the People's Republic of China, including service as a visiting lecturer at Peking University in 1981 and again in the spring of 1985. He had two separate one-year residences in Japan and numerous visits to Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. He has visited the former Soviet Union on 19 occasions, most recently in November 1998. In 1989, 1991, 1992 and 1995, he was in North Korea for one week on each occasion. On the 2nd and 3rd trips, he was head of an American Mission on Korea sponsored by the Asia Society. He has also travelled to the Republic of Mongolia on 6 occasions, heading the Asia Society's Northeast Asia Study Mission in the fall of 1985; in the fall of 1990 as head of the American delegation to the Second Mongolian International Conference, in the summer of 1992 and most recently in June of 1998.

Professor Scalapino is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was made a Berkeley Fellow in 1993. He serves on the Board of Directors of Pacific Forum-CSIS. He was a founder and first chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Asia Foundation and was recently named Director Emeritus of the Japan Society of Northern California, the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He is Co-Chairman of the Asia Society's Asian Agenda Advisory Group. He is also a member of the Board of the Atlantic Council, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and numerous other editorial boards and committees for educational and governmental agencies.

 

ICAS Web Site Links for Robert A. Scalapino:

ICAS Bulletin, 4/6/1999

 

This page last updated 11/05/11 jdb

 

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