The Program brings a high-profile scholar to Cornell each year to deliver a major public lecture. While at Cornell, the Clarke Lecturer also meets informally with faculty and students from across the university.

2012 Clarke Lecture

Robert Dohner

U.S. Policy and the Changing Economic and Financial Landscape of East Asia

Robert Dohner, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the Department of the Treasury

Robert Dohner is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the Department of the Treasury, responsible for the region extending from Pakistan and India through China, Korea, and Japan. Prior to this, he was the Director of the East Asia Office, responsible for China, Japan, and other economies of East and Southeast Asia. Prior Treasury positions include Tokyo Financial Attaché and Director of the Office of Central and Eastern Europe.

Before joining Treasury, Dohner was a Senior Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers, a Principal Economist at the OECD, and Senior Economic Adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs. He also taught economics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and he has worked at the GATT and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Dohner has a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. and a 40 year old MGB.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012,  G85, Myron Taylor Hall, Cornell University
Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to Donna Hastings.

Past Lectures

Professor Zhu Suli

"The unnoticed diverse functions of bridewealth in traditional China"

Professor Zhu Suli,
Former Dean and Professor of Law, Peking University School of Law, and 2011-12 Wang Distinguished Visiting Professor, Cornell Law School.

September 28, 2011 - Anabel Taylor Hall, Founders Room - 12:20-2:00pm

Zhu Suli, Professor of Law at Peking University Law School and the Wang Distinguished Visiting Professor for the Fall of 2011, will present the Clarke Lecture for 2011-2012 on the theme of the "bride price" in China.

Professor Frank Upham

"The Story of the "Introduction" of Norms of Gender Equality into Japanese Employment Practice"

Professor Frank Upham, Wilf Professor of Property Law, New York University Law School.
April 26, 2011

Professor Upham has spent considerable time at various institutions in Asia, including as a Japan Foundation Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Doshisha University in 1977, as a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Sophia University in 1986, and as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2003. He speaks Chinese and French, as well as Japanese. His scholarship has focused on Japan, and his book Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan received from Harvard University Press the Thomas J. Wilson Prize in 1987. The book is generally viewed as the standard reference for discussions of Japanese law and its social and political role in contemporary Japan. More recently he has begun researching and writing about Chinese law and society and about the role of law in social and political development more generally.

Dr. Yuji Genda

"Jobs and Hope: Gone Forever? Cases from Japan"

Dr. Yuji Genda
Professor, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo.
November 4, 2009

The year 1998 was a turning point in Japanese history. Banks, securities firms, and other financial institutions that no one thought would go bankrupt before went bankrupt and the Japanese economy went into a long recession. Small and medium-sized corporations, the backbone of the Japanese economy, became insolvent, the country's unemployment rate increased dramatically, and the number of suicides hit 30,000 a year and has not declined since. Although it is legally possible, Japanese case law shows that the process of laying-off employees has been extremely difficult. As a result, during a time of a recession, the recruitment of new graduates is withheld for the protection of the employment of the middle-aged and the elderly. Japanese youth were hit hardest and losing their hope for work. How can the government, corporations, schools, families, not-for-profit organizations, and young people themselves find renewed hope? Professor Genda examines the relationship between hope and work.

Spotlight Article:
Yuji Genda Offers Hope for Japan's Future

"Cross-Strait Relations: Past, Present, and Future"
Tsai Ing-wen,
Chairperson, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan; and Cornell Law School LL.M. '80
September 4, 2008

News Article:
Taiwanese Progressive Leader Speaks of Nation's Independence

Dr. Shi Zhengfu

"China's Reform as an Indigenous Institutional Innovation: an Inquiry into the Characteristics of Political and Economic Systems in China Today"

Shi Zhengfu,
Principal, Comway Capital Group and Founder, Center for the New Political Economy at Fudan University, Shanghai
April 24, 2008

Video Lecture:
China's Reform as an Indigenous Institutional Innovation

"Towards a Law and Economics of Public Property: China and Beyond"Zhiyuan Cui, Professor, School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University and Wang Distinguished Visitor at Cornell Law School
April 17, 2007

"Innovation through Intimidation: Defamation Litigation in China"Benjamin Liebman, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, Columbia Law School
March 14, 2006

"Rule of Law Lessons: For China, From Japan, Through an American Lens"Frank Upham, Wilf Family Professor of Property Law, New York University School of Law
November 8, 2004

"Have you eaten? Have you divorced? Debating the meaning of freedom in marriage in ChinaInaugural Clarke Lecture
William Alford, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, and Director of East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
October 30, 2003