ACUNS @ 30 – Increasing Awareness of ACUNS in Asia

ACUNS

Audio Podcast

Sukehiro Hasegawa President, Global Peacebuilding Association of Japan Margaret Karns Professor Emerita of Political Science University of Dayton; Visiting Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston

Summary
The 2017 ACUNS Annual Meeting, held at Sookmyung Women’s University, was the first Annual Meeting to be held in Asia. It is therefore rather fitting that during the meeting Professor Margaret Karns met with Professor Sukehiro Hasegawa—head of the ACUNS Liaison Office in Tokyo—to record this podcast on increasing ACUNS’ presence in Asia. Part of the ‘ACUNS @ 30’ celebrations, Professor Hasegawa offers new insight on some of the international aspects of ACUNS activities. Professor Hasegawa’s background as both a practitioner and academic also allows him to address both sides of ACUNS collaborative efforts. From his perspective, ACUNS enables academic reflection and analysis, and Hasegawa states that “ACUNS gives a background of [his] understanding of what the UN is about.” A member of the ACUNS Board of Directors from 2012 to 2015, Hasegawa emphasizes the importance of including Asian representatives in the organization of ACUNS. A co-operation between Japan, China, and Korea would help East Asian members in supporting, not just attending, ACUNS events.

Biographies

Sukehiro Hasegawa

Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Timor-Leste (2004-2006)

Dr. Hasegawa is currently President of the Global Peacebuilding Association of Japan, Chair of the Council of the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center, Director for Academic Exchange and Cooperation of the United Nations Association of Japan and Chief of the Tokyo Liaison Office of the Academic Association on the UN System (ACUNS).

Dr. Hasegawa was Professor of Global Politics, Faculty of Law, Hosei University, from 2007-2013. He was Visiting Professor of Toyo University from 2007- 2009 and the United Nations University in Tokyo from 2007-2013.

Professor Sukehiro Hasegawa was the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Timor-Leste from May 2004 to September 2006 and Head of the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), the United Nations Office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL), and the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT).

Professor Hasegawa served with the United Nations since 1969. He held several senior positions within the United Nations system. He served as UNDP Resident Representative in western South Pacific and Deputy in Nepal and Indonesia. In 1993, he managed the United Nations Volunteer electoral supervisors assigned to plan and administer general elections in Cambodia. In April 1994, he was appointed Director of Policy and Planning of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II), and he was the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Rwanda in 1995-96. He subsequently served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Pacific at UNDP in New York from 1997-99.

Professor Hasegawa obtained a Ph.D. from Washington University, USA, in 1974. He is married and has three children and four grandchildren.

Professor Karns was among the forty participants in the 1987 conference at Dartmouth College that led to the creation of ACUNS. She was tasked there with a plenary presentation on “Teaching International Organization.” Subsequently, she conducted the session on the same topic at the initial ACUNS Summer Workshop in 1991. Most of her career in academe was spent as a member of the faculty at the University of Dayton, where she also served as director of the International Studies Program and founding director of the University of Dayton’s Center for International Programs from 1983 to 1995.

During 1995-96, Professor Karns was Visiting Professor of International Relations at the John Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China. She returned to Asia in 1998 to teach a training course on “Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations System” for mid-career Vietnamese officials at The Institute of International Relations in Hanoi and again in May 2006 to lecture and serve as a consultant to the International Studies program at National University of Vietnam in Hanoi. In April 2007, she co-taught a workshop for thirty Vietnamese faculty in international relations on “International Relations since the Cold War’s End” with Professor Karen Mingst.

Currently, Professor Karns is Visiting Professor in the University of Massachusetts Boston John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies where she teaches courses on global governance and international organizations in the doctoral program in Global Governance and Human Security. She is a past Vice President of International Studies Association, a national member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, long-time board member and past President of the Dayton Council on World Affairs, current Vice Chair of the ACUNS Board of Directors, and a member of the Editorial Board of Global Governance.

As a scholar, Professor Karns specializes in global governance and international organizations, including the United Nations, with a particular emphasis on UN peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. With Professor Karen A. Mingst of the University of Kentucky she has published three books: The United States and Multilateral Institutions: Patterns of Instrumentality and Influence (1990); International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance (3rd ed., 2015) whose first edition won the ACUNS 2006 Prize for the Best Book on the United Nations and the United Nations System; and The United Nations in the 21^stCentury (5th ed., 2017).