TOM PLATE WRITES — There was always something of the Goliath versus David, if you framed such a thesis/antithesis picture: of Ruth Bader Ginsburg up against Donald J. Trump – the diminutive versus the hulk, the thinker versus the non-thinker, the caring versus the uncaring. But someone of stature had…
Full Article US: CAN JUDGE RUTH BADER GINSBURG’S PASSING PUSH FOR A FINAL CHANGE?
TOM PLATE WRITES – This column seeks to contrast and compare Richard Falk, Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump with the outlook of young people we teach at universities. Don’t think that’s so easy to do! Our young students get plenty of lectures. Consider nuclear apocalypse. Princeton University emeritus professor Richard…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: HOW TO TEACH CHINA-US RELATIONS AS TENSIONS BETWEEN THE TWO SUPERPOWERS SOAR
TOM PLATE WRITES — The way it is going now, I might have been wrong. The professor had written a good book but (in my mind) smudged it with an ethically snarky title: Destined for War. A few critics (okay, mainly me) pointed out that the addition of a simple question mark (Destined for…
Full Article INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: DUMPED BY TRUMP?
TOM PLATE WRITES – I wouldn’t mind being 20-Something again. It was the only time in my life that I had not yet made blunders of which I was aware, and – as best as I can recall – it was the only time I felt sure I knew just…
Full Article HONG KONG: YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
TOM PLATE WRITES — Lockdown. Many of us have just been through it; others of us are still stuck in it. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the term usually meant the kind of harsh confinement that befall inmates of a penal institution in the wake of a prison riot. Slight…
Full Article TRUMP AND XI: THE ERA OF NON-MAGICAL THINKING
COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES – The decline of the coherence and acumen of American foreign policy would appear to present Beijing with the potential for a century of anything and everything but humiliation. To be sure, historically, the U.S. has demonstrated Olympian bounce-back ability from near-death experiences (from bad economies…
Full Article DEAR BEIJING: IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO?
From News Service Reports — No sooner had after China signaled it would impose new national-security laws on Hong Kong than markets throughout the world trembled. By early afternoon Friday in Hong Kong (22 May), the Hang Seng Index had lost 5.6%, with property, financial and infrastructure stocks retreating between…
Full Article HONG-KONG-WATCH: SHAKEN MARKETS
Project Bridge was established in 1993 after the Los Angeles Riots (SAIGU) took place by the Los Angeles based Pacific Century Institute in conjunction with New York based the Korea Society. The cross-cultural program selects 16 students (eight from Los Angeles and eight from New York) each year to participate…
Full Article REFLECTIONS ON BEING KOREAN-AMERICAN: A MASTERCLASS
THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THIS COLUMN BY TOM PLATE WAS PUBLISHED EARLIER THIS WEEK BY THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST – No time to be polite: the most disgraceful and unnecessary deterioration amid the global health and economic crisis is the China-U.S. relationship that continues to sour. Casualties from a…
Full Article CHINA-US RELATIONS: THE MADNESS OF THE BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP
While spring semester study abroad and global immersion trips have been canceled due to the ongoing pandemic, Tom Plate, clinical professor and Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific studies, is continuing to facilitate cross-cultural learning experiences for Loyola Marymount University students. From opposite sides of the Pacific, LMU students collaborate with Yonsei University students…
Full Article NO ZOOM GLOOM: FROM LOS ANGELES TO SEOUL
TOM PLATE WRITES – On one hand, let me ask you: Would you be foolish enough to persist in advocating a balanced-sensible approach to the People’s Republic of China amid this murderous coronavirus-crisis for which so many blame the PRC? At a time when global suspicion and recrimination converge on Beijing/Wuhan…
Full Article CHINA VERSUS US: MAHBUBANI’S MARKER
TOM PLATE WRITES – Adept moral leadership at the top, whether in Washington or Hong Kong, is central to any serious public-health strategy. ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed on the world,’ famously wrote the poet William Butler Yeats in 1919. One hundred years later, here…
Full Article TRUMP AND THE CORONA CRISIS: SCIENCE VERSUS UNREASON?
TOM PLATE WRITES (VIA THE KOREA TIMES OF SEOUL) — As horrible as the coronavirus spread looks right now, it may not be the worst that faces us. My worry is that even after the epidemic begins its remission, what happens is that everything returns to normal. And that’s the…
Full Article CORONAVIRUS ASIA: THE POTENTIAL PLAGUE OF COMPLACENCY
TOM PLATE WRITES — Without becoming too defensive about America at this rocky passage in its political history (well, it is difficult to defend), I nonetheless will offer something of a defense, since almost no one else wants to try, but maybe someone ought to. So we start with this: Whether…
Full Article WASHINGTON: HOW COULD A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT EVER POSSIBLY TAKE PLACE?
TOM PLATE WRITES — American foreign policy rarely rises to the level of coherence recommended by its policy intellectuals and thoughtful diplomats; but without their persistence, it would be bereft of any coherence at all. When World War Two ended, for example, the American establishment came to rally around the containment…
Full Article CHINA-US RELATIONS: NO FORCE CAN CONTAIN CHINA EXCEPT BEIJING