Teaching

Japanese Foreign Policy, Columbia University, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

I teach a graduate-level seminar on Japanese Foreign Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. This seminar provides an overview of modern and contemporary Japanese foreign policy and strategy behind its engagement with the world. It examines the following questions: What are the key determinants of Japanese foreign policy, and how have they evolved over time? How should Japan approach, navigate, and shape the increasingly uncertain strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific in the years ahead, including China’s growing power, the shifting role of the U.S.-Japan alliance, and the intensifying great power rivalry? In the first few weeks of the course, we will cover the making of modern Japan and the enduring themes that have long animated Japan’s strategic thinking. In the following weeks, we will survey Japan’s foreign policies toward key countries and regions while discussing topics relevant to the respective relationships, such as security, trade, identity, historical memory, and values and norms. Each week, we will identify Japan’s ends, ways, and means in its approach to a particular region or issue and end our class by discussing current policy questions Japan faces.

Guest Lectures

History and Security: East Asia, Naval War College, Fall 2022, Fall 2024

In October 2022 and October 2024, I guest-lectured for Professor Kristin Mulready-Stone's graduate-level course on history and security in East Asia at the U.S. Naval War College. I shared my research on South Korea's decision-making process toward the introduction of the U.S. Theater High-Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) on its soil.

Theory and Policy in Asia, Georgetown University, Fall 2022

In November 2022, I gave a guest lecture in Professor Victor D. Cha's graduate-level course at Georgetown University. I shared findings from my doctoral dissertation research on the history of U.S. alliance management and China's efforts to weaken U.S. alliances.

International Relations of East and Southeast Asia, University of Texas at Austin, Fall 2022

In October 2022, I guest-lectured for Professor Patricia L. Maclachlan's undergraduate-level course on IR in East and Southeast Asia at the University of Texas at Austin. I discussed the security landscape surrounding cross-strait relations.

Teaching Assistance

Grand Strategy, Princeton University, Spring 2020

In the spring of 2020, I had the honor of teaching an undergraduate-level course on Grand Strategy taught by Professors Aaron Friedberg and John Ikenberry. Grand strategy is the broad and encompassing policies and undertakings that political leaders pursue-financial, economic, military, and diplomatic-to achieve their objectives in peacetime and war. This course examines the theory and practice of grand strategy both to illuminate how relations among city-states, empires, kingdoms and nation states have evolved over the centuries and also to identify some common challenges that have confronted all who seek to make and execute grand strategy from Pericles to Barack Obama.

Causes of War, Princeton University, Fall 2019

In the fall of 2019, I had the privilege to serve as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate-level course in the Politics Department, Causes of War, taught by Professor Gary Bass. Why do states and peoples go to war? Conversely, how can war be avoided? This course surveys some of the most important explanations--including human nature, the anarchic international system, domestic politics, economics, technology, nationalism and terrorism--and evaluates them in light of historical wars, and of crises resolved short of war. Cases include the Peloponnesian War, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, the Cuban missile crisis, ex-Yugoslavia's wars, and September 11.