University Consortium

There are both practical and theoretical reasons for making a consortium of Asian and Western universities the foundation of the Asia Strategic Forum. First, universities provide a pool of bicultural, bilingual specialists that are uniquely equipped to address the existential, intellectual and operational dimensions involved in incorporating Asia into an interdependent but still not convergent world. At the same time, access to the students at major international universities, especially graduate and professional students, will enhance the programs of the Forum and constructively stimulate future national and global leaders. Secondly, universities, especially in Asia , have a status and neutrality that is essential to address frontally and credibly complex strategic issues, including proposals for the creation of new international regimes with which the Forum will deal. In contrast, most public policy institutions, especially in the United States , have increasingly become information providers and consensus builders (Track II) or advocacy groups. Thirdly, universities have both the physical facilities and personnel to host conferences and support other activities (eg. webcasts) in which the Forum is engaged. Fourthly, one goal of the Asia Strategic Forum is to create a venue in which the scholars, senior specialists and academic administrators found at research universities, who are at the core of the international intellectual community, can be more directly and effectively involved in the process of globalization.

The core members of the University Consortium will include those schools that will host and have hosted the initial conferences of the Forum (the University of Washington , Seoul National University and Chulalongkorn University ) plus a select number of other universities that commit to organize future conferences and/or make significant contributions to the programs of the Forum. Membership in the Forum, as well as the conference topics and details of programs will be established by an executive committee made up of academics, specialists and members of the Council on Asian Affairs. As the activities of the Forum evolve, both its organization and the membership criteria will be formalized.