In spite of a rising global trend towards autocracy, some counties have reversed this trajectory and seen a renewal of democracy. Join us for a lecture by Dr Radha Kumar as she explores both the internal and external factors that support redemocratisation as well as the global security implications of geopolitical divisions between autocracies and democracies.
The Yale-NUS Lecture on Global Affairs is sponsored by the late Professor Saw Swee Hock.
About the speaker
Dr Radha Kumar is a specialist in ethnic conflicts, peace, and security. She has held various academic and leadership positions, including Director of the Mandela Centre for Peace at Jamia Millia Islamia University, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Associate Fellow at the Institute for War and Peace Studies. She has also served as chair of the United Nations University Council, vice-chair of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and is currently vice-chair of the board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In 2010-11, Dr Kumar was appointed by the Indian government to a three-person group of interlocutors tasked with preparing a report on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir called A New Compact for Jammu and Kashmir.
Dr Kumar has published several books, including A Gender Atlas of India, Making Peace with Partition, Negotiating Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations, and A History of Doing: Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India. Her latest book, Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir, was highly praised, with the Telegraph India calling it “the one book to read on Kashmir,” and the Financial Times naming it the first of five books to read on the subject. Dr Kumar has also published articles in numerous journals and is a frequent contributor to op-eds in the Hindu and the Indian Express. Among the honours she has received are the Warren Weaver fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation, the SSRC-Macarthur Post-Doctoral fellowship, and a fellowship at the Institute for Development Studies in Bangalore.
About the moderator
Associate Professor Chin-Hao Huang’s research and teaching focus on China’s foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. He is the recipient of the Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia (2018-2019) and the American Political Science Association’s Foreign Policy Section Best Paper Award (2014). He is the author or co-author of three books, including his latest manuscript, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (Columbia University Press, 2022). His work has appeared in International Organization, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Foreign Policy Analysis, The China Quarterly, The China Journal, Asian Survey, Contemporary Southeast Asia, and International Peacekeeping, and in edited volumes through Oxford University Press and Routledge, among others. He has testified on China’s foreign affairs before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, US Congress. He has also served as a consultant for US and European foundations, governments, and companies on their strategies and policies in the Asia-Pacific. Until 2009, he was a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and prior to that worked with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. His Doctor of Philosophy and Bachelor of Science are respectively from the University of Southern California and Georgetown University.
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