The following statement was presented at a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand in Bangkok at 10 AM today. The press conference was attended by local and international media and interested members of the public. The press conference was addressed by Thongchai Winichakul and Andrew Walker, both via internet links.

Over fifty international scholars and dignitaries have signed a letter to the Thai Prime Minister calling for reform of the lese majeste law. The letter comes after a spate of lese majeste cases in Thailand and moves by the Thai government to restrict internet discussion of the royal family. The letter urges the Thai government to consider the following:

• Please stop seeking more suppressive measures against individuals, web sites, and the peaceful expressions of ideas.
• Please consider suggestions to reform the lese majeste law to prevent further abuses and to prevent the possibility of further damage to the international reputation of Thailand and the monarch.
• Please consider taking action to withdraw the current lese majeste charges, and working to secure the release of those already convicted under the lese majeste law. They are charged for expressing their ideas. This should not be a crime.

The letter argues that “frequent abuse of the lese majeste law against political opponents undermines democratic processes” and generates “heightened criticism of the monarchy and Thailand itself, both inside and outside the country.”

Signatories to the letter include:

• World leaders in human rights and civil liberties, such as Lord Eric Avebury, Dr. Caroline Lucas, Senator Martone, Smitu Kothari, Walden Bello;
• Prominent scholars who are famous throughout the academic world across fields and disciplines like Noam Chomsky, Stuart Hall, Arjun Appadurai, Jim Scott, Arif Dirlik, Stanley Tambiah, Immanuel Wallerstein, and many more;
• Several Fellows of the British Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
• Presidents, former presidents and leaders of several internationally prestigious academic associations, namely the Associations for Asian Studies , the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and more;
• Leading legal scholars such as a former judge in the International Court of Justice, a former President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law, and leading scholars on human rights law.
• Leading international scholars of Southeast Asia and Thailand in many fields including political science, history, anthropology, literature, geography, economics, environmental studies, most of whom have long term experience in Thailand and the region.

Additional signatories are currently being collected. The letter will be delivered to the Honorable Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in late March or early April. Those who want to include their name on the letter are invited to send their name, title/ rank/position and affiliation to one of the following “Coordinators” of this campaign. (Please don’t provide your details as a comment to this post.)

• Thongchai Winichakul, Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. [email protected]
• Andrew Walker, Senior Fellow, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. [email protected]
• Jim Glassman, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 217 - 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 Canada. [email protected]
• Larry Lohmann, The Corner House, Station Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DT10 1YJ, United Kingdom. [email protected]
• Adadol Ingawanij, Post-doctoral Researcher, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, UK. [email protected]

New Mandala will provide a “window” for this campaign. We will provide updated news and information on the progress of the campaign.

Letter to be sent to Thai Prime Minister

(To be delivered in March/April …., 2009)

His Excellency Abhisit Vejjajiva
Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Royal Government of Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand Facsimile: 011-662-629-8213

Honorable Prime Minister Abhisit,

As scholars and sympathetic observers of Thailand, we are extremely concerned about the recent legal actions taken against Thai and foreign citizens under the lese majeste law. It is unfortunate that the political crisis in Thailand has led to the deterioration of basic civil liberties.

The frequent abuse of the lese majeste law against political opponents undermines democratic processes. Bringing charges against journalists, academics and other citizens for their views and actions simply because of allegations that they are offensive to the royal family prevents open discussion of important public issues. They illustrate the pitfall of the imprudent claims of loyalty to the monarchy.. Instead of protecting reputations, these lese majeste cases generate heightened criticism of the monarchy and Thailand itself, both inside and outside the country.

Several suggestions have been made for reforms to the lese majeste law. His Majesty himself has said that criticism of the monarchy should be permissible. We are concerned lest, instead of listening to these constructive opinions, your government continue to use the law to suppress civil liberties and freedom of expression. Some members of your government are even calling for harsher punishments under the lese majeste law. All of these are done in the name of protecting the monarchy.

The experiences of many countries have proven that only truth, transparency, civic discussion, and democratic process can turn conflict of ideas into innovative and peaceful change. Suppression of ideas does not solve anything, but such is likely to do more harm than good to the monarchy.

With the greatest respect, we would like to urge you and your government to consider the following.

1. Please stop seeking more suppressive measures against individuals, web sites, and the peaceful expressions of ideas.
2. Please consider suggestions to reform the lese majeste law to prevent further abuses and to prevent the possibility of further damage to the international reputation of Thailand and the monarch.
3. Please consider taking action to withdraw the current lese majeste charges, and working to secure the release of those already convicted under the lese majeste law. They are charged for expressing their ideas. This should not be a crime.

Sincerely yours,

James C. Scott
The Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology and Environmental Studies
Yale University
USA

Charles F. Keyes
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and International Studies,
University of Washington
USA

Craig J. Reynolds
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
Australia

Robert Albritton
Professor, Political Science
University of Mississippi
USA

Barbara Watson Andaya
Professor of Southeast Asian History
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
USA

Leonard Y. Andaya
Professor of Southeast Asian History
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
USA

Arjun Appadurai
Goddard Professor of Media, Communication and Culture
New York University
USA

Lord Eric Avebury
Vice-Chair, Parliamentary Human Rights Group
United Kingdom

Trevor J. Barnes
Professor of Geography and Distinguished University Scholar
University of British Columbia
Canada

Peter F. Bell
Associate Professor of Economics
Sate University of New York
USA

Walden Bello
Professor, Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines
Philippines

Katherine A. Bowie
Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA

Michael Burawoy
Professor of Sociology
University of California-Berkeley
USA

Hilary Charlesworth
Professor of International Law and Human Rights
Australian National University
Australia

Professor Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor (retired)
Massachusette Institute of Technology (MIT)
USA

Michael K. Connors
Senior Lecturer, Politics and Development Studies
La Trobe University
Australia

Arif Dirlik
Chair Professor of Chinese Studies
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

John Dugard
Distinguished Professor of Public International Law
University of Leiden
The Netherlands

Grant Evans
Research Fellow, Centre of Asian Studies
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Edward Friedman
The Hawkins Chair Professor of Political Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA

Susan Stanford Friedman
Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women’s Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA

Stuart Hall
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
The Open University
United Kingdom

Dr Rachel Harrison
Senior Lecturer in Thai Cultural Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
United Kingdom

Gillian Hart
Professor, Department of Geography
University of California, Berekeley
USA

Robert Hefner
Professor, Department of Anthropology
Boston University
USA

Michael Herzfeld
Professor of Anthropology
Harvard University
USA

Kevin Hewison
Professor, Department of Asian Studies and Director, Carolina Asia Center
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
USA

Philip Hirsch
Professor of Human Geography
University of Sydney
Australia

Paul Hutchcroft
Professor and Head, Department of Political & Social Change
Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Australia

Peter A. Jackson
Senior Fellow in Thai History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Australia

Robin Jeffrey
Emeritus Professor
Australian National University and La Trobe University
Australia

Professor Sarah Joseph
Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law
Faculty of Law, Monash University
Australia

Ira Katznelson
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History
Columbia University
USA

Ben Kerkvliet
Emeritus Professor, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University, Canberra
Australia

Ben Kiernan,
A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Professor of International and Area Studies
Yale University
USA

Smitu Kothari
Director, Intercultural Resources, New Delhi
Visiting Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai, India

Margaret Levi
Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
University of Washington
USA

Dr. Caroline Lucas
Member of the European Parliament
Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
United Kingdom

Senator Francesco Martone
Italy

Duncan McCargo
Professor of Southeast Asian Politics
University of Leeds
United Kingdom

Anthony Milner
Basham Professor of Asian History
Australian National University
Australia

Don Mitchell
Distinguished Professor of Geography
The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
USA

Frances Fox Piven
Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science
Graduate School of the City University of New York
USA

Anthony Reid
Professor, Asia Research Institute
National University of Singapore
Singapore

Garry Rodan
Professor of Politics & International Studies, and Director, Asia Research Centre
Murdoch University
Australia

Dr. Mohamed Suliman
Director, Institute for African Alternatives
United Kingdom

David Szanton
Emeritus Executive Director of International and Area Studies
University of California, Berkeley
USA

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
The Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor (Emeritus) of Anthropology
Harvard University
USA

Professor Nicholas Tapp
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Australia

Carlyle A. Thayer
Professor, University College
University of New South Wales
Australia

Gillian Triggs
Professor and Dean, the Faculty of Law
University of Sydney
Australia

Immanuel Wallerstein
Professor, Department of Sociology
Yale University
USA

Dr. Thomas Wallgren
Head, Department of Philosophy
University of Helsinki
Finland

Michael J. Watts
Chancellor's Professor, Department of Geography
University of California, Berkeley
USA

Coordinators of the campaign

Thongchai Winichakul
Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA [email protected]

Andrew Walker
Senior Fellow, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University,
Australia [email protected]

Jim Glassman
Associate Professor, Department of Geography
University of British Columbia
Canada [email protected]

Larry Lohmann [email protected]
Nick Hildyard [email protected]
Sarah Sexton [email protected]
The Corner House
United Kingdom

Adadol Ingawanij
Post-doctoral Researcher
Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media
University of Westminster
United Kingdom [email protected]

Profiles of the signatories (alphabetically by last names)

 

Robert Albritton from University of Mississippi wrote extensively on American politics and public policies before changing his interest to Thailand. During the past ten year, he has been working closely with the King Prachadhipok Institute on several projects on Thai democracy.

 

Barbara W. Andaya is a leading historian of early modern Southeast Asia, especially economic and social history of Malaysia and Indonesia, and a pioneer in the history of women and gender of the region. Her most recent book is The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia (2006). Barbara Andaya was the President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2005-2006.

Leonard Andaya is a very well known historian of early modern history of the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago. His several books include history of Malaysia, Jahore, Aceh, Minangkabao, Maluku, and more. His latest interests is in the construction of the Malay ethnicity and identity.

Arjun Appadurai is a famous thinker and scholar of globalization and modernity. His famous book, Modernity at Large (1996), has won wide acclaims for explaining the current conditions of global flows of people and information. He was also a founder of the journal, Public Culture. After his career as a professor at University of Chicago, he became Provost of New School University and the John Dewy Distinguished Professorship in the Social Sciences at the New School in 2004-06.

Lord Avebury (Eric Lubbock) is a Liberal Democrat Peer and has been a member of the House of Lords since 1971. He is currently Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and also for the Home Office. He has had a long Parliamentary career (was MP for Orpington 1962-70, Liberal Chief Whip 1963-70, Chair, Parliamentary Civil Liberties Group 1964-70 and Parliamentary Human Rights Group, 1976-1997). He has been a member of Parliamentarians for East Timor and Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Group for Tibet as well as active in the Peru Support Group, the Kurdish Human Rights Project and TAPOL (Indonesian human rights); Kurdish Human Rights Project; Patron, Angulimala (Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy), 1992-; Founder, Parliamentarians for East Timor, 1988; Vice-Chair, Parliamentary Group for Tibet; Member, Institution of Mechanical Engineers (MIMechE); Fellow, British Computer Society (FBCS).

Peter F. Bell, an internationally known expert on Thailand, is an economist of developing nations with more than thirty years of experience in Southeast Asia. His research contributes significantly to, among others, the issue of gender and female labors in industrializing economies. In the 1990s he directed the New York State Council on Economic Education and in 1995 received the Distinguished Award from the New York State Council on the Social Studies for his works that transformed the teaching of economics in schools.

Walden Bello is a founder of Focus on the Global South, a research institute in Bangkok and Manila. Author of 14 books on Asia and the Philippines, he is a distinguished scholar who won several awards and recognitions worldwide including the Outstanding Public Scholar for 2008 by the International Studies Association. He is also a human rights and peace activist, a journalist, a public intellectual. He was a former Chair of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, and a board member of Food First and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 2003, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.

Katherine Bowie is an anthropologist with more than thirty years of experience in Thailand. Her interests range from peasant history, political economy, and social movements, to the politics of gender and religion, Buddhist nuns (bhikkuni), and women and elections in rural villages. Her landmark publication is the study of the Village Scout movement in Thailand in the 1970s.

Michael Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of the world -- Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia. He is best known as author of Manufacturing Consent and as the leading proponent of public sociology. Burawoy was President of the American Sociological Association in 2003-04 and in 2006-2010, he is vice-president for the Committee of National Associations of the International Sociological Association.

Hilary Charlesworth is Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the ANU College of Law, currently also Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice, and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. She is Manley O. Hudson Visiting Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, New York University, and at Université de Paris (Paris I); a winner of the Goler T. Butcher Medal awarded by the American Society of International Law in 2006 for "Outstanding contributions to the development of international human rights law." Professor Charlesworth was the inaugural President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (1997-2001).

Noam Chomsky does not need an introduction. Perhaps the shortest one is – a highly acclaimed theorist who is regarded as the father of modern linguistics, and one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world since the 1960s on world politics and civil liberties. He is the most cited scholar several times in the past twenty years, both for his works in linguistics and his social and political commentaries.

 

Michael K. Connors is among the current leading political scientists of Thailand. He wrote regularly for newspapers in Australia and published several books and articles on various aspects of Thai politics including political parties and elections, Thai intellectuals and activists, the monarchy, Thai identities, culture and politics.

 

The Corner House was founded in 1997 as a non-profit support group for democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice, whether they be locally-based struggles for land or water rights or better health care; campaigns against destructive mining, dam or forestry projects; or struggles against racial discrimination. It tries to take a "bottom-up" approach to issues of global significance. As part of our solidarity work, The Corner House carries out analyses, research and advocacy with the aim of linking issues, of stimulating informed discussion and strategic thought on critical environmental and social concerns, and of encouraging broad alliances to tackle them.

 

Arif Dirlik is an authority in Chinese history, especially on Chinese political thought and the radical movements. His recently turns his interests to cultural and academic dimensions of globalization. He wrote many highly acclaimed books including, The Origins of Chinese Communism (1989), Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (1991), and The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (1997). Dirlik was at Duke University in 1971-2001, then became the Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies at University of Oregon and until 2006 when he moved to Beijing and subsequently Hong Kong.

 

 

John Dugard is a distinguished professor of public international law, currently at the University of Leiden. He has served as a judge in the International Court of Justice (2002-8) and from 2001 to 2008 he served as Special Rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights on violation of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He has written extensively on South African apartheid.

 

Grant Evans is an anthropologist of Laos and Thailand. He wrote several books on Laos, including Red Brotherhood at War (1990), The Politics of Rituals and Remembrance: Laos since 1975 (1998), A Short History of Laos (2003), and The Last Century of Lao Royalty (2009). Recently Evans wrote an article on the lese majeste law in Bangkok Post that was widely read among the international observers of Thailand.

 

Edward Friedman is a leading scholar of international political economy, democratization, Chinese politics, revolution, and the comparative study of transitions in Leninist States. His most recent books are Asia's Giants: Comparing China and India, co-edited with Gilley (2005), China's Rise, Taiwan's Dilemmas and International Peace (2005), Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (co-authored with Pickowicz & Selden, 2005).
 

Susan Stanford Friedman is a leading scholar of English literature. She has published several books and more than seventy articles on feminist theory, narrative theory, women's poetry, modernism, psychoanalysis, globalization and geopolitics, and identity. Her books received several awards including a Choice Outstanding Academic Books Award and the Perkins Prize for Best Book in Narrative Studies. Her work is translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Serbian and Spanish. She is currently the Director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at University of Wisconsin.

 

 

Jim Glassman is an economic geographer with interests in political economy, political geography, and third world urbanization of Thailand, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Rim. He published several larticles criticial to neo-liberalism and a book, Thailand at the Margins: Internationalization of the State and the Transformation of Labour (2004).

 

Stuart Hall was an influential contributor to the British Cultural Studies or the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies that have huge impacts on social sciences and the humanities throughout the world. Hall is highly recognized for the studies of race, gender, and media. In 1956, he joined E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and others, to found the famous New Left Review. British newspaper The Observer called him "one of the country's leading cultural theorists". He was a former Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Birmingham University, Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities, Queen Mary College, University of London; Chair of the Institute of International Visual Arts; and Fellow of the British Academy.

 

Rachel V. Harrison is an expert in Thai literature but who also wrote on Thai cinema, culture and gender studies, and Southeast Asian literatures in a comparative context.

 

Gillian Hart wrote about agrarian change in Java, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. Questions of gender and power also figure prominently in her work. More recent research is in my native South Africa, where she traces divergent post-apartheid dynamics.

 

Robert W. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past twenty-eight years, and has conducted comparative research on Muslim culture and politics since the late-1980s, including the project "Civil Democratic Islam" on policies for civic pluralism and democracy in the Muslim world. Hefner has published more than a dozen books and several major policy reports. His most recent works are Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (2000) and Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (2005). Hefner is the current President of the Association for Asian Studies, 2009-2010.

Michael Herzfeld is a highly recognized scholar whose numerous books and articles in English, French, Italian, and Greek focusing on cultural identity construction are well known among anthropologists throughout the world. He won several prestigious awards and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997. In recent year Herzfeld has turned to Thai studies. He has served as an advisor to the Human Resources Program of the Prince of Songkhla University in Hat Yai, and was recently appointed Adviser to the Academic Subcommittee of the King Prajadhipok Museum in Bangkok.

Kevin Hewison is the author of more than 150 publications on Southeast Asia and serves as the editor and member of editorial boards of several academic journals. His important contributions are in the studies of democratization, labor issues, and globalization and social change in Asia. But he also has considerable experience working as adviser to international organizations in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Southern Africa. Formerly he was the Foundation Chair of Asian Studies at the University of New England, Australia, and Director of Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. Currently he is leading one of the premier Asian studies programs in the US.

Paul Hutchcroft has research and teaching interests in Southeast Asian politics, the politics of patronage and corruption, political reform and democratic quality. He has written extensively on Philippine politics and political economy, and is the author of Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines (1998).

Philip Hirsch is a leading scholar of environmental studies of Thailand. His collaborative projects in fact cover the entire mainland Southeast Asia, in natural resource management, deforestation, rural change and the politics of environment. He is among the pioneers of the studies of the Mekong Region and is the director of the Australian Mekong Resource Centre.

Peter A. Jackson is a prolific anthropology and historian of Thailand who wrote on a wide range of subjects from Buddhism, history of sexuality and sexual cultures, to cultural studies of Thailand. He is best known for several works on homosexuality in Thailand.

Robin Jeffrey is an expert in the modern history and politics of India, writing extensively on ethnicity, nationalism and identity formation, and development of southern India.

Sarah Joseph is an expert in international human rights law and constitutional law. She has published numerous books and articles including, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Commentary and Materials (2004) and Human Rights Translated: A Business Reference Guide (UN 2008). She was a lead investigator on a Discovery project on the WTO and Human Rights (2005-7). The Castan Centre project that she leads prepares all United Nations human rights cases for Oxford Reports in International Law.

Ira Katznelson is a leading American political scientist and historian. He was the Chair the department of political science at University of Chicago 1974-1983, and the Dean of New School for Social Research 1983-1989. Katznelson was President of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for 2005-2006 and president of the Social Science History Association for 1997-1998. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and the American Philosophical Society in 2004. Katznelson has written or co-written ten books, co-edited several others, and published over sixty journal articles.

Ben Kerkvliet was Professor and former Head of the Department of Political and Social Change, at the ANU. He wrote extensively on agrarian politics in Southeast Asia, studying the interactions between ordinary people and authorities or other elites, and forms of peasant reesistance especially in the Philippines and Vietnam.

Charles F Keyes is one of the leading and most respected scholars of Southeast Asia and Thailand, and highly regarded among anthropologists in the US. He has studied rural Thailand, especialy the northeast region, Thai culture and Buddhism since the 1960s. He has published and edited dozens of books and numurous articles on Thailand and Southeast Asia, particularly about ethnic minorities, Buddhism, cultural history, and village communities. In January 2008, he was a keynote speaker at the Tenth International Conference on Thai Studies, presenting a lecture at the openning ceremony at which Princess Mahachakri Surindhorn presided. Keyes was the President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2001-02.

 

Ben Kiernan is the founder of the Cambodian Genicide Program at Yale University which was later deveoped into the comaprative Genocide Studies Program, a highly acclaimed center for the studies of genocide and mass atrocities in the world. As a historian of Cambodia, Keirnan is an authority on the Khmer Rouge and the US role in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. He wrote several books and over 100 scholarly articles on Southeast Asia and genocide. He and the Genocide Program played important role in bringing the Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.

 

Smitu Kothari is an editor of the Lokayan Bulletin published by the Lokayan ("Dialogue of the People") group in Delhi, India. He also co-edits Ecologist Asia with Vandana Shiva, Claude Alvares, and Bittu Sahgal, is currently writing two books, and is an active participant in many of India's popular social movements. Recognized as one of India's leading intellectual-activists, Smitu's life is devoted to contributing toward the melding of a broad spectrum of social forces in Indian society into a popular political movement for the creation of a just, sustainable, and inclusive Indian society.

 

 

Margaret Levi is a well known political scienctist who also has a joint appointment as Professor of Politics, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney, and has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including the Max Planck Institute, Oxford University, the European University Institute, the London School of Economics, and the Australian National University. Levi was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and was president of the American Political Science Association for 2004-05.

 

Caroline Patricia Lucas is one of the most prominent English politicians. She is currently a Member of the European Parliament and the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. She has worked with numerous NGOs and think-tanks, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Oxfam, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She was named in the Top 10 of the New Statesman Magazine’s Person of the Year Award 2006. She was voted by readers of The Observer for the Politician of the Year 2007 award. In the same month, BBC Wildlife magazine named her in their Top 50 Conservationists.

 

Senator Francesco Martone, senator of the Republic of Italy. From 1988 to 1995 he worked for Greenpeace International and for three years was president of Greenpeace Italy. In 1992 he was part of the Italian government delegation to the Rio Earth Summit. He founded and coordinated for six years the Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank. He has collaborated in numerous campaigns on social issues and was a member of the scientific committee, Sdebitarsi. Elected to the Senate from the Liguria constituency in 2001 and from Sardinia in 2006, he was part of several Permanent Commissions on foreign policy and emigration, finance, and environmental resources. He has been secretary of the Special Commission on Human Rights and a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations.

 

Duncan McCargo is currently one of the leading scholars on Thai politics. He published several books on political reform, democratization, constitutionalism, Buddhism, media and the monarchy. His latest book, Tearing Apart the Land (2008), is about the crisis in the Malay Muslim region of Thailand. He also published a book on Vietnam, and studies Indonesia and comparative politics in the Asia-Pacific region.

Anthony Milner is a historian of Malaysia and Malay political culture, but also wrote on Australian-Asian Relations, Sumatran history, and Islam in Southeast Asia. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA) since 1995, and former Dean of Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU.

Frances Fox Piven is widely recognized as one of America's most thoughtful and provocative commentators on America's social welfare system. She taught at the Columbia University School of Social Work from 1966 to 1972. From 1972 to 1982 she was a professor of political science at Boston University. In 1982 she joined the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism. Over the course of her career, she has served on the boards of the ACLU and several other organizations. She was awarded many times by several professional associations, including the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the American Public Health Association, and more. She was President of the American Sociological Association in 2006-07.

Craig J Reynolds is a leading historian of Thailand who is very well known and highly respected among Thai scholars. He published extensively on cultural and intellectual history of Thailand and pre-modern Southeast Asia. Among his publications are Sedition in Thai History (2006) and a collection of his articles in Thai. He once served as the Director of the Thai Studies Center, a national project by the Australian government.

Anthony Reid is one of the most prolific historians and an authority of the early modern history of Southeast Asia. He wrote and edited dozens of books including the famous two volumes, "Southeast Asia int The Age of Commerce.” After his career at the Australian National University and at the Univesity of California- Los Angeles, he became the founding director of the Asia Research Institute in Singapore. Reid has been elected as a Corresponding Fellow at the prestigious British Academy on 17 July 2008.He also won the prestigious Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2002.

James C. Scott is one of the world’s leading scholars on agrarian studies, peasantry, subaltern people, and the upland ethnic minorities. His works have been widely influential across world areas and academic disciplines in social sciences and the humanities. Among his well known books are The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), Weapons of the Weak (1985), Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), and Seeing Like a State (1998). Scott served as Director, Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as president of the Association of Asian Studies in 1997-98.

 

Dr. Mohamed Suliman is a well-respected Sudanese scholar and author who lives in exile in Britain. He is the Chair of the Institute for African Alternatives in London which is a research organisation on African issues, in search of African solutions to Africa's problems, and to meet the needs of African information users working for sustainable development in the region. Dr. Suliman wrote several books about conflicts in Sudan, Dafur, and more.

David Szanton directed the International and Area Studies at University of California, Berkeley, throughout the 1990s when the study abroad programs in the UC system expanded tremendously. He also worked with the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council since 1970 in several projects for international and area studies, especially in Southeast Asia.

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah is a leading social anthropologist of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tamils, as well as the anthropology of religion and politics. He wrote several important books on Theravada Buddhism in Thailand, but later turns his interests to the role of competing religious and ethnic identities in Sri Lanka. He received several prestigious awards including the Balzan Prize and the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize. The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland awarded him its highest recognition, the Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture. He is also a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a title given to those who have "attained high international standing" in a discipline in the humanities or social sciences. He was also President of the Association for Asian Studies in 1989-90.

Nicholas Tapp is an expert in the ethnic minorities in mainland Southeast Asia and China, a leading scholar on the Hmong people. His very well known books are Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand (1989) and The Hmong of China: Context, Agency and the Imaginary(2002).

 

Carlyle Thayer is an acclaimed scholar and expert in politics and security of Southeast Asia, with noted career in teaching and research at several military academies including at the Royal Military College-Duntoon, University College, ADFA, the U.S. Defense Department’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, Deakin University, and Australian Defence College. He wrote extensively on Vietnams, terrorism in Southeast Asia, and multilateral security institutions in the Asia-Pacific. He was a former National Secretary of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (1996-97).

Gillian Triggs is an expert in international laws with publications energy and resources law, law of the sea, territorial sovereignty, jurisdiction and immunity, international criminal law, international environmental law and human rights. From 2005 to 2007 she was the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. In April 2007, she was appointed as the Dean of the University of Sydney Law School, the first Law School to be established in Australia, and is one of the most prestigious law schools in the country.

 

Andrew Walker has been working on cross-border trading links between Thailand, Laos and southern China, on issues of rural development, resource management and modernization in northern Thailand. He published several books and articles including The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, Burma and China (1999), Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (2008) and “The Rural Constitution and the Everyday Politics of Elections in Northern Thailand” (2008). He is the co-founder of the New Mandala blog on mainland Southeast Asia which has become popular among scholars of the region.

Immanuel Wallerstein is one of the best known scholars in the world by his famous “World Systems Theory”. He was visiting professor at universities worldwide, was awarded multiple honorary titles, intermittently served as Directeur d'études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and was president of the International Sociological Association between 1994 and 1998. He was the head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilization at Binghamton University until 2005 when he moved to Yale. In 2003 he received the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association.

 

Thomas Wallgren is a philosopher and an activist. He is an expert on Wittgenstein and has published, Transformative Philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the Democratic Spirit of Philosophy (2006). He also co-chair of the Finnish chapter of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (democracy forum), a coalition for comprehensive democracy and chairperson of the Network Institute for Global Democratization.

 

Michael Watts is a well known geographer with important contributions to political ecology and political economy of peasant societies in Africa and South Asia, especially the question of food security and mass poverty. He works with various development and philanthropic institutions, such as UNDP, the Ford Foundation, OXFAM, and NGOs in Africa. His recent publications include Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (2004) and Afflicted Powers (2005). He served as the Director of the Institute of International Studies at UC-Berkeley, which promotes research and training on transnational and global issues, and also the director of the Africa Studies Center, the Rotary Peace Fellows program, and the Development Studies Program.

Thongchai Winichakul is an intellectual and cultural historian of Thailand. His book, Siam Mapped, won the Harry Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies (1995). He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1994) and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (2003). Thongchai was among the student leaders who were detained for two years after the 1976 massacre in Bangkok.