November Shannon Meet Up

Jerome Keating passes around the news about the next meet up....and some important news about his role in raising Taiwan's image overseas.

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To all,

I am sending this a bit early because I will be out of the country at the end of October and wish to have arrangements made before I leave. Our November meeting will be on the first Saturday of November, (November 3rd) from 10 am to 12 noon at Shannons.

Thanks to the recommendation and contact from Linda Arrigo, our speaker will be Tibetan Khedroob Thondup. Khedroob is an elected member of the Tibetan Parliament in exile and also the President of the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center in Darjeeling (an NGO with 500 Tibetans). This second position keeps him traveling back and forth between Taiwan and India. His topic will be Tibetan matters; it promises to be a topic rich with material.

As I said, I will be out of the country for the last two weeks of October in Europe where I have the honor to be one of five spokespersons for Taiwan (cf. my attached agenda and who I will be with); This is the reason I have had to make announcements early.

Everything has been set with Shannon's but if for some reason Khedroob is called out of the country early, (he is set to go back to India in mid-November) I will ask Syd to fill us in on his adventures with movie moguls etc. If Syd cannot make it, then I will fill people in on my trip and experiences, but we will have a meeting on November 3rd at Shannons.

The Shannon
No. 6 Dun Hua N. Rd (2772-0948)
This is just south of the corner of Nanking E. Rd. and Dun Hua N. Rd. on the west side of the street. [MT -- across from the concert venue, next to Dan Ryan's]

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Jerome is going on a long trip to Europe. What's happening is a seminar series on Taiwan...

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Seminar Series in Europe

Agenda October 17th through 30th:

During the last two weeks of October, a team of five speakers/scholars will be touring major European capitals and cities. The city sequence that the team will follow will be Brussels, Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and London. In each city there will be:

1.. Closed-door sessions with European foreign ministry officials and parliament members. These sessions will be coordinated by the local Taiwan Representative Offices, which will arrange for, and host, the respective appointments. Thus MOFA is fully in charge of all closed-door sessions.

2.. Open-door seminars with scholars and members of the news media. These seminars are part of a longer-term strategy to work with the European think tanks regarding the Taiwan issue. These seminars will be organized by local think-tanks/academic organizations in coordination with the Taiwan Representative offices.

The five speakers and brief backgrounds are:

Prof. June Teufel-Dreyer. Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. Professor Dreyer has done field research in China, Taiwan, and Japan. Professor Dreyer has served as Chief Far East Specialist for the Library of Congress and as Asia Advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations. She has published numerous books and articles on such topics as ethnic minorities in China, the Chinese military, Asia-Pacific security issues. Prof. Dreyer also served on the Congressionally-mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2001 through 2005. Prof. Dreyer is a graduate from Wellesley College, and has a Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard, and joint Ph.D. in Government and East Asian Studies from Harvard.

Prof. Jerome F. Keating. Associate Professor of Language and Literature, Huafan University, Taiwan. Prof. Keating is an international training consultant, educator, and writer, who has been living and working in Taiwan for the past twenty years. He arrived in Taiwan in 1988, shortly after Martial Law was lifted. He has taught at Chinese Culture University and National Taipei University. An acute observer of life and politics he has over 150 articles on Taiwan life, scenes, and culture published in a variety of magazines and newspapers. Books he has written include Taiwan, the Struggles of a Democracy (2006) and the co-authored book Island in the Stream, a Quick Case Study of Taiwan's Complex History (3rd edition 2005). His website http://zen.sandiego.edu:8080/Jerome contains some 260 essays and commentary on Taiwan, its neighbors and its politics. Prof Keating is a graduate of Notre Dame University (Philosophy and Literature), holds two Masters--Notre Dame Univ.(Literature) and Holy Cross College (Theology) and an inter-disciplinary Ph.D. from Syracuse University (Humanities and Literature) as well as Univ. of Michigan (TOEFL Certificate) and Univ. of Texas at Dallas (MBA coursework).

Mr. Stephen Yates. Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. Mr. Yates served in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from April 2001 to September 2005. He was deeply involved in the development and execution of U.S foreign policy priorities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Mr. Yates was Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation after serving in the Department of Defense. Mr. Yates is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He is a graduate from the University of Maryland, and received a Master’s degree in China Studies from the Johns Hopkins University (Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies -- SAIS).”

Prof. Wen-yen Chen. Executive Director of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in Washington DC. Until 2004, he was a professor of Psychology at the University of DC in Washington. He has been involved in the Taiwan democratization movement since 1979. He served as president of both the North American Taiwanese Professors Association and the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. In his capacity as the president of these two leading organizations, he has been promoting and supporting Taiwan's democracy for the past 25 years. He was appointed by President Chen as national policy adviser in 2000. Prof. Chen is a graduate from National Taiwan University, and has a Ph.D. from The City University of New York.

Dr. Gerrit van der Wees. Chief Editor of Taiwan Communiqué. Mr. Van der Wees is a Dutchman with a long involvement in Taiwan’s democratic movement. As chief editor of Taiwan Communiqué (1980 – present) he was a close observer of Taiwan’s transition to democracy. From 1982 through 2005, he was a Dutch government civil servant, and served as a diplomat in Washington (1994-2000). Since 2005, he has been a Senior Political Advisor at the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in Washington DC, responsible for contacts with the US Senate. He is a graduate from the University of Delft, and has an inter-disciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle.

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[Taiwan]