Daniel Sneider in the Baltic Sea

A lecturer in international policy and East Asian studies at Stanford University, Daniel Sneider has focused his studies on U.S. foreign policy and the management of alliance relations during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. His focus is on Northeast Asia, the foreign policy of Japan and Korea, and the formation of wartime historical memory in Asia.

Sneider came to academia from a long career as a journalist, as a foreign correspondent and a foreign policy columnist writing about broad global issues. His career as a foreign correspondent took him to India, Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea and to the former Soviet Union. He served as Moscow Bureau Chief for The Christian Science Monitor, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union, the revolts of the Soviet republics, and the end of Soviet Communism. He traveled widely in the former Soviet Union, including to all the Baltic republics and extensive travel to Ukraine, where he was witness to the struggles for independence.

At Stanford, Sneider conducted research on regionalism in East Asia, a project that included work in Moscow and Vladivostok. Sneider’s academic work on the formation of historical memory about World War Two has led him to comparative study of the formation of war memory in Europe, including research visits to Poland and Germany. He is currently finishing a book on the management of relations with Korea and Japan during the Cold War.

The son of a diplomat, Sneider lived in Japan and elsewhere in Asia for much of his childhood. He is a frequent contributor to several major U.S. periodicals, as well as a leading Japanese magazine, and serves as a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America where he makes regular contributions to the Institute’s Peninsula blog. He will be accompanied by his wife, Elisabeth Rubinfien, a former journalist and teacher, who worked as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Moscow.

During our program, Sneider will discuss a wide range of issues, including the history of the Baltic region as an arena for struggle among many nations; the struggle for freedom of the Baltic republics; Poland’s complex history between Germany and Russia; and the impact of the Ukraine war on the geopolitics of the Baltic region and northern Europe.

• Lecturer and associate faculty member, Center for East Asian Studies and affiliate of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

• Former associate director for research, and director, the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project and the Nationalism and Regionalism project, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

• Former national/foreign editor, The Mercury News; former syndicated columnist, Knight Ridder; Moscow bureau chief, 1990-1994 and Tokyo correspondent, 1985-1990, The Christian Science Monitor

• Contributor, Toyo Keizai, East Asia Forum, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Slate, National Interest, International Economy, and Christian Science Monitor

• MPA, public administration, 1985, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

• BA, East Asian history, 1973, Columbia University