About the Speakers

Ambassador Thomas Hubbard is chairman of The Korea Society and senior director at McLarty Associates, where he specializes in Asian affairs. A career foreign-service officer for nearly forty years, he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2001 to 2004, and before that as Ambassador to the Philippines from 1996 to 2000. He served seven years in Japan and was deputy chief of mission and acting ambassador in Malaysia. He held key Washington postings, including assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs. Ambassador Hubbard was a principal negotiator of the 1994 Agreed Framework aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and headed the first senior-level U.S. government delegation to North Korea. He was also President Clinton’s envoy to promote human rights and democracy in Burma. Ambassador Hubbard sits on numerous advisory boards. He received his BA in political science from the University of Alabama and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama.

Sheila A. Smith, an expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, is senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Dr. Smith directed CFR’s New Regional Security Architecture for Asia Program and currently leads a project on China and India as Emerging Powers: Challenge or Opportunity for the United States? She joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Dr. Smith was on the faculty of the Department of International Relations at Boston University (1994-2000), and on the staff of the Social Science Research Council (1992-1993). She has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus. Dr. Smith earned her PhD and MA degrees from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She regularly contributes to CFR’s Asia Unbound blog (blogs.cfr.org/asia).