Kent E. Calder currently serves as Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs and International Research Cooperation at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, as well as Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies there. He is also the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of East Asian Studies at SAIS. Calder is the author of 12 major books and numerous scholarly and popular articles. Crisis and Compensation received the Ohira Memorial Prize and the Arisawa Memorial Prize of the American Association of University Publishers. Pacific Defense was the first publication by an American to receive the Mainichi Grand Prix in Asia-Pacific Studies for its analysis of how economic change is transforming the U.S.-East Asia security equation. Calder’s most recent book, Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration was published in 2019. His works have been translated into five foreign languages, including Japanese, Korean,Chinese, Portuguese, and Mongolian.
History
Calder served from 1997-2001 as Special Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, working under Walter Mondale, Thomas Foley, and briefly Howard Baker. He has also held staff positions with the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, serving as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1990. Calder joined Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2003, serving as director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies ; Asia Programs ; and as Vice Dean. Calder taught for two decades at Princeton University, where he holds emeritus standing, after teaching for four years at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. At Harvard, he was the first Executive Director of the university’s Program on US-Japan Relations, working with Edwin O. Reischauer and Hisashi Owada. A specialist on Japanese trade and industrial policy in his early years, Calder focused on how party politics and socio-economic structure affect functioning of the Japanese political economy. From 1990 to 2003, after receiving tenure at Princeton, Calder directed the university's Program on U.S.-Japan Relations in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Education
Calder received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1979, where he worked under the director of Edwin Reischauer. Apart from the Ohira, Arisawa, and Mainichi Asia-Pacific Prizes for his academic work,Calder also received the Academia Prize of the Japan Society of Scholars ; the Eagle on the Sun Award of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry ; and the Urasenke Tea Culture Prize. The last of these was a special award for his efforts in promoting international tea-culture diplomacy. In 2014, Calder was also awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese government for his contribution to the development of Japan studies in the United States and the enhancement of trans-Pacific understanding.
Selected publications
Books
Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration
Circles of Compensation: Economic Growth and the Globalization of Japan.
Singapore: Smart City, Smart State.
Asia in Washington: Exploring the Penumbra of Transnational Power.
The New Continentalism: Energy and Twenty-First Century Eurasian Geopolitics.
