The 2009 Bernard Schwartz Fellows

Nobuyoshi Sakajiri has been a senior diplomatic correspondent at the China General Bureau of Asahi Shimbun since September 2005. He joined the Asahi Shimbun in 1989. In 1994 he was selected to participate in the Asahi Shimbun’s foreign-language training program. After a year of Chinese studies at the University of Sichuan, China, he was assigned to cover Hong Kong from 1996 to 1998, before and after its handover to China. In Tokyo, Nobu served as a staff reporter at the Foreign News Department and for two years also covered social security matters in Japan.

In Spring 2001, he was selected as a Jefferson Fellow, participating in an exchange of US and Asia-Pacific journalists in Honolulu, Hawaii sponsored by The East-West Center. From April 2002 to August 2005, he served as a diplomatic correspondent in Washington, DC and mainly covered the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Capitol Hill. During his tenure there he filed exclusive stories on the North Korean nuclear crisis, US-Sino relations, and US-Japan relations on the front page of Asahi Shimbun, and his stories have been republished by international media including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN. As a correspondent in Washington, DC and Beijing, he has covered all the rounds of the six-party talks in Beijing since August 2003.

In 2007, Nobu received the Vaughn Ueda Prize, which is regarded as Japan's Pulitzer Prize, for his reporting from Washington, DC and Beijing. He is the co-author of the book Honryu Chugoku—‘The Torrential China’ (Asahi Shimbun Press, 1998), which appeared daily on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun from 1996 to 1998, Eagle and the Dragon—Unknown Relations between the United States and China, (Heibonsha, 2001), and Chasing Nuclear—Terror and the World Shaken by the Nuclear Black Market (Asahi Shimbun Press, 2005).

Nobu graduated from Sophia University, Tokyo with a B.A. in Portuguese in 1989, and is based at the Asia Society's Washington DC Center, where his work will focus on Northeast Asian security and China's domestic economic, political, and social issues in conjunction with global affairs.

Simon S.C. Tay is Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, a non-governmental think tank that represents Singapore in the influential ASEAN-ISIS network of regional think tanks. Simon (LL.B Hons from the National University of Singapore and LL.M from Harvard) teaches international law at the National University of Singapore. Since July 2002, he has been chairman of the National Environment Agency, the country's major agency for environmental protection and public health.

In Fall 2003, Simon was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy. He was selected for three terms as a Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament (1997–2001) and has led public consultations on Singapore in the 21st century, the national concept plan, and the Singapore Green Plan 2012. In 2006, he received the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat, PBM), a Singaporean National Day award.

Simon was a Fulbright scholar (1993-94) at Harvard Law School, where he won the Laylin Prize for the best thesis in international law. In 2000, the World Economic Forum (Davos) named him a "global leader of tomorrow," and in 2002, he was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship, one of Singapore’s first non-governmental recipients of that award.

An Asia Society International Council member, Simon began his tenure in January 2009 at the Asia Society's New York headquarters, where his work focuses on issues related to US-Asia relations, climate change and the environment in Asia, and political and economic changes in ASEAN and East Asian countries.

Current Bernard Schwartz Fellows
2008 Bernard Schwartz Fellows
2007 Bernard Schwartz Fellows