Earlier this year Dr. Chris Suh, Assistant Professor of History, delivered a lecture for Brandeis University entitled “Between the ‘American Century’ and the ‘Asian Century’: Toward a New Paradigm for Understanding Racial Inequality.” Drawing on his 2023 book The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion (Oxford UP), Suh’s lecture addressed the influence of American geopolitical interests on Asian race relations as well as historical and contemporary racial tensions in the US. Student journalist Sophia De Lisi covered the lecture for the Justice, Brandeis’s independent student newspaper. Find a quote from her insightful article below, along with the full piece: “Professor Chris Suh explains how American geopolitics inform Asian race-relations.”

“Like all books, my book is a product of its time,” Professor Suh said. “I was writing it in the late 2010s, and the early 2020s, where there was a lot of anxiety about whether U.S. international dominance was finally coming to an end.” He explained that the second half of the 20th Century was characterized by the United States’ Cold War victory against the Soviet Union, and that this victory gave the U.S. the foundation necessary to lead an “unipolar world order.” Suh referenced Henry Luce’s essay, “The American Century” to expand on this period of global dominance that the U.S. had built over the 20th century.

Suh explained that despite the U.S.’ past successes, the 21st Century has seen potential for Asian countries — given their rising economic, military and political power — to overtake the lead that the United States has held for the last century. He expanded on the Biden administration’s current foreign policy strategy in Asia, stating that it is “very much a resumption” of former President Barack Obama’s administration policy, known as “Pivot to Asia” and “Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific.” Suh said that the intent of these policies was to both reduce tensions in the Middle East after the Iraq and Afghanistan War and give the U.S. a way to enter “strategic alliances” with Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand “in response to the rise of the [People’s Republic of China.]”