Contested Legitimacies and Governance in Burma/Myanmar

Mr. Selig Harrison is Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of the Century Foundation’s Program on the United States and the Future of Korea. He is also adjunct professor of Asian studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Mr. Harrison has specialized in East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar. His contact with Korea includes an interview with Kim Il-sung in 1972 and leading a Carnegie Endowment delegation to Pyongyang in 1992 that learned for the first time that North Korea had reprocessed plutonium. He has written six books, including Korea Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement (2002).

Mr. Joel Wit is Senior Fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He works on Northeast Asian security issues as well as weapons proliferation. He served for 15 years in the Department of State and most recently was the coordinator for the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. Mr. Wit has served as senior advisor to Robert L. Gallucci, ambassador at-large in charge of policy towards North Korea, where he worked on U.S. strategy to resolve the 1994 nuclear crisis, and has served in a variety of positions, primarily in the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) talks and the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). Mr. Wit received an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Bucknell University.