OPPORTUNITY: Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture

Clarke Program Fellow

Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture, Law School

Cornell University

Meridian 180, a new community of prominent intellectuals and policy makers in Asia, the United States and around the world interested in new ways of thinking about law and markets broadly conceived, seeks to hire a Fellow at its center of operations at Cornell University, in Ithaca New York beginning no later than September 1, 2014. The aim of Meridian 180 is to generate new paradigms and solutions for the next generation of transpacific relations. The Fellow will play an integral part in this mission through translation, research, and outreach to wider public and policy communities.

Meridian 180 is a project of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture at the Cornell Law School. It is a non-profit, non-political project funded through private donations and with support from Cornell Law School. It is comprised of Senior Fellows and of Members in law, the academy, private practice and policy circles who meet regularly via an on-line platform supporting multilingual conversations, as well as periodically in face to face conferences. Ideas that emerge from these conversations are then incubated and developed, with the help of the Fellow, into forms in which they can make a difference in each individual society—ranging from policy papers to academic books, blog entries, and individual conversations with policy makers.

The Fellow will be responsible for the day to day maintenance and translation of on-line dialogues. He or she will also (1) work with other Fellows to draft, create, and translate various elements of the Meridian 180 project, (2) help organize conferences and workshops in the US and the Asia Pacific Region, (3) administer various day-to-day aspects of the project, and (4) take initiative, in coordination with the Director and other members of the team, to develop new features and projects to further the goals of the Meridian 180 project.

Duties and responsibilities (with approximate % of work time):

• Day to day translation of on-line dialogues on meridian-180.org (30%): The Fellow will provide on-line translations from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese of participants’ interventions on the website. This will be a daily task and translations typically must be completed within a 24 hour period.
• Work with other Fellows and Meridian 180 members to produce publications emerging from on-line conversations (25%): The Fellow will work with other Fellows, Meridian 180 members, and other Meridian 180 staff to write/edit/research/produce the final versions of conversations that will be made publicly available, either on meridian-180.org or in other venues (in electronic format or in print – policy papers, books, op-eds, etc.).
• Work with the Director on strategic planning (10%): The Fellow will help develop new research and outreach initiatives for both meridian-180.org and the Clarke Program. The Fellow will help identify emerging scholars whose work should be promoted and/or included on meridian-180.org and more generally via the Clarke Program.
• Conferences and Website Maintenance (15%): The Fellow will work on larger Clarke Program projects, related or not to meridian180.org. In particular, he or she will help with the organization of the conferences which, each year, will convene Meridian 180 members to further and promote the ideas developed in on-line conversations. The Fellow will also take initiative in managing the various features on Meridian 180 website.
• Individual research (20%, i.e. 8h/week) The Fellow is also expected to pursue his or her own individual academic research and writing leading toward publications and conference presentations. It may be possible to take this research time in one block during a portion of the summer break.

Qualifications and requirements

•  law degree (JD or LLB) or PhD in the humanities or social sciences in hand by July 1, 2014.
•  fluency in English and Chinese. Some level of familiarity with Japanese and/or Korean a plus (but not necessary).
• experience as translator or interpreter.
•  must be comfortable with basic computer and internet operations; familiarity with programming (Drupal, PHP, commonspot) a plus (but not necessary)
• entrepreneurial initiative; independence, ability to work in teams, maturity, writing skills, research/scholarly experience, organization, focus, interest in the future of the East Asia-US relationship, familiarity with the Chinese academia, willingness to work on administrative task such as updating databases, communicating with institutions within Cornell University, and other miscellaneous day-to-day tasks, willingness to learn new skills, particularly in relation to computer and internet technology.

Application procedure:

Interested applicants should submit a resume, cover letter and writing sample by December 13, 2013 to Donna Hastings at dkh25@cornell.edu.