Emanuel Pastreich (born October 16, 1964) is an American professor, director, and polyglot who is an international relations expert and serves as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Tokyo, Seoul and Hanoi. He is also a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation where he strives to solve geopolitical tensions in Northeast Asia. Pastreich was briefly an independent candidate for president of the United States 2020. In September 2023, Pastreich officially became a candidate for the Green Party’s presidential nomination in September, 2024 but had to abandon the campaign because of a failure to gain financial support within the party. Trained as a scholar of Asian studies, Pastreich writes on both East Asian classical literature and current issues in international relations and technology in multiple languages.
He is fluent in Chinese, Japanese and Korean and has stressed the importance of Asia for the United States in his political writings.
Early life and education
Pastreich was born in Nashville, Tennessee on October 16, 1964. He attended Lowell High School in San Francisco, graduating in 1983. He began his studies at Yale University, graduating with a B.A. in Chinese in 1987. He studied abroad at National Taiwan University in 1985. Pastreich obtained an M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Tokyo in 1991, where he wrote the master's dissertation entirely in Japanese. He then received a Ph.D. in East Asian studies from Harvard University in 1998.
Work
Pastreich is president of The Asia Institute, a think tank that conducts research on the intersection of international relations, the environment and technology in East Asia. He also serves as senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation, where he devotes his work to resolving tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
He served as professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he taught Japanese culture and was a researcher at the Program in Arms Control & Domestic & International Security, George Washington University, Solbridge International School of Business, and the College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University. He also worked as advisor for international relations to the governor of Chungnam Province (2007-2008) and conducted numerous research projects with Korean science institutes.
Pastreich’s close relations with South Korea began after he was dismissed in 2004 from his position as assistant professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was offered a position at the S. Korean embassy in Washington DC. He served as the director of the KORUS House (2005-2007), a think tank for international relations at the embassy, and as the editor-in-chief of Dynamic Korea, a journal of the Korean Foreign Ministry that introduces Korean culture and society.
His best-known book is I Shall Fear No Evil (2020) which consists of a series of major speeches from his 2020 presidential campaign. The speeches touch on economic, security and social problems within the context of America’s historical evolution, drawing on wisdom gathered from Western and Eastern political philosophy to address current social contradictions. His other writings in English include the books The Novels of Park Jiwon: Translations of Overlooked Worlds, a collection of the novels of a Korean pre-modern author, The Visible Vernacular: Vernacular Chinese and the Emergence of a Literary Discourse on Popular Narrative in Edo Japan , a study of the reception of Chinese vernacular literature in Japan, Earth Management: A Dialogue on Ancient Korean Wisdom and its Lessons for a New Earth, and his autobiographical novel Wrestling with Shadows.
His eight books in Korean include Life is a Matter of Direction, not Speed: A Robinson Crusoe in Korea, a description of his experiences living in Korea; Scholars of the World Speak out About Korea's Future, a series of interviews with leading scholars such as Francis Fukuyama, Larry Wilkerson and Noam Chomsky about contemporary Korea; A Republic of Korea that Koreans do not understand, an assessment of Korea’s native traditions and their value that was praised by former President Park Geun-hye and designated as a national security book by the Korean Government; No Fake Unification, a blistering critique of plans to push through a unification of the Korean Peninsula led by multinational corporations; and Earth Management: Finding the Answer in the Hongik Tradition, a consideration of the importance of traditional culture in an age of ecological crisis.