Prof Carlyle A. Thayer is a political scientist who has specialized in domestic Vietnamese politics for over four decades. His research and publications have focused primarily on leadership and decision-making in the Vietnam Communist Party, the functions of the National Assembly, and the domestic role of the Vietnamese military. He has written about Vietnamese boat people and the treatment of the ethnic Chinese (or Hoa) minority in the 1970s. Since 1991, Thayer’s research and publications have focused on the emergence of civil society, political dissent, pro-democracy activism, political networking and the role of the Internet, religious freedom, Catholic Church-state land disputes, and the role of the state security apparatus in repressing these groups. In 2001 Thayer testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; he regularly briefs Australian parliamentary delegations prior to visiting Vietnam.

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Email: jkurlant@hotmail.com

Joshua Kurlantzick is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he studies Asian politics, rights, and economics. He also has done extensive work on asylum cases for nationals from Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, China, Indonesia, and other Northeast, Southeast and South Asian nations. His work has included analyses of the political environment, judiciary, and state of political and civil rights in many South, Southeast, and Northeast Asian countries, as well as assessments of criminal syndicates and trafficking in these states. He has worked with more than ten U.K. firms and multiple U.S. firms on nearly thirty asylum cases. He is the author of five books on Southeast Asian politics, institutions, rights, and economics. Kurlantzick also has been a Visiting Scholar in the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Columnist for Time, a Special Correspondent for The New Republic, an Asian Correspondent for The Economist, and a Contributing Writer for Mother Jones, among other positions. He has twenty years of experience covering events in Asia, and writing about rights issues in Asia, for a range of periodicals including The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, the London Review of Books, The Washington Monthly, The Washington Quarterly,  and Foreign Policy, among others.

Email: thvu@uoregon.edu

Dr Tuong Vu (PhD, Berkeley) is an Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian politics in the Department of Political  Science at the University of Oregon, and co-editor in chief of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies.  He has published several books and articles on Vietnam. Originally from Vietnam, Vu has served as a court expert on contemporary Vietnamese politics, laws, economy, and society.

Email : zachary.abuza@gmail.com

Dr. Zachary Abuza is a Professor at the National War College, in Washington, DC, where he focuses on Southeast Asian politics and security issues, including governance, insurgencies, democratization and human rights. He has just completed a manuscript, a comparative analysis of the peace processes in Aceh, Mindanao and southern Thailand, to be published in September 2016 by Rowman Littlefield. In 2015, he authored a major study on the media and civil society development in Vietnam for the National Endowment for Democracy. He is the author of six books, five monographs and numerous articles and book chapters on politics and security issues in Southeast Asia.