The Second SKKU International Conference, “Why Cooperate Now?”

- Joined with: ‘A Natural History of Human Morality’ Michael Tomasello, 

‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ Jared Diamond, ‘Animal Liberation’ Peter Singer, etc.

- Prospect on Origin and Change of Human Cooperation

- Suggestion of Solutions to Enhance Cooperation and Overcome Conflicts

SKKU hosts the Second SKKU International Conference (http://cooperationnow.kr/en/) under the theme of ‘Cooperation, Why now?’. This is the second conference since the previous first conference held on January 14 under the theme of ‘An Age of Upheaval’.

In this conference, Korean/English webpage has been established to maximize the publicity effect and induced universal public participation. This event will be broadcasted live through the SKKU Youtube channel with a Korean simultaneous interpretation.

This conference was planned to search for intervention that can recover the sense of cooperation and communication in global conflicts and extreme competition such as deglobalization, global inequality, political polarization, the US-China Trade War, the Supply Chain Crisis, and the recent Russia-Ukraine War. The event will proceed with the presentation and discussion from renowned scholars including Professor Michael Tomasello (SKKU College Distinguished Chair Professor), author of "Origins of Morality", world-renowned evolutionary psychologist, Professor Jared Diamond (SKKU College Distinguished Chair Professor), author of "Guns, Germs, and Iron", and Professor Peter Singer (SKKU College Distinguished Chair Professor), a practical ethicist and the author of Animal Liberation, widely known among examinees.

The first keynote presenter, Professor Michael Tomasello, will emphasize the cooperative socialization of humans since their early childhood, showing features of mutual helping and cooperation, unlike primitives, based on the life-long experiments on chimpanzees, baby gestures, and languages. Professor Cecilia Ridgeway (Sociology, Emerita of Stanford University) who will join in the discussion session will discuss why conflicts and prejudices appear in the process of human action adjustment and how this can block cooperative natures.

In the second session, Professor Jared Diamond will explain why East Asia developed to be more cooperative unlike Europe/US by looking into the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago and the emergence of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’. Professor Peter Singer who will step up in the discussion will discuss how human’s practical ethics and altruistic natures have developed and how this strengthened donation culture and drive. Professor So-Jeong Park (Department of Confucian Studies, Eastern Philosophy and Korean Philosophy), will discuss about the possibility of deriving cooperation by overcoming the dichotomy that views the Eastern/Western world as individualism and collectivism.

In the third session held in the afternoon, Professor Maurice Obstfeld from the University of California, Berkeley, will discuss about the tactics and methods of future global financial cooperation focused on the possibility of the financial crisis, deglobalization, and US-China trade wars under the theme of ‘global dollars period and global financial cooperation’. In this discussion session, Dr. Cyn-Young Park (Asian Development Bank Director of Regional Cooperation and Integration Division) will participate in the discussion, and the semiconductor field expert, Professor Seok-Joon Kwon (SKKU Department of Chemical Engineering) will focus on the global supply chain crisis.

In the fourth session, Professor Ji-Hyun An from Samsung Seoul Hospital will have a discussion about how human cooperation can contribute to social and psychological well-being and Professor Ju-Hee Cho from Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology (SAIHST) will share cross-border clinical research and education cooperation examples. Professor Won-Mok Shim (SKKU Department of Biomedical Engineering) will step up in the discussion, talking about the possibility of human cooperation and its limits focusing on cognitive neuroscience, perception, and recognition.

□ The Second SKKU International Conference Program

○ Date: 2022 October 28 (Fri.) 09:00-16:40
○ Venue: 600th Anniversary Hall 3rd Floor Conference Hall 1, SKKU Humanities and Social Sciences Campus (Online Live Broadcast)

○ SKKU International Conference Webpage: http://cooperationnow.kr/en/

○ YouTube Live Broadcast Link (ENG): https://youtu.be/Bof8Gu5fpUY

○ Conference Themes and Speakers

□ SKKU International Conference Guest Speaker Profile

○ Michael Tomasello (Speaker)

Michael Tomasello is a James F. Bonk Distinguished Chair Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University and a distinguished chair professor at SKKU. His major research interests include processes of social cognition, social learning, cooperation, and communication from developmental, comparative, and cultural perspectives. He focuses on processes of shared intentionality, empirical research mainly with human children from 1 to 4 years of age and great apes. His recent books include <Origins of Human Communication>, <Why We Cooperate>, <A Natural History of Human Thinking>, and <A Natural History of Human Morality>. For his career achievements, Tomasello has received numerous honors, including the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences' Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science, the British Academy's Wiley Prize in Psychology, and the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Tomasello is the emeritus director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology as well as Honorary Professor Leipzig University since 1999. 

○ Cecilia L. Ridgeway (Discussant)

Cecilia L. Ridgeway is the Lucie Stern Professor of Social Sciences, Emerita, in the sociology department at Stanford university. She is particularly interested in the role that social hierarchies in everyday social relations play in the larger processes of stratification and inequality in a society. Much of her research focuses on interpersonal status hierarchies, which are hierarchies of esteem and influence, and the significance of these hierarchies for inequalities based on gender, race, and social class. One of her ongoing research focuses is the role of interactional processes, including status processes, in preserving gender inequality despite major changes in the socioeconomic organization of society. Her publications include "Status: Why Is It Everywhere? Why Does It Matter?" and "Framed By Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World". She has received the Outstanding Recent Contribution Award at Social Psychology Section of the American Sociological Association, Outstanding Reference Source Award for distinguished career contributions to the study of gender at American Sociological Association. She served as the President of the American Sociological Association in 2012-2013.

○ Emily Ryo (Discussant)
Emily Ryo is a professor of law at the USC Gould School of Law. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and practiced law at the international law firm of Cleay, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton. Her current research focuses on immigration, criminal justice, legal sttitudes and legal noncompliance, and procedural justice. She approaches these issues through innovative interdisciplinary lenses, using diverse quantitative and qualitative methods. As an empirical legal scholar, she has published widely in both leading sociology and law journals, including American Sociological Review and Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (Forthcoming). She has been awarded the ABF/JPB Access to Justice Fellowship and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to support her scholarship. She is the recipient of the 2021 William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award.

○ Jared Diamond (Speaker)
Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) and a distinguished chair professor at SKKU, known for his breadth of interests, which involves conducting research and teaching in three other fields: the biology of New Guinea birds, digestive physiology, and conservation biology. His major research interests are geography and human society, and biogeography. He is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author of five best-selling books, translated into 38 languages, about human societies and human evolution: <Guns, Germs, and Steel>,<Collapse>, <Why Is Sex Fun?>, <The Third Chimpanzee>, and <The World until Yesterday>. His most recent book is <Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis>. His prized and honors include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a director of World Wildlife Fund/U.S. and of Conservation International. As a biological explorer, his most widely publicized finding was his rediscovery, at the top of New Guinea's remote Foja Mountains, of the long-lost Golden-fronted Bowerbird, previously known only from four specimens found in a Paris feather shop in 1895.

○ Peter Singer (Discussant)

Peter Singer is an Australian moral phiolsopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a distinguished chair professor at SKKU. He is widely known for his writings such as <Practical Ethics> and <Animal Liberation> and his lectures on <The Most Good You Can Do>. in addition, he has published more than 50 books, including <The Ethics of What We Eat>, <Why Vegan?> and <Ethics in the Real World>, and has been translated into 25 languages. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. In his writing <Practical Ethics>, he argued for the practice of animal rights, abortion, and polarization by incorporating utilitarianism into specific and everyday issues. In 2012 Singer was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation's highest civic honor. He founded the charity The Life You Can Save and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. In 2021, he was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture.

○ So-Jeong Park (Discussant)
So-Jeong Park is an associate professor of Confucian Studies, Eastern Philosophy and Korean Philosophy at SKKU. She studied and taught at National University of Singapore(NUS) and Nanyang Technological University(NTU) in Singapore, and currently studying with interest in Korean philosophy and comparative philosophy. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal published by the Korean Philosophy Association with 70-year history. In addition, she is the center director of the K-Academic Expansion Center, which is in charge of producing and spreading global educational content for Korean Philosophy and Culture(IKPC). "Introduction to Korean Philosophy", a course that introduces Korean philosophy, is being taught on a global MOOC platform called 'Coursera'.

○ Maurice Obstfeld (Speaker)
Maurice Obstfeld is a professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His main areas of study are international economy and macroeconomics and current research is dynamic open-economy models with nominal rigidities, exchange rates and international financial crises, global capital-market integration in historical perspective. He is also the co-author of two leading textbooks on international economics, International Economics with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz and Foundations of International Macroeconomics with Kenneth Rogoff as well as more than 100 research articles on exchange rates, international financial crises, global capital markets, and monetary policy. In 2014-2015 he was a Member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers as lead macroeconomist, and from 2015-2018 he served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Before that, he served as an honorary adviser to the Bank of Japan's Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is active as a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Most recently, he has joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C., as a nonresident senior fellow. Among his honors are the Frank Graham Lecture at Princeton, the inaugural Mundell-Fleming Lecture of the International Monetary Fund, the Bernhard Harms Prize and Lecture of the Kiel Institute for World Economy, the L.K. Jha Memorial Lecture at the Reserve Bank of India, and the Richard T. Ely Lecture of the American Economic Association.

○ Cyn-Young Park (Discussant)
Cyn-Young Park is Director of the Regional Cooperation and Integration Division in the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department of the Asian Development Bank(ADB). In her current capacity, she manages a teamof economists to examine economic and policy issues related to regional cooperation and integration(RCI) and develop strategies and approaches to support RCI. During her progressive career within ADB, she has been a main author and contributor to ADB's major publications including Asian Development Outlook(ADB's flagship publication), Asian Economic Integration Report, Asia Capital Markets Monitor, Asia Economic Monitor, Asia Bond Monitor, and ADB Country Diagnostic Study Series. She has also participated in various global and regional forums including the G20 Development Working Group, Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN), ASEAN+3, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC), and Asia-Europe Meeting(ASEM). She has written and lectured extensively about the Asian economy and financial markets. Her work has been published in peer reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Financial Stability, the Journal of Futures Markets, the Review of Income and Wealth, and the World Economy. Prior to joining the ADB, she served as Economist(1999-2002) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD), where she contributed to the OECD Economic Outlook. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. She holds a bachelor degree in International Economics from Seoul National University.

○ Seok-Joon Kwon (Discussant)
Seok-Joon Kwon is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at SKKU. His research interests include multiscale/multiphysics modeling and simulation related to smart chemical processes and material design, next-generation semiconductor materials and process technologies, information and signal theory/simulation, self-assembly/self-organization-based pattern formation, nanophotonics, and plasmonics. In Korea Institute of Science and Technology(KIST), he served as a researcher at the Material Research Division, a senior researcher at the Advanced Materials Research Division, and was awarded the 'KIST Young Fellow' for promising new researchers.

○ Ji-hyun An (Speaker)
Ji-hyun An is a professor of psychiatry Samsung Medical Center. She graduated from SKKU School of Medicine in 2013. She worked as an intern at Samsung Medical Center in 2015 and a resident at Samsung Medical Center in 2018. Currently, she is a clinical lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Samsung Medical Center. The main fields are cancer patient mental health, employee stress management, depression and mood disorders, and elderly mental illness. She is a full member of the Korean Medical Association and the Korean Neuropsychiatric Association.

○ Ju-Hee Cho (Speaker)
Ju-Hee Cho is a trained behavior scientist and epidemiologist. Her primary research interests are the psycho-social problems caused by cancer and its treatment. She is leading several qualitative and quantitative observational studies and clinical trials to find out the needs of cancer patients and their families, as well as to develop and implement the education programs both in clinic and in communities. As part of her work, she has had to develop or validate a variety of measuring tools for survivorship and health-related quality of life for cancer survivors in Korea and other Asian countries. She is also one of the co-Pls of the Kangbuk Samsung Cohort Study, a collaboration between the Kangbuk Samsung Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to evaluate risk factors for chronic disease and to understand the natural history of disease in a cohort of over 400,000 Korean men and women with detailed health exam data. In this cohort, she is particularly interested in identifying novel psychosocial risk factors of cancer and its progression. She is currently the Director of Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Cancer Education Center at the Samsung Comprehensive Cancer Center, SKKU School of Medicine, Seoul Korea and the Chair of the Department of Clinical Research Design and Evaluation at SAIHST, SKKU.

○ Won-Mok Shim (Discussant)
Won-Mok Shim is an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at SKKU. She obtained Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University and later worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard University, MIT, and as an assistant professor at Dartmouth College. Her research interests are cognitive neuroscience, perception and cognition, memory, and human fMRI.

○ Jeong-Woo Koo (Moderator)
Jeong-Woo Koo is a professor of sociology and Director of the Center for Human Rights and International Development at SKKU. Heis the author of an award-winning book (Korean), Human Rights as Sources of Discrimination. He is a recipient of the 2019 Justice Minister's Award, the 2017, 2022 SKKU Teaching Award, and the 2015 Harvard-Yenching Fellowship. His research interests include human rights, international development, corporate social responsibility, machine learning, and AI and social issues. His articles have appeared in Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Comparative Education Review, Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Human Rights, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Sociological Forum (forthcoming), and the Journal of Global Security Studies (forthcoming). He writes and comments frequently for South Korean daily newspapers.

○ Sung-Hyun Kim (Moderator)

Sung-Hyun Kim is a professor of economics at SKKU and Dean of the College of Economics and Principle-Investigator of the Economics BK21 Program at SKKU. Prior to joining SKKU in 2012, he taught at Tufts University, Brandeis University, and Suffolk University in the US for over 15 years. He has published more than 50 academic journal papers and book chapters in the field of macroeconomics and international finance and conducted research projects for various international and Korean institutes such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, US International Trade Commission, and the Bank of Korea. Since 2019, he has served as the Editor-in-Chief for the International Economic Journal. 

○ YouTube Live Broadcast Link (ENG)

○ Inquiries: Office of Academic Affairs (02-760-1053, hhgil@skku.edu)