Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan to discuss “how to think about Southeast Asia” at Yale

Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan, one of Singapore’s top diplomats, will present the George Herbert Walker Jr. Lecture in International Studies at Yale on Monday, September 30.

Titled “How to Think about Southeast Asia,” his talk will be delivered at 4:30 p.m. in Henry R. Luce Hall Auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Ave. Sponsored by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, the talk is free and open to the public.

Ambassador Kausikan is the former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, and was ambassador-at-large until May 2018. He is currently chairman of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. As one of Singapore’s leading diplomats and strategists, he served the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as deputy secretary for Southeast Asia, permanent representative to the UN in New York, and ambassador to the Russian Federation. He is the author of “Dealing with an Ambiguous World” and “Singapore Is Not an Island.”

George Herbert Walker III, formerly the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, established this lecture series in 1986 in memory of his father, a graduate of the Yale Class of 1927. Previous George Herbert Walker Jr. Lecturers in International Studies have included George Schultz, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Madeleine Albright, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker III, George Mitchell, Richard Holbrooke, Carla Hills, Christopher Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Goldstone, John Major, Nicholas Burns, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Rory Stewart, among other notable international figures.