HISTORY

Established by Soka University of America (SUA) founder, Daisaku Ikeda, the Pacific Basin Research Center began operations in January, 1991 as an advance research unit of SUA, a private, undergraduate, liberal arts university which opened its doors ten years later in 2001. Reversing the customary evolution of universities from undergraduate instruction, SUA hosted graduate and special studies from 1994 and 1987 respectively that preceded the undergraduate program. During this interregnum, PBRC developed a distinctive research program that drew international attention not only to the Center but to the prospect of a University similarly devoted to pursuing research and education leading to the peaceful development of the Asia Pacific region.

With twenty-seven years of teaching at Harvard and as a prolific scholar and international authority on public administration and policy, Harvard Professor Emeritus, John D. Montgomery, was formally inaugurated as the first director of PBRC on January 2, 1991. In the initial years, the PBRC operated out of the director's Harvard office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

On May 3 of 2001, Soka University of America officially opened, welcoming its first class of students in August of that same year. With operations as a full-scale institution of higher learning in Aliso Viejo, California underway, the PBRC office transitioned to SUA in July of 2004. It was at that time that Dennis A. Rondinelli, then a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapell Hill, accepted the role of the second director of the PBRC. Under Rondinelli’s leadership, PBRC launched a distinguished speaker series, a visiting professorship series, a Faculty Summer Research Grants program and a new publication series, including most recently Globalization and Change in Asia (Rienner 2007).

In the summer of 2007, William Ascher of Claremont McKenna College was selected to direct the Pacific Basin Research Center.  Since its inception, Ascher has contributed as a PBRC Advisory Board member and contributor to PBRC publications, working closely with founding Director, John D. Montgomery and Ascher’s immediate predecessor, the late Dennis Rondinelli. Dr. Ascher notes that “the foundations for the PBRC’s distinctive role in exploring sustainable, humanistic development have been brilliantly laid by my friends and colleagues, Jack Montgomery and Dennis Rondinelli. I am very much looking forward to building on their bold accomplishments.”