Who We Are: The Oak Institute

Walter Hatch
Director
wfhatch@colby.edu
(207) 859 5305

Walter Hatch is an expert on the politics and political economies of East Asia, especially Japan and China. At Colby, where he serves as associate professor of government, he teaches courses on international relations, international political economy, comparative politics, and the politics of development. He also holds research positions at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies. In a previous life, he was a journalist, serving briefly as a stringer for CBS News and – for a much longer time – a political reporter for The Seattle Times. He has been the editor of two academic journals, one in Tokyo and the other in New York.

Among his numerous publications are two books: “Asia ‘s Flying Geese: How Regionalization Shapes Japan” (Cornell University Press, 2010) and “Asia in Japan’s Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance” (Cambridge University Press, 1996). He is currently working on a third book that explains why Germany has fared better than Japan in achieving reconciliation with neighbors that they brutalized in the past. In addition, he is editing and contributing to a book about the communist party-state and civil society in China.

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