Benjamin Self is vice president of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. Mr. Self serves as director of the Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program, a congressionally-mandated professional exchange for mid-level US government employees. He also manages the US-Japan Network for the Future, a program launched in 2009 to foster a new generation of Japan specialists, and the Mansfield-PhRMA Research Scholars Program, which supports the dissemination of best practices in Translational Science.

Mr. Self previously was the inaugural Takahashi Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. From 1998 to 2008, he was at the Henry L. Stimson Center as a senior associate working on Japanese security policy. While at the Stimson Center, he directed projects on Japan-China relations, fostering security cooperation between the US-Japan Alliance and the PRC, Japan’s nuclear option, and confidence-building measures. Mr. Self has also carried out research and writing in areas such as nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, ballistic missile defense, Taiwan’s security, Northeast Asian security dynamics, the domestic politics of Japanese defense policy, and Japan’s global security role. From 2003 until 2008, Mr. Self was living in Africa and studying the role of Japan in Africa, including in humanitarian relief, economic development, conflict prevention, and resource extraction. He also has served as adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and American University. Mr. Self earned a bachelor of arts at Stanford and a master of arts in Japan Studies and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has worked in the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a visiting research fellow at Keio University on a Fulbright grant from 1996 until 1998.