College Begets Love of International Relations

One of the nation’s foremost experts on U.S. Asia policy, Daniel Kliman has authored two influential books on changing power dynamics in the region, and regularly contributes to leading publications such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He speaks Japanese and is conversant in basic Chinese.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, at one point he considered an altogether different profession.

“I originally planned to become an engineer, but in college discovered that my heart just wasn’t in it, and I went on to fall in love with international relations,” said Daniel, a graduate of Dos Pueblos High School who received a Towbes Foundation Honors Scholarship from the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara each of his four years at Stanford University.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science at Stanford, he studied at Kyoto University in Japan as a Fulbright Fellow before completing his doctorate in politics at Princeton, also with Scholarship Foundation support.

Today, Daniel is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank specializing in U.S. national security issues.

Prior to joining CNAS, he served as a senior advisor at the Department of Defense, where he focused on long-term U.S. strategy in the Asia Pacific. Daniel is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

He says his greatest achievement is his young family, which includes a 2-year-old daughter.

To this day, he marvels at the assistance he received from the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara.

“I am extremely grateful to the Scholarship Foundation,” he said. “The organization is making an incredible difference in the lives of students.”