MICHAEL PENN was born in Los Angeles on June 21, 1970 and grew up in southern California. After graduating in 1992 from the University of California Santa Barbara with a BA in History, he did postgraduate work at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Texas at Austin. His MA thesis, focused on modern art and politics in Iraq, was completed in 1996. Arriving in Japan in June 1997, Penn studied the local language and began to examine Japanese relations with the Islamic world. In April 2000 he accepted a full-time teaching position at the University of Kitakyushu.

Sensing the relative institutional weakness of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in Japan, Penn founded the Shingetsu Institute for the Study of Japanese-Islamic Relations in August 2004 together with several of his close Japanese colleagues. He has served as the institute’s Executive Director since that time and has primary responsibility for running the institute and issuing the Shingetsu Newsletter.

Penn recently joined PanOrient News, a Tokyo-based media organization, serving as chief English editor and Japan correspondent for Press TV.

　
JACOB SCHLESINGER is Japan editor-in-chief for The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires. Prior to this, Schlesinger was deputy Washington bureau chief for the Journal, working with reporters covering the White House, Congress and domestic policy.

Schlesinger first joined the Journal in August 1986 as a reporter in the paper’s Detroit bureau. He transferred to Tokyo in April 1989, where he covered technology, trade, and Japanese politics. He authored the book Shadow Shoguns: The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Postwar Political Machine, published by Simon & Schuster in August 1996.

From 1996 through 2009, Schlesinger worked in the Journal’s Washington bureau as a reporter covering economics, and politics. In 2003, Schlesinger was a member of a team of Journal reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for the “What’s Wrong” series, a series of stories that exposed and elucidated corporate scandals. Prior to joining the Journal, Schlesinger was a business reporter at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times from 1984 until July 1986. A native of East Lansing, Mich., Schlesinger received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard College.

　
REGULAR MEMBERS
Michael Penn, PanOrient News

REINSTATEMENT (REGULAR MEMBERS)
Jacob M. Schlesinger, The Wall Street Journal

PROFESSIONAL-ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
P.R. Placid, Bibek Co., Ltd.
Naoko Sakokawa, Freelance

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Masahiro Takayama, Ivy Planning Inc.
Toshio Kato, K.K. GA Corporation
Shiro Kambe, Sony Corporation
Hiroyoshi Kishida
Koh Aoki, Active Middle International Association
Tsutomu Ochiai, Sunfresh Co., Ltd.
Ryuichi Otsuka, Nippon Rad Inc.
Yasufumi Tanaka, Chugai Electric
Industrial Co., Ltd.
Masami Kinugasa, BizWin Consulting Inc.
Yoko Hirai, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Shuichi Takahashi, AFG Consulting Co., Ltd.
Teruko Fujii, Teva Pharmaceutical K.K.

REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE MEMBERS)
Mike Ghaemmaghami, WIB Real Estate Finance Japan K.K.