Stephen B. Young

(Posted on Friday, July 1, 2022)

Stephen B. Young is the global executive director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism and the author of Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good, The Tradition of Human Rights in China and Vietnam, and The Theory and Practice of Associative Power: CORDS in the Villages of Vietnam 1967–1972.

He and his wife, Pham Thi Hoa, translated from Vietnamese the novel about Ho Chi Minh published as The Zenith. His 1968–1971 service in Vietnam for the US Agency for International Development in village development and counterinsurgency was highly praised by President Richard Nixon, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Colby, and ambassador to Saigon Ellsworth Bunker.

In 1975 and again in 1978, Young took a lead in successful efforts to resettle refugees from South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the United States. For many years Young was a confidant of Nguyen Ngoc Huy, the founder of the Tan Dai Viet Nationalist political party in South Vietnam.

Young also served as an assistant dean at the Harvard Law School and dean and professor of law at the Hamline University School of Law. He graduated from the International School in Bangkok, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School.

In 1966, Young discovered the Bronze Age culture of the village of Ban Chiang in Northeast Thailand, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 1989, he proposed the formation of a United Nations interim administration for Cambodia to finally put an end to the Killing Fields in that country.

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