Tom Plate, the internationally syndicated columnist, writes about America's relationship with the Pacific Rim and travels frequently to Asia. Mr. Plate's columns have appeared in many world newspapers, in both Asia and the United States, especially in The Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, and The Straits Times of Singapore. The Advertiser is Hawaii's leading newspaper and one of the Gannett chain's biggest; the two Asian media properties are widely regarded as the region's leading English-language newspapers. He is a regular columnist at all three.  His column is also syndicated widely to such leading newspapers as The Japan Times, The Korea Times (USA and South Korea) and The Seattle Times -- via the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International and the Knight-Ridder news service.

In his other full-time job, Plate has a joint appointment in both the School of Public Policy and College of Letters and Science at the University of California, at Los Angeles, where he began teaching in 1994. He teaches undergraduate courses on the media of Asia, and on government, business and media ethics. He is the founder of the non-profit Asia Pacific Media Network, headquartered at UCLA. APMN offers a premier international network for educators, journalists, media professionals, government and business officials concerned about common issues and controversies in the region and involves the region's leading media institutions and universities. 

He is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, the Century Association of New York and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. A graduate of Amherst College and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with a master's degree in U.S. foreign policy, Adjunct Professor Plate is the author of five books and has been an editor or writer at Time, Newsday, New York Magazine and CBS. From 1989-1995 he was Editor of the Editorial Pages of the Los Angeles Times. He is the winner of journalist awards, including from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Great Los Angeles Press Club. Recently, he was a Media Fellow at Stanford University, and a fellow in Tokyo at the Foreign Press Center's annual Asia-Pacific Media Conference. He is listed in Who's Who in America and for the last several years has been an invited member participant at the annual retreat of the World Economic Forum in Davos. He has lectured at Princeton, the Anderson School at UCLA, the East West Center at the University of Hawaii, The Getty Museum and Trust, and at various universities in Asia. He is currently working on an autobiography and is heard often on radio as an occasional BBC commentator.