About

Professor David Kang has dedicated over 20 years to the field of emergency management, with a career rooted in public service and a strong sense of duty to assist individuals and communities before, during, and after disasters. His professional journey began in public health with the State of Alaska's Department of Environmental Health, where he worked in response and preparedness program management. Over a decade, he expanded his expertise across preparedness, operations, planning, analysis, and hazard mitigation within Alaska's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Currently, Professor Kang serves as the Director of Planning and Exercise in the Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC. In this role, he is FEMA's top planner, responsible for developing catastrophic and crisis action plans that structure the U.S. response to all forms of emergencies, ensuring the agency effectively manages the full disaster lifecycle. He has actively responded to every national-level disaster since 2013, including managing multiple aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic response and leading national coordination efforts. Professor Kang's expertise lies primarily in emergency management planning, where he focuses on providing structure to complex and uncertain problems to optimize resource use and decision-making during disasters. He emphasizes the increasing professionalism and sophistication of the emergency management discipline, noting the growing challenges posed by climate change, cybersecurity, and the expanding scale and frequency of disasters. His approach to teaching at USC Bovard College reflects his extensive practical experience and commitment to preparing students to apply emergency management principles and methodologies effectively in real-world disaster environments. He values the opportunity to engage with motivated students who are eager to make an immediate impact in the workforce and shares a pracademic philosophy that bridges theory and practice.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Archaeology
• Mathematics
• Business
• Economic system
• Political economy
• Economics
• Economy
• Ancient history
• Economic history
• History
• Advertising

Selected publications

• China’s ambitions are narrower than Washington thinks

  2026-01-09

  report1st authorCorresponding

  Listen to this article The past year has seen a slight change in Washington’s views towards China. Although the ‘China threat’ is still the dominant view, some cracks have emerged such as a controversial RAND report that advocated for improving ties with China — though it was later withdrawn for ‘further review’. These changes are […]

  PublisherDOI

• The Bargaining Theory of War and North Korea: Why the Peninsula is More Stable than the Conventional Wisdom Suggests

  Asian Journal of Peacebuilding · 2025-05-31

  articleSenior author

  Is war becoming more likely on the Korean Peninsula? How might we assess this likelihood? In this article, we apply the bargaining theory of war to the Korean Peninsula, which elicits three key insights. First, both sides of the Peninsula are well aware of each other’s relative power; thus, the information problem that could increase the possibility of war is minimal. Second, the commitment problem concerning North Korea’s denuclearization does not increase the likelihood of war. The commitment problem hypothesizes that war is more likely if there is a rapidly changing balance of power, which does not apply to the current situation on the Peninsula. Finally, there have been no significant changes to the tacit bargaining that has maintained peace on the Peninsula over the years.

  PublisherDOI

• East Asia in the World: From Imperialism to the Cold War

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-11-20

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• What Does China Want?

  International Security · 2025-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The conventional wisdom is that China is a rising hegemon eager to replace the United States, dominate international institutions, and re-create the liberal international order in its own image. Drawing on data from 12,000 articles and hundreds of speeches by Xi Jinping, to discern China's intentions we analyze three terms or phrases from Chinese rhetoric: “struggle” (斗争), “rise of the East, decline of the West” (东升西降), and “no intention to replace the United States” ((无意取代美国). Our findings indicate that China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability and is more inwardly focused than externally oriented. China's aims are unambiguous, enduring, and limited: It cares about its borders, sovereignty, and foreign economic relations. China's main concerns are almost all regional and related to parts of China that the rest of the region has agreed are Chinese—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Our argument has three main implications. First, China does not pose the type of military threat that the conventional wisdom claims it does. Thus, a hostile U.S. military posture in the Pacific is unwise and may unnecessarily create tensions. Second, the two countries could cooperate on several overlooked issue areas. Third, the conventional view of China plays down the economic and diplomatic arenas that a war-fighting approach is unsuited to address.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond Western Paradigms of IR Theorizing: The Importance of Cultural Differences

  Journal of Social and Political Philosophy · 2025-08-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The ever looming shadow of caregiving

  BMJ · 2024-04-24

  editorialOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  shares what it is like to live with someone with profound autism and the impact this can have on the whole family

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond Power Transitions

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2024-10-09 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• There Is No East Asian Balancing against China

  2024-05-30 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Is there an incipient East Asian containment coalition against China? The evidence leads to the conclusion that there is not. Despite decades of scholarly claims that East Asia is, will, or should contain China, as China has grown richer and more integrated within East Asia, the East Asian defense effort has steadily declined. East Asian countries are also increasing their economic and diplomatic relations with China, not limiting them. The explanation for why there is no emerging containment coalition in East Asia is straightforward: most East Asian countries do not see China as a threat to their survival, and so they are not reacting as if it were. Leaders and publics in East Asia see their most pressing issues as economic and domestic, not military and not related to China. Thus, one key argument about US grand strategy towards China needs to be rethought.

  PublisherDOI

• Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral Authority: Why China Will Not Build a Twenty-First Century Tributary System

  Governing China in the 21st century · 2023-01-01 · 4 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Investigating the contribution of hyaluronan to the breast tumour microenvironment using multiparametric <scp>MRI</scp> and <scp>MR</scp> elastography"

  2023-03-11

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joseph Gowa

  Université de Montréal

  100 shared

• Anger Robert

  Columbus Center

  100 shared

• Richardson Volker Rittberger

  Yale University

  100 shared

• Jean‐Philippe Thérien

  Université de Montréal

  100 shared

• Helen Mckeown

  The Ohio State University

  100 shared

• Alain Noël

  Université de Montréal

  100 shared

• Stephen Keohane

  100 shared

• Albert Evangelista

  University of Illinois Chicago

  100 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Public Policy

  University of Southern California

  2006

• M.S., Public Policy

  University of Southern California

  2003

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1999