October 29th, 2009

Authoritarian Governments in Cyberspace - Liberation Technology Summary

Summary of the October 8th class. Evgeny Morozov's ,Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, presentation sought to challenge a number of assumptions that are often made about the relationship between the web, nation states and democracy. Read more »

October 28th, 2009

Minds for Sale - Liberation Technology Summary

Summary of the September 24th class Jonathan Zitrain's presentation raised a number of concerns about current trends in online behavior. He suggested that these developments may undermine the practice of ‘civic technologies’, where unconnected individuals voluntarily come together to achieve something they could not do individually. paper available
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October 27th, 2009

Where Did They Go and What Have They Been Up To? John Ciorciari

John D. Ciorciari was a Shorenstein Fellow at APARC in 2007-08 and an affiliate of APARC and SEAF in 2008-09 while a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Upon leaving Stanford he took up a position as an assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Read more »

SEAF Scholars Traveling to Philadelphia despite Old Joke

Past, present, and future Southeast Asianists linked to SEAF have ignored the hoary joke about the contest whose first prize is one week in Philadelphia and whose second prize is two weeks in that city. Several of them are on the program of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) to be held, yes, in Philadelphia on 25-28 March 2010. Read more »

October 26th, 2009

Using intelligence to shape the future

"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture, devoted to anticipating the future--"not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it." Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more positive direction. Audio & Video transcripts available paper available
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Morada and Jones on Hard Choices

Edited by SEAF Director Don Emmerson and co-published in 2008-09 by APARC at Stanford and ISEAS in Singapore, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia continues to attract attention. Excerpted below are two differing but equally thoughtful recent reviews:
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China Dialogue features PESD research on China CCS

PESD's Research Associate, Gang He, discusses the energy dilemma of doing CCS in China and sets out his technical and policy recommendations for China's adoption of this important technology. Read more »

October 21st, 2009

Martha Crenshaw awarded $500,000 to study terrorist patterns

Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation, has received a National Science Foundation grant to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations. "Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will be the first worldwide study to analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. Read more »

October 20th, 2009

Professor Phillip Lipscy addresses the CSIS Japan Chair Forum about global reform after the financial crisis

In July 2009, Shorenstein APARC Professor Phillip Lipscy spoke to CSIS in Washington, DC about the dynamics of Asian cooperation as the region rebuilds after the financial crisis. Read more »

Comparing health systems through the lens of pharmaceutical policy: A new book

A newly published book examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific, focusing on China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India. Read more »

October 19th, 2009

Exchange over Scott Sagan's 'No First Use' article in Survival

In the June-July 2009 issue of Survival, Scott Sagan argued for the United States to adopt a declaratory policy of nuclear no first use. In response, Survival invited experts to comment on the argument, with a conclusion from Sagan.

• » The Case for No First Use: An Exchange

October 16th, 2009

Program on Human Rights launched at Stanford

In a new Stanford endeavor, FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law has joined with the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society to launch an interdisciplinary Program on Human Rights. Introducing its latest program, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond noted that "today's human rights interact with a number of other urgent global issues including climate change, immigration, security, women's rights, poverty, and child soldiers" to name but a few. The campus-wide Human Rights Program builds on the work of CDDRL's Program on Global Justice by bridging the normative and the empirical. Audio & Video transcripts available 5 transcripts, paper available
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Martin Kenney provides an "Historical Perspective" on the state of venture capital

Recently Dr. Martin Kenney (Professor, UC Davis) delivered a fascinating presentation for a SPRIE audience, tracing venture capital from its pre-WWII angel investor beginnings all the way up to the present, which he sees as the most difficult circumstances the industry has ever faced.

• » A Historical Perspective on the Development of the VC Industry in Silicon Valley--Are We in a New Era?
  

PESD researchers consider obstacles to technology adoption by the poor

Xander Slaski and Mark Thurber introduce a framework for understanding why the poor often fail to adopt seemingly beneficial technologies like improved biomass cookstoves. Read more »

2009-10 CISAC Fellows and Visiting Scholars

CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year. Read more »

October 15th, 2009

Joseph C. Martz from Los Alamos National Lab named inaugural Perry Fellow

Joseph. C. Martz, a nuclear materials scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), has been named the inaugural William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford University. Read more »

Tapan Parikh: Giving Farmers a Voice - Liberation Technology Summary

Summary of the October 15th class. Tapan Parikh, of UC Berkeley School of Information, spoke about a number of projects that are using mobile phone based technology to give small businesses the information they need to improve productivity. He argued that voice technology has distinct advantages over text, because it overcomes challenges of illiteracy while responding to a strong need people feel to be heard. Read more »

October 14th, 2009

Alan Garber assesses what to expect from health reform

Entitlement programs, especially Medicare, pose the single gravest threat to our long-term financial future, Stanford Health Policy Director Alan Garber notes, with Medicare alone on a trajectory to consume 10 percent of the nation's output. Garber, a physician, economist, and professor of medicine, explores major cost savings proposals and the key features of the health reform plans now being debated in the U.S. Congress. Audio transcript available
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October 13th, 2009

The new Asianism

Daniel Sneider: Since the Democratic Party of Japan won in the country's August national election, Japan watchers have worried the new government might try to upset the status quo and ease away from the United States. The DPJ is implementing a new paradigm -- but not the one people think. Read more »

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss comments on re-set of U.S.-Russia relations

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a host of issues were on the table: a new treaty to reduce nuclear arms, efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and how to address Iran's nuclear program effectively. CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss provides the context for a re-set of relations with Russia and identifies the areas where we might see stepped-up cooperation.

• » The World: Oct 13 Audio program

October 9th, 2009

In Economist debate, SHP director Garber focuses on value of comparative effectiveness research

Stanford Health Policy director Alan Garber offers his take on comparative effectiveness research in the Economist's online debate forum. Garber writes that our current system of "ignoring value ... has failed to limit expenditures or to deliver superior health outcomes." Part of the series "Economists Debates," Garber is the featured guest in the most recent online version of Oxford style of debating. Read more »

October 7th, 2009

CISAC goes to Washington

CISAC may be geographically distant from Washington, DC, but its influence inside the Beltway has been underscored by five scholars now serving in the Obama administration. Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Michael McFaul, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Paul Stockton and Jeremy Weinstein have all been closely affiliated with the center. Read more »

October 5th, 2009

Stanford Health Policy analyses of flu pandemics project savings from earlier vaccinations

In a city the size of New York, starting a vaccination campaign a few weeks earlier could save almost 600 lives and over $150 million, according to a study by scientists at the Stanford Health Policy and Stanford University School of Medicine. The study, to be published online Oct. 6 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, modeled a pandemic in a hypothetical urban area with a population and demographic characteristics mirroring New York City's.
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Op-Ed: Exchange we can believe in

J.P. Schnapper-Casteras, a recent CISAC fellow, argues in the Washington Post that despite the potential long-term benefits, only a few dozen Iraqis are able to study in the United States each year. By comparison, during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union exchanged 50,000 citizens over 30 years, producing more educated students and some of the most pro-Western and pro-democracy Soviet scholars and scientists. Read more »

October 1st, 2009

Lucky Gunasekara and Tom Wiltzius - FrontlineSMS:Medic - Liberation Technology Summary

Summary of the October 1st class. Lucky Gunasekara, a student at Stanford's School of Medicine, and Tom Wiltzius, a student in Stanford's Computer Science program, took us through the rationale behind working with mobile phones and the content of their project working with health workers in Malawi. Read more »