In 2019, SPICE established two new online courses for students in Hiroshima—one for MBA students and one for high school students. These courses have a special significance to me because my ancestral home is Hiroshima. My paternal grandfather left Hiroshima for Hawaii to work as a sugar cane field laborer in 1903. After three years, he departed for California.

The signing of President Trump’s Phase One trade deal with China has rekindled speculations about the future of the world’s second-largest economy. Many analysts have cited trade frictions between the United States and China as a driving force behind the slowdown the Chinese economy has experienced in recent years.

While everyone was distracted with Justice Department controversies and the New Hampshire primary, a senior Huawei official has conceded that the company can clandestinely access users’ mobile networks. 

Shorenstein APARC is pleased to announce that Arzan Tarapore has been appointed a research scholar supporting the Center’s efforts to promote policy-relevant research, education, and public engagement on contemporary South Asia. In addition to conducting research and providing mentorship on South Asia security and geopolitical issues, Tarapore will organize public programming exploring the trends and challenges shaping the region. He will also cultivate cooperative relationships with stakeholders in the academic and policy communities in South Asia.

Ukraine unhappily found itself at the center of the impeachment drama that played out in Washington last fall and during the first weeks of 2020. That threatened the resiliency of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, a relationship that serves the interests of both countries.

With Donald Trump’s impeachment trial now in the past, Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainians undoubtedly hope that their country will no longer feature so prominently in U.S. domestic politics. That would be good, but it may not happen.

Last fall, SPICE provided me an opportunity to design and organize its first post-collegiate online course. The Stanford-Hiroshima Collaborative Program on Entrepreneurship (SHCPE’s Japanese-friendly pronunciation, “shu-ppe”) was conducted in collaboration with the Hiroshima Business and Management School (HBMS) at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima (PUH). HBMS offers the only Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in Japan’s western region of Chugoku and Shikoku.

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University is pleased to announce that Oriana Skylar Mastro has been appointed an FSI Center Fellow.

"Freedom is inseparable from human dignity," says LarryDiamond for Bertelsmann Foundation talks on "How to Fix Democracy." The crisis is “bad, deepening, accelerating,” but he suggests several steps we can take to reverse the trend, such as ranked-choice voting to tackle the two-party system, and spreading “motor voter” laws to increase the number of registered voters. Watch the video here. 

The 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires in one year. Unfortunately, President Trump’s attitude seems to reflect disinterest, if not antipathy. Last April he asked for a proposal to involve Russia and China and cover all nuclear arms, but it has yet to emerge. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has shown any real interest in the concept.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent January 31 in Kyiv underscoring American support for Ukraine, including in its struggle against Russian aggression. While Pompeo brought no major deliverables, just showing up proved enough for the Ukrainians.

The U.S. government should now follow up with steps to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, which has been stressed by President Donald Trump’s bid to drag Ukraine’s leadership into U.S. politics.

Organizational sociology may not be the first academic field people tend to look to for an explanation of the origins of a public health crisis such as the spreading Wuhan coronavirus, but from the perspective of Stanford sociologist and APARC faculty member Xueguang Zhou, who specializes in institutional change in contemporary Chinese society, the writing on the wall has long been there for all to see.

A Q&A with Professor Stephen Stedman, who serves as the Secretary General of the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

This article originally appeared on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Rose Gottemoeller is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. She is also the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In a recent interview with People's Daily Online, APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar reflects on some of the milestones in the developing and diversifying relationship between the United States and China over the past forty years. The interview is part of a series of short documentaries produced by People's Daily Online West USA to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and China in 1979.

This is the third of a series of pieces the Observatory intends to publish on societies and elections at risk from online disinformation. Our goal is to draw the attention of the media, tech platforms and other academics to these risks and to provide a basic background that could be useful to those who wish to study the information environment in these areas.

When I first visited Kawasaki City, I was immediately struck by the multicolored character for 川or “kawa” (river) in the Chinese characters for川崎 (Kawasaki) that appears on signs, buildings, posters, and even storm drain covers. I learned from Kawasaki Mayor Norihiko Fukuda that the multicolored 川 symbolizes the importance that Kawasaki City places upon diversity.

Elderly patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure have a poor prognosis and high risk of death and hospital readmission. So, their post-discharge care can strongly influence their outcomes.

Yet despite data showing that transitional care interventions, such as home visits by nurses, can reduce death rates and hospital readmission by more than 30%, many health systems have not implemented such programs. Health policy experts say this is due in part to cost concerns and doubts about the effectiveness of these delivery services.

Each year, thousands of scientists from across the globe come together at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual fall meeting to share new findings and research on pressing topics facing our world, including climate change, extreme events, environmental pollution, groundwater resources and more.

"The Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age found the rise of social media has caused irrevocable harm to global electoral integrity and democratic institutions—and the effects may get even worse," Paris Martineau writes in Wired. CDDRL's Deputy Director Stephen J. Stedman served as the Secretary-General of the Commission.

Updated January 24

Speaking on Monday about Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Ukraine’s foreign minister said “please don’t drag us into your [America’s] internal political processes.”  Unfortunately, Republicans appear intent on doing precisely that, as they repeat the false Russian claim that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 US election.

Republicans see this as part of their effort to defend President Trump. In doing so, they put at risk America’s long-standing support for its Ukrainian partner.

On January 11, 2020, Taiwan held its 15th presidential and 10th Legislative Yuan election. Taiwanese citizens soundly re-elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, who won 57.1% of the vote over her opponents, Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu (who took 38.61%), and the People’s First Party candidate James Soong (4.26%). The DPP also maintained its majority in the Legislative Yuan, though with a slight decrease of a few seats. Voter turnout was high, with almost 74% of eligible voters casting ballots, up from 66% in 2016.

On a recent Friday afternoon at Stanford, the weather reminded me of some crisp yet clear winter days in Japan. The sun brightly lit the Falcon Lounge on the 5th floor of Encina Hall as six alumni from the 2014 to 2018 Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) and Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP) cohorts gathered to celebrate the new year.

Following the death of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, five international affairs experts from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) gathered to discuss Soleimani’s prominence in Iran, the potential consequences of Soleimani’s death on the surrounding Gulf states and U.S.-Iran relations, and the rising presence of Russia and China in the region.