CISAC senior research scholar Herb Lin writes in this Washington Post op-ed about the Equifax hacking and how to prevent such future incidents. He urges Congress "to go beyond proposed legislation on free freezing of credit reports to require that individual reports be frozen by default, 'thaw-able' only with the individual’s consent."

In Superficial Korea, a book recently published in South Korea, Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin shares his observations on and provides recommendations for social maladies currently affecting Korean society. Shin sees a problematic level of superficiality in a number of aspects of today's Korea: its interpersonal relations, policies and social systems, and rules and regulations. After explaining his diagnosis in the first part of the book, Shin goes on to offer a prescription in the form of lessons that can be learned from Silicon Valley’s culture. The final section of the book touches on issues in which he specializes as an academic—and which have been of the utmost interest to Koreans in recent days—that is, South Korea’s relations with North Korea and other players on the global stage.

Superficial Korea is in Korean; interviews with Dr. Shin and reviews of the book can be found below:

Stanford Daily (interview, in English)

Korea Herald (Op-Ed, in English)

Korea Daily (interview, in Korean)

Sisa Journal (interview, in Korean)

Munwha Ilbo (interview, in Korean)

Yonhap News (book review, in Korean)

Munwha Ilbo (book review, in Korean)

Kyunghyang Shinmun (book review, in Korean)

As the new deputy director for the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Harold Trinkunas will assume more day-to-day management duties of the center in addition to his research scholarship.

Trinkunas, who starts his new role Oct. 1, will provide additional oversight over CISAC’s core operations, from research and fellowships to administration and finance. He was previously CISAC’s associate director for research; he will continue to be a senior research scholar affiliated with the center.

In his new capacity, Trinkunas will work to ensure that CISAC remains on a sustainable footing as its faculty, scholars and fellows generate knowledge to build a safer world and educate the next generation of security experts. This will contribute to maintaining CISAC’s position as a global thought leader on meeting the most pressing challenges for international security and international cooperation.

CISAC’s associate director position for administration and finance will report to Trinkunas, who joined CISAC in September 2016. Previously, that position (under recruitment now) reported to CISAC’s co-directors.  

The new organizational structure brings CISAC into alignment with other centers at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. It will also allow co-directors Amy Zegart and Rod Ewing  to focus more time on CISAC’s external relationships – with CISAC supporters, policy makers and media. These are key audiences for the Center’s scholarly findings and education programs.

Zegart, CISAC co-director for the social sciences, said, "I couldn't be more delighted that Harold has agreed to become CISAC's deputy director. Creating this deputy director position will enable us to bring together longer-range strategic planning and day-to-day operations -- and Harold is ideally suited to the task, with deep experience in university administration at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brookings, and Stanford as well as an active and exciting scholarly research agenda."

Ewing, CISAC co-director for the sciences, said, “Harold’s expanded role in CISAC will allow for a better coordination of administrative and budgetary decisions on a day-to-day basis.  I certainly look forward to working with Harold as we continue to expand the impact of CISAC scholarship on policy issues.”

Management, research

Trinkunas joined CISAC last year from the Brookings Institution, where he was the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow as well as director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program.

“This is a great opportunity to work in collaborative ways with exceptional scholars around some very important international security challenges facing today’s world,” Trinkunas said then.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Trinkunas earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford in 1999; he was also a predoctoral fellow and later a visiting professor at CISAC.  His first exposure to CISAC took place when he served as a teaching assistant to Scott Sagan in 1992.

Through the years, CISAC has evolved and adjusted its focus to reflect the global security realities, Trinkunas said. Research at CISAC spans biosecurity and global health, terrorism, cybersecurity, governance, and nuclear risk and cooperation, among others.

Trinkunas said he enjoys the mentoring aspect of working with emerging scholars in the CISAC fellowship program, which he oversees.

Security, governance

Trinkunas’ most recent book, Aspirational Power: Brazil's Long Road to Global Influence, co-authored with David Mares of UC San Digo, was published last year by the Brookings Institution Press.  Aspirational Power was chosen as one of Foreign Affair’s “best books of 2016.”

Trinkunas studies the intersection of security and governance. In his research, he has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Harold Trinkunas, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8035, antanas@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Our featured faculty member this month is Fiona Griffiths, Professor of Medieval European History.  Fiona earned her PhD from Cambridge University and came to Stanford in 2013, having taught previously at New York University and Smith College.  She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; and the Institute of Historical Research (University of London).  At Stanford, she serves as Co-Director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS).

Fiona’s research explores the cultural history of medieval religion, focusing on the experiences and interactions of religious men (priests or monks) with women (nuns and clerical wives).  Her first book, The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century, argued for the involvement of medieval nuns in the scholastic debates of the twelfth century, through close examination of the female-authored Hortus deliciarum (Garden of Delights), a magnificently illuminated manuscript of theology, biblical history, and canon law.  As Fiona discovered, the nuns who created the Hortus deliciarum found support for their studies among local monks, whose libraries provided them with access to scholastic texts.  Fiona’s most recent study, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Women’s Monastic Life, 300-1200 (forthcoming in early 2018) takes up the question of men’s support for religious women, examining a religious vocation not often discussed in medieval scholarship—the nuns’ priest.  As she shows, nuns’ priests defied conventions of sexual segregation within the religious life, sometimes living alongside female monasteries and even professing obedience to an abbess. Nuns’ Priests’ Tales examines the arguments that nuns’ priests made in defense of their service to women, explaining how their understanding of religious women as “brides of Christ” upset traditional assumptions concerning the immutability of male clerical authority.  With Professor Kathryn Starkey (German), Fiona has recently edited a collection of essays on the medieval senses, looking at how medieval people interacted with objects (jewelry, manuscripts, tools, relics, etc) and how objects guided and shaped human experiences.  Her teaching centers on medieval religion, material culture, and gender studies.