FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.
The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.
Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.
Standards & Regulations for Yucca Mountain: What Went Wrong?
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About the topic: Standards and regulations for the management, transportation and disposal of radioactive materials have been key to the development of strategies for the handling and disposing of radioactive materials at the “back-end” of the nuclear fuel cycle. This presentation summarizes previous U.S. experience in developing a standard and regulations for the geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The main purpose of a standard and its implementing regulations should be to protect human health and the environment, but the structure of the standard and regulations, as well as the standard-of-proof for compliance, should not extend beyond what is scientifically possible and reasonable. The demonstration of compliance must not only be compelling, but it must also be able to sustain scientific and public scrutiny. We can benefit from the sobering reality of how difficult it is to project the future behavior of a geologic repository over extended spatial and temporal scales that stretch over tens of kilometers and out to a million years.
About the Speaker: Rodney Ewing is the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan. He was appointed to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Obama on July 28, 2011.
He has faculty appointments in the departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering and is an Emeritus Regents' Professor at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Mineralogical Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemical Society, the American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Materials Research Society.
CISAC Conference Room
Rodney C. Ewing
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E203
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
0
rewing1@stanford.edu
1946-2024
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security
Professor of Geological Sciences
Rod Ewing was the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He was also the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he had faculty appointments in the Departments of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering. He was a Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. Ewing received a B.S. degree in geology from Texas Christian University (1968, summa cum laude) and M.S. (l972) and Ph.D. (l974, with distinction) degrees from Stanford University where he held an NSF Fellowship. His graduate studies focused on an esoteric group of minerals, metamict Nb-Ta-Ti oxides, which are unusual because they have become amorphous due to radiation damage caused by the presence of radioactive elements. Over the past thirty years, the early study of these unusual minerals has blossomed into a broadly-based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials. In 2001, the work on radiation-resistant ceramics was recognized by the DOE, Office of Science – Decades of Discovery as one of the top 101 innovations during the previous 25 years. This has led to the development of techniques to predict the long-term behavior of materials, such as those used in radioactive waste disposal.
He was the author or co-author of over 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He had published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in over 100 different ISI journals. He was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He was a Founding Editor of the magazine, Elements, which is now supported by 17 earth science societies. He was a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists. In 2014, he was named a Founding Executive Editor of Geochemical Perspective Letters and appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Applied Physics Reviews.
Ewing had received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2006, the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006, a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007, the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2015, Ian Campbell Medal of the American Geoscience Institute, 2015, the Medal of Excellence in Mineralogical Sciences from the International Mineralogical Association in 2015, the Distinguished Public Service Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2019, and was a foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was also a fellow of the Geological Society of America, Mineralogical Society of America, Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society, American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society. He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017.
He was president of the Mineralogical Society of America (2002) and the International Union of Materials Research Societies (1997-1998). He was the President of the American Geoscience Institute (2018). Ewing had served on the Board of Directors of the Geochemical Society, the Board of Governors of the Gemological Institute of America and the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
He was co-editor of and a contributing author of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (North-Holland Physics, Amsterdam, 1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (MIT Press, 2006). Professor Ewing had served on thirteen National Research Council committees and board for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that have reviewed issues related to nuclear waste and nuclear weapons. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as the Chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is responsible for ongoing and integrated technical review of DOE activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste; he stepped down from the Board in 2017.
Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Seminars
Democratic Transition and Development in the Arab World
The third ARD annual conference examineي the challenges, key issues, and ways forward for social and economic development in the Arab world during this period of democratic transition.
Day One - April 26, 2012
9:15-10:45am Opening Panel – International & Domestic Frameworks for Development
Welcoming Remarks: Larry Diamond and Lina Khatib, Stanford University
George Kossaifi, Dar Al-Tanmiyah:
Towards an Integrated Social Policy of the Arab Youth
10:45-11:00am Break
11:00-12:30am Session 1: Political Economy of Reform
Chair: Hicham Ben Abdallah, Stanford University
Mongi Boughzala, University of Tunis El-Manar:
Economic Reforms in Egypt and Tunisia: Revolutionary Change and an Uncertain Agenda
Abdulwahab Alkebsi, Center for International Private Enterprise:
Answering Calls for Economic Dignity
12:30-1:30pm Lunch
1:30-3:00pm Session 2: Oil-Dependent Economies and Social and Political Development
Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Hedi Larbi, World Bank:
Development and Democracy in Transition Oil-rich Countries in MENA
Ibrahim Saif, Carnegie Middle East Center:
Lessons from the Gulf's Twin Shocks
3:00-3:30pm Break
3:30-5:00pm Session 3: Youth, ICTs, and Development Opportunities
Chair: Ayca Alemdaroglu, Stanford University
Loubna Skalli-Hanna, American University:
Youth and ICTs in MENA: Development Alternatives and Possibilities
Hatoon Ajwad Al-Fassi, King Saud University:
Social Media in Saudi Arabia, an era of youth social representation
Day Two - April 27, 2012
9:00-10:30am Session 1: Civil Society Development
Chair: Sean Yom, Temple University
Laryssa Chomiak, Centre d’Etudes Maghrebines à Tunis (CEMAT):
Civic Resistance to Civil Society: Institutionalizing Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia
Rihab Elhaj, New Libya Foundation:
Building Libyan Civil Society
10:30-11:00am Break
11:00-12:30pm Session 2: Democratic Transition and the Political Development of Women
Chair: Katie Zoglin, Human Rights Lawyer
Valentine Moghadam, Northeastern University:
The Gender of Democracy: Why It Matters
Amaney Jamal, Princeton University:
Reforms in Personal Status Laws and Women’s Rights in the Arab World
12:30-1:30pm Lunch
1:30-3:00pm Session 3: Minority Rights as a Key Component of Development
Chair: Lina Khatib, Stanford University
Mona Makram-Ebeid, American University in Cairo:
Challenges Facing Minority Rights in Democratic Transition (title TBC)
Nadim Shehadi, Chatham House:
The Other Turkish Model: Power Sharing and Minority Rights in the Arab Transitions
3:00-3:30pm Break
3:30-4:45pm Session 4: Towards Integrated Development in the Arab World
Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Closing roundtable discussion: Scenarios for integrated development
4:45-5:45pm Reception
Bechtel Conference Center
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