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.
| description | structure & personnel |
The Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) relocates to Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) of Stanford School of Engineering, from September 1, 2013.
Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Robert Cowan, a laboratory fellow, have been awarded the 2008 Los Alamos Medal, the institution's most prestigious award.
Established in 2001, the medal is the highest honor the laboratory can bestow upon an individual or small group. Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio will present the medals to Hecker and Cowan during a formal awards ceremony and reception.
Recipients of the award are selected by a review committee on the basis of whether they have "made a contribution that changed the course of science, facilitated a major enhancement to the laboratory's ability to accomplish its mission, had a significant impact on lab sustainability, and established a major direction for the institution or the nation."
Hecker was selected "based on his many important and signature contributions to scientific research as a technical staff member, to the management of science at Los Alamos during his brief but critical leadership of the emergent Center for Materials Science and later as laboratory director, and to national policy, including stockpile stewardship and plutonium aging, engaging Russian nuclear weapons scientists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, promoting the importance of the study of terrorism as an emerging threat, and acting as a senior representative of the nuclear weapons complex in the North Korea nuclear weapons situation," the committee wrote.
Hecker's contributions to the science of plutonium metallurgy and his scientific leadership have been recognized by election to the National Academy of Engineering, as a member of the American Physical Society, as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hecker also has received the U.S. Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award.
As laboratory director, Hecker helped transition the laboratory to a post-Cold-War environment and promoted collaboration with Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the ex-Soviet stockpile of fissile materials. "As both a scientist and as a manager, Hecker was a passionate and eloquent spokesman for science, a legacy that will continue to be felt at Los Alamos for many years," the committee wrote.
Hecker and Cowan join a distinguished coterie of past Los Alamos Medal winners, including Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, former laboratory Director Harold Agnew and Louis Rosen, father of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Byongho Tchoe is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University. He began his research career at the KDI (Korea Development Institute) which is a topnotch government think tank in Korea and served from 1983 to 1995. After earning his PhD in economics, he continued his research career at KIHASA (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs) from 1995 up to now.
He has always been an influential resource in formulating health and social policy in Korea, and served as an advisor to the minister of health and social welfare in 2000. He participated as a member of many task forces and committees for health and social policy making. He was awarded a National Medal for contributing 30 years achievement of National Health Insurance in 2007.
He was also active in academic society. He published many articles and books. He served as a president of Korean Association of Health Economics and Policy and a vice president of Korea Association of Social Security. He holds a master's degree in public policy from Seoul National University and a PhD in economics from the University of Georgia.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Daishiro Nomiya's research interests focus on global social movements and comparative sociology, with an emphasis on the cultural aspects of civic engagements. Since 2001, he has taught global civil society in the Graduate Program in International Relations at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Chin-fen Chang is a full-time Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Currently she is working a book on The Sociology of Labor Markets, to be published in Chinese, addressed to a Chinese audience. As part of the book, but also for separate article publication, she works on another two specific empirical projects at Stanford, both of which are comparative analyses among East Asian Countries (mainly Japan, Korea, and Taiwan).
Even though employed women are still overrepresented in poorly-paid, low-status jobs, the gender wage gap has narrowed over the past two decades in most countries. A similar trend occurred in the East Asian region too. However, it remains unknown whether the smaller gender wage gap is a result of better endowments of women (more education and work experience, factors emphasized by human capital theory) or of more comparable returns for women's qualifications (supporting institutional perspectives and/or contributions of women's movements in reducing discrimination). This project utilizes the decomposition method to solve the puzzle.
The second project aims to compare differences of social identities among East Asian countries. In addition to the class perspective as being conventionally used in the past literature, this paper will compare gender differences of the status evaluation from a feminist perspective.
One of her recent publications in English is: "The employment discontinuity of married women in Taiwan: Job status, ethnic background and motherhood ethnic background and motherhood," Current Sociology, 54(2): 209-228. Her website in IOS is: http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/ios/index.php?pid=23&id=115
Chang got her Ph.D. in Sociology from The Ohio State University (1989), M.A. in Sociology from the University of Iowa (1986), and B.A. in Economics from National Taiwan University (1980). She served as the chief editor of Taiwanese Journal of Sociology from the year of 2004 to 2006.
Jeffrey Gedmin is President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. and in that
capacity directs Broadcasting and Internet operations in 28 languages to
countries stretching from Belarus to Bosnia and from the Arctic Sea to the
Persian Gulf. Dr. Gedmin is author of the book "The Hidden Hand: Gorbachev and
the Collapse of East Germany" (1992) and editor of a collection of essays titled
"European Integration and the American Interest" (1997). He was also executive
editor and producer of the award-winning PBS television program, "The Germans,
Portrait of a New Nation" (1995) and co-executive producer of the documentary
film titled "Spain's 9/11 and the Challenge of Radical Islam in Europe," aired
on PBS in the spring of 2007. Jeffrey Gedmin has taught at Georgetown University
and is an honorary professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany. A member
of the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of the Council for a Community of
Democracies (Washington, D.C.) and the Program of Atlantic Security Studies
(Prague, Czech Republic), Gedmin holds a PhD. in German Area Studies and
Linguistics from Georgetown University.
Dr. Gedmin's piece "Reporting
Among Gangsters" on human rights violations perpetrated against journalists in
Central Asia, appeared in the July 2, 2008 edition of the Washington
Post.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
When democractic governments adopt harmful and unjust policies, it is common practice to hold their constituencies collectively responsible for the outcome of the injustice. Yet when "constituencies" are held responsible for unjust outcomes, it is their individual members who bear the actual burdens of the injustice. This fact raises important questions about the just rules of distribution of collective responsibility in democracies.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Program on Global Justice
Encina Hall, Room E112
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Avia's current post-doc position at Stanford is divided between the Program in Ethics in Society and the Program on Global Justice at the Freeman Spogli Institure for International Studies.
She wrote her thesis at Nuffield College, Oxford University. The title of the thesis is Civic Responsibility in the Face of Injustice. The thesis analyzes the ways in which democratic citizens, as individuals and as members of a collective, are responsible for the injustices perpetrated by their governments. A chapter of the thesis, 'Sanctioning Liberal Democracies", is forthcoming in Political Studies.
For the last two years she has been a tutorial fellow, at Christ Church College, teaching political theory to undergraduates. Before going to Oxford, she completed her B.A. and M.A. degrees at the Department of Political Science, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her research interests concern the global responsibilities of liberal democracies; the notion of collective responsibility; the scope of democratic civic duties and the nature of democracy.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the program in American Studies.
Room 307
Lane History Corner
Abstract: Russia is the country that has the largest amount of weapon-usable fissile materials in its disposal, most of which has been produced during the cold war. In the years following the end of the cold war. Russia has undertaken significant effort to downsize its nuclear complex, leading to its serious transformation. This transformation, however, left the basic structure of the nuclear industry, most of the production facilities and most of the fissile material intact. Substantial amounts of weapon-usable fissile materials are still in storage, moved from one facility to another, or used for research and other purposes, creating security risks. Although the dangers associated with continuing presence of weapon material are generally acknowledged, the task of reducing this danger, by either eliminating the material or removing it from circulation and consolidating in a mall number of safe and secure storage sites, has proven difficult. The talk analyses the progress that Russia has made so far in consolidating its weapon-usable materials and describes the challenges that it is facing in further advancing this goal.
Pavel Podvig is a researcher at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. In 2008-09, Podvig is CISAC's acting associate director for research. Before coming to Stanford in 2004, he worked at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which was the first independent research organization in Russia dedicated to analysis of technical issues related to arms control and disarmament. In Moscow, Podvig was the leader of a major research project and the editor of the book Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (MIT Press, 2001). In recognition of his work in Russia, the American Physical Society awarded Podvig the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of 2008 (with Anatoli Diakov). From 2000 to 2004, Podvig worked with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and earlier with the Security Studies Program at MIT. His current research focuses on the Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons complex, as well as technical and political aspects of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, missile defense, and U.S.-Russian arms control process.
Podvig received his degree in physics from MIPT and his PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Since 2001, Podvig has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a member of the APS Committee on International Freedom of Scientists and is serving as the Chair of the Committee in 2008.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room