Seo-Hyun Park (speaker) is a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation project explores how the hierarchical regional order in East Asia has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic identity politics in historical and contemporary Japan and Korea, with both countries alternating between deferential and defiant security strategies vis-a-vis regional hegemons such as China and the United States. Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, and the Cornell University Einaudi Center's Carpenter Fellowship. She has also conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University. Her research interests include the politics of sovereignty and national identity, globalization and regionalization, anti-Americanism, and territorial disputes as well as general issues in East Asian security and politics.

Phillip Lipscy (discussant), a specialist on Japanese political economy and international relations, is a center fellow at FSI and an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and regional cooperation in East and South East Asia. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, Lipscy pursued his doctoral studies in government at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, The Institute for Global and International Studies at The George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. Lipscy's most recent research investigates negotiations over representation in international organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. He is also researching the causes and implications of the rapid accumulation of international reserves in East and Southeast Asia.

Sponsored by the Islamic Society of Stanford University and the Muslim Student Awareness Network.

Co-sponsored by VPSA, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Office of Religious Life.

For the past sixty years, most analysts have assumed that Japan's security policies would reinforce American interests in Asia. The political and military profile of Asia is changing rapidly, however. Korea's nuclear program, China's rise, and the relative decline of US power have commanded strategic review in Tokyo just as they have in Washington. What is the next step for Japan's security policy? Will confluence with U.S. interests--and the alliance--survive intact? Will it be transformed? Will Japan become more autonomous?

Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies. He is also the founding director of the MIT Japan Program. In 2001 he became chairman of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, an independent federal grant-making agency that supports Japanese studies and policy-oriented research in the United States. In 2005 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Samuels served as head of the MIT Department of Political Science between 1992-1997 and as vice-chairman of the Committee on Japan of the National Research Council until 1996. Grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Abe Fellowship Fund, the National Science Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation have supported nine years of field research in Japan.

Dr. Samuels' recent book, Securing Japan, was published in 2007 by Cornell University Press.

His previous books include Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan, a comparative political and economic history of political leadership in Italy and Japan, "Rich Nation, Strong Army": National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective, and Politics of Regional Policy in Japan.

His articles have appeared in International Organization, Foreign Affairs, International Security, The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Daedalus, The Washington Quarterly, and other scholarly journals.

Dr. Samuels received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

As a result of the events which started in Poland with the birth of the Solidarity Movement in 1980 and the events that followed in the next decade, the political map of Europe has changed drastically. New spirit and new countries have emerged, changing the continent as radically as it was changed by the two World Wars. This time, however, change was achieved without (or nearly without) bloodshed . The process of unification of the continent which continued with the admission of Poland (and five other countries) first to NATO and then to European Union, changed those two institutions which are still re-defining themselves. This lecture will present and evaluate this new shape of Europe and of European institutions in light of these changes.

About the Speaker
Dr. Kozlowski earned an M.A. from the Department of Philosophy and History from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, after which he studied Political Science at the Sorbonne and English language at the London School of English. He earned his Ph. D. in History from Jagiellonian University in 1988. Dr. Kozlowski studied at Northwestern University (1986-87) and at Stanford University (1987-88) on a Fulbright Research Grant.

Dr. Kozlowski worked as a journalist and editor for a number of Polish publications including "Wiesci," "Wiadomosci Krakowskie," and "Tygodnik Powszechny", before joining the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 1990, Dr. Kozlowski has served as Minister-Counselor and Charge d'Affairs at the Polish Embassy in Washington D.C., as Director of the American Department and Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Ambassador of Poland to Israel, and as Ambassador for Polish-Jewish Relations. He is currently the Deputy Director of the Department of Africa and Middle East, Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This is a CDDRL's Special Research Seminar within our Democracy in Taiwan Program.

Chang-Ling Huang is an associate professor of political science at the National Taiwan University. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Chicago. Her research interests are gender politics and labor politics. She has published in various journals including Developing Economies, Anthropology of Work Review, American Journal of Public Health and Issues & Studies. Her current research project is a comparative study on state feminism in South Korea and Taiwan. She examines how the newly democratized states in these two countries have been actively promoting gender equality.

Professor Huang received the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2007 at the National Taiwan University. In addition to her academic career, since 2000 she has been a board member of the Awakening Foundation, the earliest established feminist organization in post-war Taiwan. Between 2004 and 2007, she was the president of the foundation. She has also been a civilian member of various government committees and commissions in Taiwan.

Professor Huang is a visiting scholar at Stanford's Political Science Department in the academic year of 2007-2008.

China's Harmonious Society colloquium series is co-sponsored by the Stanford China Program and the Center for East Asian Studies

Since 2006, the official doctrine of China's Communist Party calls for the creation of a "harmonious society" (HeXieSheHui). This policy, identified with the Hu Jintao leadership, acknowledges the new problems that have emerged as China continues its amazing economic growth. The economy is booming but so are tensions from rising inequality, environmental damage, health problems, diverse ethnicities, and attempts to break the "iron rice bowl." In this series of colloquia, leading authorities will discuss the causes of these tensions, their seriousness, and China's ability to solve these challenges.

Depending on where one stands, China's state-owned enterprises have reformed too slowly or too fast. Some lament the incompleteness of China's efforts to break the "iron rice bowl," to free firms from inefficient industrial practices, to rid firms of non-production expenses. Yet, as incomplete and slow as the reforms seem to some, New Left critics charge that China's reforms have gone too far, that SOEs have been subject to asset stripping, that firms have been "given away," and that the privileged few, particularly factory managers, have become rich capitalists overnight, through corruption and collusion with local officials. The losers in this view are the workers, who have been left unemployed, subject to layoffs, without health care, and sometimes without even their promised pensions-the very problems that prompted Hu Jintao's call for fixes to create a new "harmonious society." These two views of SOE reform, while seeming to convey different realities, reflect the political cross currents that have shaped China's corporate restructuring. Based on recent research in China, Jean Oi will discuss how those charged with reforming SOEs have tried to walk the tightrope between too slow and too fast reform, and the consequences.