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.
Counter-narratives of Sexuality in Meiji/Taishô Japan
Before sexology and medical science prevailed in Japan as the accepted forms of "knowledge" of human sexuality, by the 1910s and '20s, other discourses competed with sexology's binaries of "normal sex" and "pathological sex," and so on. Leslie Winston will discuss the paradigm of intersexuality in the work of Shimizu Shikin (1868-1933) and Tokuda Shûsei (1872-1943) as a counter-discourse to the dominant narratives on sexuality. The body of the hermaphrodite confirmed that the roles the state insisted women should assume, in fact had no basis in "nature." As sexologists and scientists were making efforts to eliminate hermaphroditism, Shikin and Shûsei were invigorating it as an alternate discourse.
Leslie Winston is Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese Language and Culture at Dickinson College. Her research focuses on subjectivity, particularly the female subject, in Japanese literature of the 1890s and early twentieth century. Her current interest lies in the discourse on intersexuality and its production of knowledge of the categories of "woman" and "man." She earned her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. in English Literature from Stony Brook University, and an M.A. in Communication Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
History Corner, Main Quad
Building 200, Room 303
Katrina: Redefining the Essence of Homeland Security
Paul Stockton is the associate provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Stockton is the editor of Homeland Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2005). His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security and Strategic Survey. He is co-editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). Stockton has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997). Stockton received a BA summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a PhD in government from Harvard University in 1986. He served from 1986-1989 as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Stockton was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship for 1989-1990 by CISAC. In August 1990, he joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1995 until 2000, he served as director of the NPS Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, he founded and served as the acting dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed associate provost in 2001.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Graduate Certificate in International Security
The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University offers a three-course certificate program in International Security for professionals at national labs, international corporations, non-governmental organizations, members of the military and government, and others seeking a background in international treaties and global policy-making as context for their work.
Program
Beauty and Terror: Does Mathematics Have a Role to Play in Winning the Shadow War?
How do you stop a terrorist?
You can work hard: Post men and equipment at every street corner, every port, every bay, every slip of beach, every straight stretch of asphalt long enough to land a plane.
You will spend billions, and your lines will be thin. All you've done is build the "impregnable" Atlantic Sea Wall--which the Allies punched through in hours on D-Day.
You've got to work smarter, not harder.
The opening line of the Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind is "Mathematicians won the war." During World War II, the mathematics underlying cryptography played an important role in military planning.
Thereafter came a new kind of war. After the first frosts descended in the Soviet East, perhaps $2 billion were spent in the development of Game Theory.
Now again we face a new kind of war. And we need a new kind of mathematics to fight it.
Since 2001, tremendous amounts of information have been gathered regarding terrorist cells and individuals potentially planning future attacks. There is now a pressing need to develop new mathematical and computational techniques to assist in the analysis of this information, both to quantify future threats and to quantify the effectiveness of counterterrorism operations and strategies. Concepts and techniques from mathematics--specifically, from Lattice Theory and Reflexive Theory--have already been applied to counterterrorism and homeland security problems. The following is a partial list of such problems.
1. Strategies for disrupting terrorist cells
2. Data analysis of terrorist activity
3. Border penetration and security
4. Terrorist cell formation
Jonathan Farley is a CISAC science fellow and a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. His work focuses on applying lattice theory and other branches of mathematics to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security.
In 2001-2002 he was one of four Americans to win a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to the United Kingdom. In the calendar years 2003 and 2004 he taught as a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he received the Harvard Foundation's Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University for "outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics." The City of Cambridge, Mass., declared March 19, 2004, to be "Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day."
He obtained his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University in 1995, after winning Oxford's highest mathematics awards, the Senior Mathematical Prize and Johnson University Prize, in 1994. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with the second highest average in his graduating class.
Farley's work includes the solution of a problem posed by universal algebraist George Gratzer that remained unsolved for 34 years, and the solution (published in 2005) of a problem posed in 1981 by MIT mathematics professor Richard Stanley.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Secret Practices of the War on Terror
Barbara Olshansky is Director Counsel of the Global Justice Initiative and Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Barbara's current docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights includes class action lawsuits concerning international human rights; immigrants' rights; race discrimination in employment, education, the environment, and public health; and prisoners' rights. Barbara recently co-authored two books: the most recent, entitled America's Disappeared, discusses the plight of America's "war on terror" detainees; and the second, entitled Against War With Iraq, analyzes the international law ramifications of the U.S. decision to pursue a military campaign in Iraq.
Barbara has also written two other books: Democracy Detained, discussing America's secret practices used in the "war on terror," and Secret Trials and Executions, assessing the military commissions scheduled for Guantánamo detainees. Stanford Law School recently named her 2005 Public Interest Lawyer of the Year.
Stanford Law School, Room 190
US-Japan Alliance: Challenges and Opportunities
Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Wright is Commander, U.S. Forces Japan, and Commander, 5th Air Force, Yokota Air Base, Japan. In these two command positions he is the senior U.S. military representative in Japan and commander of U.S. Air Force units in Japan respectively.
The general received his commission upon graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1973 and served as an instructor pilot early in his career. He has held command at all levels -- fighter squadron, group, wing and major command. Prior to assuming his current position, he was Vice Commander, Air Combat Command, with headquarters at Langley Air Force Base, Va., and Air Component Commander for U.S. Joint Forces Command and U.S. Northern Command. A command pilot, General Wright has more than 3,200 flying hours, principally in fighter aircraft, including 65 F-16 combat missions flown during operations Desert Storm, Provide Comfort and Deny Flight.
Philippines Conference Room
Manly Narratives: Writing Hokkaido into Imperial Japan
Michele Mason will discuss her work that examines competing portrayals of "manliness" and "manhood" set in or associated with Hokkaido during the Meiji period. Focusing on representations of the tondenhei farming militia, nature and the colonial project and the shûjikan prison system in Hokkaido, she argues that powerful rhetorical modes deployed in the appropriation of the island played a crucial role in the construction of imperial ideology, the modern military, Japanese subjects and national identity. Her project reconsiders Hokkaido's ambivalent colonial status and its naturalized yet marginal position in the nation, as well as highlights the significance of gender, and specifically masculinity, in shaping modern Japan.
Michele Mason is a postdoctoral fellow in Japanese studies at FSI. Currently she is investigating little known stories about Hokkaido by Kôda Rohan, Hoshino Tenchi, Tayama Katai in addition to canonized works such as Kunikida Doppo's Meat and Potatoes. She received a B.A. in Linguistics and Japanese from the University of Oregon (Eugene), an M.A. in modern Japanese literature from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in modern Japanese literature with an emphasis on cultural studies from the University of California, Irvine.
Building 360, Room 361JK
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Indonesia's Yudhoyono: A Strong Leader At Last?
After more than 30 years under the strong leadership of Suharto, Indonesians saw three weak and not always legitimate presidents come and go: B. J. Habibie (1998-99), Abdurrahman Wahid (1999-2001), and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001-2004). Democratization went forward. Yet Indonesians increasingly longed for a stronger
government that could deliver on its promises, including economic development. In 2004 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) won the country's first-ever direct presidential election by a landslide. During the campaign he promised, above all, an effective
government. Looking back on his first year, how has he performed? Has he broken the string of weak leaders? Will he grow in his job to become more effective? More
broadly, are weak leaders good for democracy but bad for development? Or does Indonesia illustrate some other relationship between national leadership, political
openness, and economic progress?
Hadi Soesastro is currently a visiting professor in the Weatherhead Institute of East Asian Studies at Columbia University. He has been with CSIS since 1971. His research interests include the political economy of development, regionalism, and trade, and energy issues, topics on which he has published and lectured widely. Recent writing on Indonesia includes an essay in Economic Recovery and Reform (2004). Dr. Soesastro chairs the International Steering Committee of PAFTAD (Pacific Trade and Development) and serves as an adjunct professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. In Indonesia he has served as a member of the National Research Council and the National Economic Council. He earned his PhD from the RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California.
Daniel I. Okimoto Conference Room
Is Taiwan Chinese?: Comparing the Experiences of Taiwanese and Chinese
Many people in China and the US assume that the new Taiwanese national identity is a political ploy which originated with Taiwan's government. Based on ethnographic research in both Taiwan and China, Melissa Brown argues that Taiwanese identity -- in both its ethnic and national forms -- are based on social experience. Because the people of Taiwan and China have had such different social experiences since 1895, Taiwanese identity as distinct from Chinese identity is real. The reality of Taiwanese identity poses challenges for resolving the debate over Taiwan's future relations with China, particularly in nationalistic responses due to lack of Chinese experience with Taiwanese society.
Melissa J. Brown is Assistant Professor of Anthropological Sciences and Research Affiliate at Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. She has been researching changing identities in Taiwan and China since 1991. Her books include Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan (University of California, Institute for East Asian Studies, 1996) and Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities (University of California Press, 2004).
Philippines Conference Room