Stanford University

Culture

Deborah Hensler

Room N349, Neukom Building
Stanford Law School
Stanford, CA  94305

(650) 723-0146 (650) 725-0253
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Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution
Professor of Law
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Deborah R. Hensler is the Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Emerita at Stanford Law School, where she teaches courses on complex and transnational litigation, the legal profession, and empirical research methods. She co-founded the Law and Policy Laboratory at the law school with Prof. Paul Brest (emeritus). She is a member of the RAND Institute Civil Justice Board of Overseers and the Berkeley Law Civil Justice Initiative Advisory Board. From 2000-2005 she was the director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.

Prof. Hensler has written extensively on mass claims and class actions and is the lead author of Class Actions in Context: How Economics, Politics and Culture Shape Collective Litigation (2016) and Class Action Dilemmas: Pursuing Public Goals for Private Gain (2000) and the co-editor of The Globalization of Class Actions (2009). Prof. Hensler has taught classes on comparative class actions and empirical research methods at the University of Melbourne (Australia) and Catolica Universidade (Lisboa) and held a personal chair in Empirical Legal Studies on Mass Claims at Tilburg University (Netherlands) from 2011-2017. In 2014 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by Leuphana University (Germany). Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Hensler was Director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Prof. Hensler received her A.B. in political science summa cum laude from Hunter College and her Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the Stanford Law School
Director at the Law and Policy Lab
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The Europe Center May 2016 Newsletter

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Event Recap: Networks of European Enlightenment

Networks of European EnlightenmentConventional wisdom suggests that there were multiple enlightenments, each of which was distinctive and national in nature. Yet did the "Scottish Enlightenment," for instance, truly develop apart from the "German Enlightenment"? At the end of April, Stanford University hosted the "Networks of European Enlightenment" conference, which brought together leading scholars studying the role of transnational networks and communication in spreading knowledge throughout the enlightenment. The works presented at this conference suggest an alternative to the conventional wisdom: there was significant communication between enlightenment thinkers, resulting in a diffusion of knowledge throughout Europe.

Over the course of the conference, participants presented work ranging from theoretical and empirical approaches to studying historical networks, to the role of particular individuals and locales in the diffusion of enlightenment thought, to the ways in which religious and epistemic communities facilitated this diffusion of knowledge. The participants in this conference included scholars from Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, Queen Mary University of London, the University of Cambridge, the University of Helsinki, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, the University of Oxford, the University of Vienna, and Yale University.

The Networks of European Enlightenment conference was convened by Dan Edelstein, who is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and Chair of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and a TEC faculty affiliate. Dan earned his Ph.D. in French from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and joined the faculty at Stanford in that same year. His research interests lie at the nexus of literature, history, political theory, and digital humanities and his work typically focuses on eighteenth-century France.

The Networks of European Enlightenment conference was co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center, the French Culture Workshop, the France-Stanford Center, and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

Featured Faculty Research: Amir Eshel

We would like to introduce you to some of The Europe Center’s faculty affiliates and the projects on which they are working. Our featured faculty member this month is Amir Eshel, who is the Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies, Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, and former Director of The Europe Center.

Amir EshelAmir earned his Ph.D. in German Literature from Hamburg University in 1998 and joined the faculty at Stanford that same year. In his research, Amir is interested in how literary and cultural portrayals of modernity are used as commentary on contemporary philosophical, political, and ethical questions. In his current project, The Contemporary, which is supported in part by The Europe Center, Amir and his colleagues examine the cultural and political portrayals and uses of defining moments of the twentieth century, such as 1945, 1973, 1989, and 2001. This project is both interdisciplinary and global in scope and seeks to not only understand how these pivotal moments are portrayed and used, but also why and how some moments become important cultural reference points, while others do not. Throughout this academic year, The Contemporary has hosted numerous events engaging scholars from across the United States and Europe, including speakers from Uppsala University in Sweden, Goethe University in Germany, and the University of Antwerp in Belgium, among others. For more information about The Contemporary, please visit the project's website.

Featured Graduate Student Research: Suddhaseel Sen

We would like to introduce you to some of the graduate students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured graduate student this month is Suddhaseel Sen (Musicology). Suddhaseel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music at Stanford University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies at Stanford, Suddhaseel arranged Indian music for Western ensembles in India and Canada, in addition to doing academic research in English literature.

Suddhaseel SenSuddhaseel is a musicologist who is interested in Indian music and the orchestral, chamber, and operatic repertoires of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Supported in part by The Europe Center, Suddhaseel spent summer 2015 conducting fieldwork for his dissertation, Intimate Strangers: Cross-Cultural Exchanges between Indian and Western Musicians 1880-1940. During his fieldwork, Suddhaseel spent time in the archives of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France), examining letters and writings by French composers known to have visited India and incorporated Indian themes and musical elements in their compositions. From this research, he discovered that French composers came into greater direct contact with the music of the Maghreb, on the one hand, and the music of Southeast Asia, on the other, as a result of which the musical traditions from these non-Western regions were more influential than Indian or South Asian music in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since completing his fieldwork in France, Suddhaseel has conducted further research in London and is currently located at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. Suddhaseel is continuing to work on his dissertation, which he hopes to defend in the 2016-2017 academic year.

For more information about The Europe Center's Graduate Student Grant program, please visit our website.

Spring 2016 Graduate Student Grant Competition Winners Announced

Please join us in congratulating the winners of The Europe Center Spring 2016 Graduate Student Grant Competition:

  • Lindsay Der, Anthropology, "Animal Symbolism and Inequality at the Origins of Agriculture."
  • Jane Esberg, Political Science, "Strategies of Repression: Killings, Courts, and Censorship in Military Dictatorships."
  • Andre Fischer, German Studies, "Myth in German Postwar Literature, Film, and Art."
  • Nicole Gounalis, Italian, "From Futurism to Neorealism: Art, Politics, and Civil Society in Italy, 1909-1959."
  • Benjamin Hein, History, "Gateway to the Americas: ArcGIS and the Spatial History of Frankfurt's Financial Hinterland."
  • Torin Jones, Cultural Anthropology, "Reluctant Integration: African Migrants and the New Sicilian Imagination."
  • Nicholas Levy, History, "Rust Proof: Industrial Development and Urban Life in the Socialist 1970s."
  • Lachlan McNamee, Political Science, "Sowing the Seeds of Conflict: The Long-Term Political Effects of the Irish Plantation Scheme."
  • Fayola Neely, German Studies, "Metalinguistic Awareness in the Acquisition of German as a Third Language: The role of L2 Proficiency."
  • Jessi Piggott, Theater and Performance Studies, "Political Street Theater: A Comparative History of Agitprop and Contemporary Art Activism."
  • Jens Pohlmann, German Studies, "Capitalizing on the Avant-Garde? An Analysis of Adversarial Author's Marketing Strategies in the Second Half of the 20th Century."
  • Justin Tackett, English, "Listening Between the Lines: Sound Technology and Poetry, 1850-1930."
  • Michael Webb, Economics, "Skill-Biased Technical Change in the UK Manufacturing Sector: Does It Explain Inequality?"

Please visit our website for more information about our Graduate Student Grant program.

The Europe Center-Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Exchange Program

Over the past month, The Europe Center has welcomed our first two visitors from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) as part of an exchange program agreement set last year. Both visitors are senior policy advisors - one focused on trade and the other on the budget. While at Stanford, they interacted with faculty and students to discuss the critical issues facing Europe and examine solutions for them. The other part of the exchange agreement, the Summer Internship Program with the ALDE Group, was implemented last June. Selected Stanford undergraduate interns work on policy related research projects while also learning about the legislative work of the European Parliament.

For more information about The Europe Center's Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe, please visit our website.

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Kuwait scholar examines the impact of oil on urban life in Kuwait [VIDEO]

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In a talk dated April 20, 2016, American University of Kuwait Scholar Farah Al-Nakib discussed her recently released book Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Stanford University Press, 2016). The book traces the relationships between the urban landscape, patterns and practices of everyday life, and social behaviors and relations in Kuwait, from its settlement in 1716 through the bridge of oil discovery to the twenty-first century. The history that emerges reveals how decades of urban planning, suburbanization, and privatization have eroded an open, tolerant society and given rise to the insularity, xenophobia, and divisiveness that characterize Kuwaiti social relations today. However, over the past decade several social forces and youth-based movements—from political protesters to architects and small entrepreneurs—have been staking claims to the city and demanding a different kind of urban experience. Beyond simply reviving the declined urban center, Al-Nakib argues, their efforts have the potential to restore Kuwaiti society’s lost urbanity.

 

 

 

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At Stanford, Fu Ying discusses prospect of building US-China consensus

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China and the United States have lately been characterized as geostrategic rivals and on a path toward inevitable conflict. But, according to Fu Ying, chairperson of China’s Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress and former ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and the United Kingdom, this picture is incomplete and misrepresents a reality that is much more nuanced.

Fu discussed the current state of U.S.-China relations in a keynote speech at Stanford on Tuesday. Speaking to a full house in Encina Hall, she described different perspectives and shared challenges of China and the United States, and urged a new consensus between the world’s two largest economies.

“In the past thirty years, we’ve had friendly moments, but we were never very close. We had problems, but the relationship was strong enough to avoid derailing.

“Now we are at a higher level. If we work together now, we are capable of making big differences in the world. But if we fight, we will bring disasters – not only to the two countries, but to the world,” Fu said.

Fu’s visit was co-hosted by the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, two centers in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). Following her remarks, Thomas Fingar, a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered comments and took questions from the audience.

Fu opened her speech by saying she welcomed alternative views and “a debate.”

Misunderstandings, she said, afflict the U.S.-China relationship. Confusion shared between the two countries can largely be attributed to a “perception gap,” which, she said, is aggrandized through media reporting.

Concern on the American side over China, she said, is tied to its own doubts over its “constructive engagement” strategy. An approach held during the past eight U.S. administrations, the strategy was based on an assumption that supporting market-based reforms in China would lead to political change, she said. However, this has not occurred, and some in the U.S. are now urging the construction of another “grand strategy.”

The United States, she said, also has “rising anxiety about what kind of a global role China is going to play,” and about the future direction of the Chinese economy after its growth slid to hover around seven percent in the last two years compared to its once double digit growth in the past decade.

China interprets the United States’ apprehension as misguided, Fu said. “We see it as a reflection of the United States’ fear of losing its own primary position in the world.”

On the other hand, China, she said, is “relatively more positive” about its overall engagement with the United States. The purpose of Chinese foreign policy, Fu said, is to improve the international environment and to raise the standard of living of its people without exporting its values or seeking world power. “We believe China has achieved this purpose,” she added.

The United States and others must also remember that the past can loom large in the minds of the Chinese people, Fu said.

In attempting to understand China, “one should not lose sight of the historical dimension,” she said. China at various times in the nineteenth to early twentieth century was under occupation by foreign powers, she said, and this is a reason why sovereignty is a closely held value in the Chinese ethos.

The overall “perception gap” between China and the United States has moved from misunderstanding to fear, and that, she said, is causing negative spillover effects for both countries.

Two manifestations of this fear, she cited, are the United States’ “reluctance to acknowledge China’s efforts to help improve the existing order,” such as the development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, and the U.S.’ “growing interference” in South China Sea issues.

“Will it lead to a reckless urge to ‘throw down the gauntlet’?” Fu asked.

She acknowledged that collision is a concern. China is focused on addressing its challenges with the United States, including avoiding potential incidents and finding ways “to adapt to and participate in adjustment in international order,” Fu said.

Yet, she cautioned that the two countries be realistic in their aims and know that China is not seeking to emulate the United States. China and the United States, unlike Japan and South Korea, do not have a formal strategic or security alliance, and they need not have one, Fu said.

“China is not an ally, and it should not be an enemy either,” she said.

“Can we accept and respect each other, and build new consensus?” she asked. She then stated, “I want to end my speech with a question mark as a salute to Stanford University which is renowned for its capability of addressing difficult questions.”

Fingar gave a brief response to Fu’s address.

Calling it largely “fictional,” he challenged the notion that there is high “American anxiety” about China. Instead, he noted, “Americans do not think very much about China,” as reflected in the multitude of polls taken recently during the primary campaigns. Thus, “there isn’t a lot of public drive to do things differently with China.”

Among U.S. academics, however, there is “puzzlement,” Fingar suggested. Puzzlement, he explained, borne less from any kind of loss of confidence in U.S. policy of constructive engagement but rather from China’s seeming departure from a trajectory that it had set for itself over the last 40 years. At the moment China’s reforms appear “bogged down;" its leaders, slow to take the critical steps necessary for economic growth; and its engagement with the outside world, increasingly unpredictable. “The puzzlement about China,” therefore, and “concern about policy has at least as much to do with concern that China may be stumbling as it does about a rising China,” he added. Debunking the zero-sum notion of international relations, Fingar emphasized instead that the United States has “done very well as a nation” in part because of its active engagement with and because of China’s success. “We welcome the rise of China, the rise of others,” he stated.

Fingar concluded with his opinion that the debacle in the South China Sea does not pose a serious threat to the relationship. Instead, “the world needs more examples of joint U.S.-Chinese cooperation and leadership” as was the case with recent breakthroughs in climate change between the United States and China. Otherwise, he added, other countries will not commit their resources for fear of a veto or objection from either the United States or China.

Later that day, Fu met with faculty members of FSI and Hoover.

Related links:

Photo gallery from the event

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Fu Ying, chairperson of China's Foreign Affairs Committee at the National People's Congress, speaks with Thomas Fingar about U.S.-China relations at Stanford, May 10.
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Overcoming Economic Malaise: Strategic, Educational and Social Innovation for South Korea

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South Korea has relied on its export-oriented development model to become an economic powerhouse, but has now reached the limits of this model. Indeed, Korea’s phenomenal growth has incubated the seeds of its own destruction. Learning from the Korean developmental experience, China has adopted key elements of the Korean development model and has become a potent competitor in electronics and the heavy industries. Meanwhile, the organizational and institutional legacies of late industrialization have constrained Korean efforts to move into technology entrepreneurship and the service sector. These strategic challenges are compounded by a demographic bomb, as social development has led to collapsing birthrates in Korea, much like other developed countries in Europe and Asia. Within the next few years, the Korean workforce will start diminishing in size and aging rapidly, straining the country’s resources and curtailing its growth. In this seminar, Joon Nak Choi, 2015-16 Koret Fellow at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Reserach Center, will discuss innovations in business strategy, educational policy and social structure that are directly relevant to these problems, and that would alleviate or perhaps even reverse Korea’s economic malaise.

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A Stanford graduate and sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor of management at the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context. He coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (Stanford University Press, 2015).

This public event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Joon Nak Choi

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Joon Nak Choi is the 2015-2016 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). A sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context.

Choi, a Stanford graduate, has worked jointly with professor Gi-Wook Shin to analyze the transnational bridges linking Asia and the United States. The research project explores how economic development links to foreign skilled workers and diaspora communities.

Most recently, Choi coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea with Shin, who is also the director of the Korea Program. From 2010-11, Choi developed the manuscript while he was a William Perry postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

During his fellowship, Choi will study the challenges of diversity in South Korea and teach a class for Stanford students. Choi’s research will buttress efforts to understand the shifting social and economic patterns in Korea, a now democratic nation seeking to join the ranks of the world’s most advanced countries.
 
Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea. The fellowship has expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in Korea, and aims to identify young promising scholars working on these areas.

 

2015-2016 Koret Fellow
Visiting Scholar
<i>2015-16 Koret Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University</i>
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Korean Studies Colloquium Series

The Europe Center April 2016 Newsletter

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Event Recap: German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen Visits Stanford

Ursula von der LeyenUrsula von der Leyen, Minister of Defense, Federal Republic of Germany

In her March visit to Stanford University, Ursula von der Leyen, Minister of Defense for the Federal Republic of Germany, spoke to members of the Stanford community about the consequences of current international security challenges for Germany and for Europe. In recent months, some in Germany have advocated border closures as a solution to the ongoing migration crisis. Von der Leyen was highly critical of such measures because they necessitate closing intra-European Union borders thereby limiting the freedom of movement within the European Union, something she heralds as one of the greatest achievements of European integration.

As an alternative to the simplistic border closure approach, von der Leyen advocated a more nuanced approach, consisting of four broad steps. First, she said that the EU member states must clarify the meaning of “asylum,” and that those wishing to migrate to Germany or some other European country but who are not fleeing persecution must go through the regular migration process. Second, she stated that in order to maintain border-free travel across the Schengen area, the member states must reinforce external borders in an effort to combat human smuggling, human trafficking, and organized crime. The third step in von der Leyen’s approach was to enhance multilateral cooperation. She highlighted increased NATO naval patrols in the Mediterranean, the EU-NATO-Turkey summit meeting, and commitment to raising funds to feed and shelter refugees as examples of such cooperation. Finally, she said that Europe and its allies must deal with the root causes of the refugee flows by bringing peace and stability to both Iraq and Syria and by stopping ISIS. Doing so, she argued, will require military means, at least initially, and also requires increased coordination among the many disparate actors currently involved in the conflict. In order to successfully deal with the ongoing crisis, she argued, people must have a viable future in their own countries.

A medical doctor by training, von der Leyen spoke fondly of the time that she and her family spent at Stanford in the nineties. She became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1990 and became active in politics shortly after returning to Germany from Stanford. Since that time, she has served at the local, lander, and federal levels of government and was first appointed to the cabinet in 2005. Prior to her 2013 appointment as Minister of Defense, von der Leyen served as the Minister of Family Affairs and Youth (2005-2009) and as the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs (2009-2013).

The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe

Please join us in congratulating the students selected to participate in The Europe Center’s summer 2016 Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe:

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) 
Christine Cavallo
Joshua Petersen

Bruegel
Nafia Chowdhury 
Max Morales 
Andrea Villarreal

The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Amanda Jaffe

The International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS)
Caitlyn Littlepage
Sarah Manney

For more information about The Europe Center’s Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe, please visit our website.

Featured Faculty Research: Ken Scheve

We would like to introduce you to some of The Europe Center’s faculty affiliates and the projects on which they are working. Our featured faculty member this month is Ken Scheve, who is a Professor of Political Science and Director of The Europe Center.

Taxing the RichKen earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000 and joined the faculty at Stanford University in 2012. Ken's research interests are in the fields of international and comparative political economy and comparative political behavior with particular interest in the behavioral foundations of the politics of economic policymaking. An example of this research is his recent book, Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe, which he co-authored with David Stasavage of New York University. In this book, Scheve and Stasavage tackle a subject of considerable political conflict: taxes on the richest members of society. There has been a great deal of debate about what government should do in this area, but we know far less about the reasons why some governments actually do tax the rich and others do not. Scheve and Stasavage address this question by examining income, inheritance, and other taxes from 1800 to the present in a set of twenty countries.

The core argument of the book is that countries tax the rich when the public thinks the state has failed to treat citizens as equals and in so doing has privileged the rich. Scheve and Stasavage begin with the premise that debates about taxation revolve around self-interest (no one likes paying taxes), economic efficiency, and fairness. They argue that fairness considerations center on what it means for the state to treat citizens as equals in income tax policy. Historically, they demonstrate that there are three main fairness arguments that have been used for or against taxing the rich. Equal Treatment arguments claim that everyone should be taxed at the same rate just like everyone has one vote. Ability to Pay arguments contend that states should tax the rich at higher rates because they can better afford to pay when compared with everyone else. Compensatory arguments suggest that it is fair to tax the rich at higher rates when it compensates for unequal treatment by the state in some other policy area. They argue that over the last two centuries compensatory arguments have been the most powerful arguments in favor of taxing the rich.

Examining the history of income taxation, Scheve and Stasavage find that compensatory arguments were important in the early development of income tax systems in the 19th century when it was argued that income taxes on the rich were necessary to compensate for heavy indirect taxes that fell disproportionately on the poor and middle class. But the most significant compensatory arguments over the last two centuries have been arguments to raise taxes on the rich to preserve equal sacrifice in wars of mass mobilization. These conflicts, particularly World War I and World War II, led states to raise large armies, often through conscription, and citizens and politicians alike adopted compensatory fairness arguments to justify higher taxes on income and wealth. Mass war mobilization led governments of both left and right to tax the rich.

Scheve and Stasavage show that governments have neither taxed the rich just because inequality is high, nor have they done so simply because the poor and middle classes outnumber the rich when it comes to voting. The main occasion when governments have moved to tax the rich is during times of mass mobilization for war, especially in democracies in which the norm of treating citizens as equals is held more strongly. They demonstrate that the real watershed for taxing the rich for many countries came in 1914. The era of the two world wars and their aftermath was one in which governments taxed the rich at rates that would have previously seemed unimaginable.

Throughout the book, Scheve and Stasavage show that when countries shift from peace to war, or the reverse, there has also been a big shift in the type of fairness arguments made in favor of taxing the rich. During times of peace, debates about whether it is fair to tax the rich center on competing equal treatment and ability to pay arguments. During times of war, supporters of taxing the rich have also been able to make compensatory arguments. If the poor and middle classes are doing the fighting, then the rich should be asked to pay more for the war effort. If some with wealth benefit from war profits, then this creates another compensatory argument for taxing the rich. These compensatory arguments had the biggest impact in democracies that are founded on the idea that citizens should be treated as equals. The fact that war had a much bigger impact on taxes on the rich in democracies than in autocracies also suggests that the rich weren’t being taxed out of simple necessity. It was because war determined what types of fairness arguments could be made.

The findings in Taxing the Rich have implications for the future of income taxation: Don’t expect high and rising inequality to necessarily lead to a return to the high top tax rates of the post-war era. What really matters is what people believe about how inequality is generated in the first place. If it is clear that inequality has risen because the government has failed to treat citizens as equals in the first place, then there is room for convincing compensatory arguments. Today, in an era where military technology favors more limited forms of warfare — drones rather than boots on the ground — the wartime compensatory arguments of old are no longer available. Absent new compensatory arguments, Scheve and Stasavage expect some to argue for taxing the rich based on ability to pay, but this probably won’t suffice to produce radically higher tax rates. More politically plausible reforms include those that involve increasing taxes on the rich by appealing to the logic of equal treatment to remove deductions, exemptions, and cases of special treatment. For more information about this research, please visit the book's website.

Publication Details: Scheve, Kenneth F., and David Stasavage. 2016. Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe. Princeton, NJ and New York, NY: Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Featured Graduate Student Research: Melissa Kagen

We would like to introduce you to some of the graduate students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured graduate student this month is Melissa Kagen (German Studies). Melissa is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies at Stanford, Melissa earned an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

Melissa KagenMelissa's research interests include nineteenth and twentieth century German and Austrian opera and fiction, Jewish studies, and performance studies, as well as digital humanities. In her dissertation, Melissa examines the concept of "Wandering" - an important theme since Wagner's work - in modernist German opera. She considers the distinctive conceptions of German and Jewish wanderers in four operas written by German-speaking Jews prior to World War II. These operas include Der Ferne Klang (1912) by Franz Schreker, Die Tote Stadt (1920) by Erich Wolfgang, Moses und Aron (1933) by Arnold Schoenberg, and The Eternal Road (1937) by Kurt Weill. Supported by The Europe Center, Melissa conducted research in Germany and Austria during summer 2015. During this time, she traveled to libraries and archives to access works related to her dissertation research. A highlight of her research trip was seeing a performance of Der Ferne Klang in Manheim. Because this opera is rarely performed and is not available on DVD, this was the first time Melissa had ever seen a performance of Der Ferne Klang. Another crucial outcome of her archival work was the realization that in Die Tote Stadt, the protagonist himself does not wander, but rather the spaces wander around him. This realization was crucial to her novel discussion of this work. Melissa will be presenting her completed project in May and graduating in June. She hopes to return to Europe this summer to work on a related project.

For more information about The Europe Center's Graduate Student Grant program, please visit our website.

Stanford Student Sarah Flamm Participates in Model WTO

Model WTOModel WTO Participants at the University of St. Gallen

In April Stanford University student Sarah Flamm traveled to Switzerland to participate in the 19th annual Model World Trade Organization program. Here is Sarah’s description of her experience:

I had the pleasure of representing the delegation of the United States at the 19th annual Model World Trade Organization (WTO) this April. With the generous support of SIEPR and The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute, I traveled to Switzerland to join 60 graduate and undergraduate students from different parts of the world to deliberate over the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). The simulation took place at the University of St. Gallen and the WTO headquarters in Geneva. Over the course of an intense week, we delegates negotiated and drafted amendments to the GPA to reflect changing national and international priorities and values.

Government procurement refers to purchases of goods and services made by government agencies with public money for public purposes. This topic is more interesting and polemical than one might initially suspect. Federal procurement represents a huge market ($530 billion in the United States), making its impact quite consequential. The goal of the GPA is to facilitate and to open trade opportunities and to ensure that governments follow the principles of non-discrimination, transparency, and procedural fairness in procurement. It is one of the few agreements where the United States has allowed itself to be subject to international arbitration, favoring the benefits of market access. Government procurement is also symbolically important as it reflects how nations choose to spend their money and whom they decide to support.

I represented the delegation of the United States, along with four others students from Belgium, Switzerland, China, and Hong Kong. We were each assigned to represent the United States on different committees, which included Green Procurement, Anti-corruption, African Participation, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and Social Issues. I served on the Social Issues Committee, which addressed priorities in government procurement as they relate to labor standards, minority rights and discrimination, among others. On the Social Committee I had two main negotiation goals: 1) insert the term "social issues" into the GPA text in order to empower governments to explicitly take social responsibility into account when awarding government contracts, and 2) define "social issues" to mean meeting minimum labor standards, notably to comply with two International Labour Organization conventions - Convention 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labour and Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Over the course of six moderated negotiation rounds, we discussed these as well as priorities raised by other countries. The negotiations varied from meticulous arguments over text, to practical discussions on how to create allowances for developing countries that currently rely on child and cheap labor, making them presently unable to meet the requirements of developed countries in order to compete for contracts.

Amidst negotiations, our delegation consulted with David Bisbee, who is the Attaché at the U.S. Mission to the WTO. He advised on negotiations and strategy, and upon conclusion of the negotiations we met with him in person at the U.S. embassy in Geneva. It was interesting to represent a country that is not very enthusiastic about multilateral bodies such as the WTO. In reality, the United States would likely have abstained from voting to include the Social Issues language that we had promoted because of the fear that it would open the door to discrimination. At the end of the week, we met with lawyers from the WTO Secretariat in Geneva who gave us detailed feedback on the new GPA text we had created. This provided an opportunity to better understand whether our results were realistic and how they compared to real negotiation outcomes. We also learned about the procedure for ratification of the amended document.

Simulations like Model WTO differ from reality in that country representatives are often more willing to compromise than they would in reality, but this also allowed for an expanded policy space for our countries to come up with workable solutions. This experience has piqued my interest in one day representing the labor and trade priorities of the United States on the global stage.

The Europe Center Sponsored Events

April 28, 2016 
12:00PM - 1:30PM 
Pauline Schnapper, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle 
Is Britain Going to Leave the EU? The Referendum Campaign and the Crisis of British Democracy 
CISAC Central Conference Room, Encina Hall 
RSVP by 5:00PM April 25, 2016.

Save the Date: April 28-29, 2016 
9:00AM - 5:00PM 
Conference: Networks of European Enlightenment 
Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center 
This conference is co-sponsored by The Europe Center, the French Cultural Workshop, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

Save the Date: April 29-30, 2016 
Symposium: Adjudicating Across Borders: Contemporary Challenges in International Adoption 
Stanford Law School Room 290 
RSVP required. 
This conference is co-sponsored by The Europe Center

May 9, 2016 
11:30AM - 1:00PM 
Monica Martinez-Bravo, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI), Madrid 
Workshop Title TBD 
Room 400 (Graham Stuart Lounge), Encina Hall West 
No RSVP required. 
This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

European Security Initiative Events

Save the Date: April 28, 2016 
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John Bass, United States Ambassador to Turkey

Save the Date: May 3, 2016 
Steve Sestanovich, Professor of International Diplomacy at Columbia University

 

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Shorenstein APARC scholars discuss President Obama's visit to Hiroshima

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In the wake of this month’s G7 Summit in Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama has an opportunity to make a presidential visit to Hiroshima. Such a visit would reinforce his vision of a nuclear-free world and solidify an important legacy of his foreign policy, Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin and Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider write in an editorial for The Diplomat. The co-authors argue that the visit be framed in a way that would contribute to historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia and not undermine progress made between Japan and South Korea. 

Sneider wrote in an earlier Toyo Keizei editorial that while the White House has not yet announced a decision, the momentum for such a visit exists. And while issues of divided historical memory cannot be ignored, the occasion would not include an apology. The editorial can be viewed online in English and Japanese.

Sneider also contributed to Public Radio International's podcast series "Whose Century Is It?" and two articles on the Huffington Post Japan website. The first article, written in Japanese, examines how the history of atomic bombings are taught in the United States, and the second article, written in English, explores the question of acceptability of President Obama's visit to Hiroshima by the Japanese people.

During the visit, Obama delivered a speech that outlined the threat of nuclear weapons and the need for a world free from them. Writing for Nippon.com, Sneider said the speech and overall visit was well-received by many, but also had its critics. "The best judgment of the impact of Obama's Hiroshima visit may be what follows in Northeast Asia, where the task of postwar reconciliation remains unfinished," he wrote. The editorial can be viewed online in English and Japanese.

Shin and Sneider lead a decade-long research project that examines historical reconciliation in Asia, and are co-authors of the forthcoming book, Divergent Memories, about elite opinion and wartime memory in Asia.

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During a break in the G7 Ministerial Meetings in Japan, a delegation visits the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on April 11, 2016 with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
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Stanford historical memory project seeks WWII reconciliation in Asia

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From atomic bombs to harsh military occupations in the World War II period, the past is very much the present in the Asia Pacific region.

Stanford scholars are striving to help heal these wounds from yesteryear. Helping old enemies better understand each other today is the aim of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a multi-year comparative study of the formation of historical memory regarding the wartime period in countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

Left unattended, misguided wartime narratives may exacerbate current disputes to the point of armed conflict, said Daniel Sneider, associate director of research at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He leads the Divided Memories project along with Gi-Wook Shin, a Stanford sociology professor and the Shorenstein center director.

Sneider points out the critical importance of textbooks and what is taught in schools – especially given the rise of nationalism among youth in China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

"Dialogue among youth of the different nations is needed, along with an appreciation for the diversity of views and the complexity of history," he said.

Shin said, "Each nation in northeast Asia and even the U.S. has selective or divided memories of the past, and does not really understand the views of the other side."

Education and history

Launched in 2006, the Divided Memories project has published research findings, issued recommendations and convened conferences. In the early days, the researchers examined high school history textbooks in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and America.

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The outcome was the project's first book in 2011, History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories, which suggests that an "introspective effort" to understand national narratives about WWII has the potential to bring about historical reconciliation in the region. Sneider describes it as the first comparative study of textbooks in the countries involved; it soon evolved into a classroom supplemental textbook published by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education.

"Formal education is a powerful force in shaping our historical understandings," Sneider noted. "We wanted to look at the textbooks that have the most impact and usage."

A 2014 book, Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, which was co-edited by Shin, Sneider and Daniel Chirot, a sociologist with the University of Washington, compared successful European WWII reconciliations with lagging Asian efforts. Another book, Divided Lenses, published earlier this year, examined the impact of dramatic film and other forms of popular culture on wartime memory. A new book is due out this summer, Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War, which focuses on leaders in politics, the media and academia in Japan, China, South Korea and the U.S.

The Divided Memories project aims to generate discussions and collaborations among those who create "historical memories" – educators, policymakers and government leaders. One report that grew out of such dialogues included suggestions for reconciliation:

  • Create supplementary teaching materials on the issue. 
  • Launch dialogues among Asian, American and European historians. 
  • Offer educational forums for journalists, policymakers and students. 
  • Conduct museum exchanges and create new museums, such as one wholly dedicated to WWII reconciliation in Asia. 
  • Increase student exchanges among all the countries involved. 

History is reflected in today's geopolitics, as noted in the revived disputes by these nations over rival claims to islands in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Without resolution, these disagreements can flare up into military conflicts, Sneider wrote.

"The question of history taps into sensitive and deeply rooted issues of national identity," he noted.

Whether recounting Japanese atrocities in China, China's exaggerated account of its Communist fighters' role in World War II, or the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, no nation is immune to re-creating the past to further its own interests today, Sneider wrote.

For example, Divided Memories research on Chinese textbooks shows how the Chinese government in recent decades embarked on a "patriotic education" campaign to indoctrinate young people by exaggerating its role in Japan's WWII defeat. This narrative suits the nationalistic desires of a Chinese government no longer exclusively motivated by communist ideology, Sneider said.

One project of APARC and its Japan Program that was also an outgrowth of Divided Memories involved Stanford scholars urging Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to show "clear, heartfelt remorse" in a 2015 speech on the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. A 15-page report featured hypothetical statements suggesting what Abe might say to make amends for Japanese actions in China and Korea.

"While we cannot claim to have directly influenced the prime minister, his statement did go further in the direction of an expression of remorse over the war and the need to continue to look clearly and honestly at the past than many expected," said Sneider.

 

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A workshop on history textbooks co-hosted by Shorenstein APARC and Academia Sinica's Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies takes places in Taipei, Sept. 3, 2008.

Generations and grievances

Consciousness-raising on other fronts, however, is getting results, thanks to Stanford's Divided Memories project. A 2015 landmark agreement between Japan and South Korea over the WWII "comfort women" dispute was reached due to extensive U.S. involvement. Comfort women were women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II.

In an article, Sneider explained how the U.S. perceived that the dysfunctional relationship between South Korea and Japan over this issue, among others, threatened to undermine American strategic interests in Asia. 

Shin highlights the importance of U.S. involvement. "The U.S. is not just an outsider to historical and territorial disputes in the region," he said. "From a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. has done a wonderful job in reviving the devastated region into a prosperous one after 1945, but from a historical reconciliation perspective, the U.S. has done a poor job."

He suggests that America should "play a constructive role in promoting historical reconciliation" among the countries involved. And so, the Divided Memories project has included the United States in its efforts.

According to Sneider, Divided Memories is unique among all reconciliation projects for its emphasis on the inclusion of the U.S.; comparative analyses across countries; and real-world policy impacts. As part of the Shorenstein research center, it is housed within Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

"This project reflects what Stanford, our center and the Freeman Spogli Institute are all about – true interdisciplinary research and engagement," Sneider said.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

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Japanese soldiers in Shanghai, March 23, 1927 | A Stanford project encourages World War II reconciliation and historical accuracy about the conflict and its consequences in Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. Progress has been made on classroom textbooks and scholarly discussions and exchanges.
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Global Talent and Immigration Issues in Aging Societies: The Korean Experience

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As the keynote for Shorenstein APARC's 8th annual Koret Workshop, Se Young Ahn, one of South Korea's leading public intellectuals, will analyze the Korean experience of utilizing global talent and immigration in the context of an extremely rapidly aging society.

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Ahn is the chairman of the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences in South Korea. He oversees 23 national think tanks including Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, Korea Development Institute, Science and Technology Policy Institute, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, Korea Labor Institute, and Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. He also chairs the National Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiation, and is a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Sogang University. Ahn's research areas include trade policy and economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the China-Korea Free Trade Agreement and Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement. A graduate of Seoul National University, Chairman Ahn received a doctoral degree from the Pantheon-Sorbonne (Paris I) University in France.

The Koret Workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Se Young Ahn <i>Chairman, National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences</i>, Korea
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