The Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) has launched a multi-year collaborative project with research institutes in Europe and the Greater Middle East. First partners include the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
Did Jordan's general elections, called forth after parliament's dissolution a year earlier, introduce new hope for democratic reform in an increasingly autocratic kingdom? The panel of speakers at this research seminar will address the aftermath of the parliamentary contest of November 2010, assessing broad trends in this critical state following the November elections.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
N/A
Sean Yom finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Government at Harvard University in June 2009, with a dissertation entitled "Iron Fists in Silk Gloves: Building Political Regimes in the Middle East." His primary research explores the origins and durability of authoritarian regimes in this region. His work contends that initial social conflicts driven by strategic Western interventions shaped the social coalitions constructed by autocratic incumbents to consolidate power in the mid-twentieth century--early choices that ultimately shaped the institutional carapaces and political fates of these governments. While at CDDRL, he will revise the dissertation in preparation for book publication, with a focus on expanding the theory to cover other post-colonial regions and states. His other research interests encompass contemporary political reforms in the Arab world, the historical architecture of Persian Gulf security, and US democracy promotion in the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Democracy, Middle East Report, Arab Studies Quarterly, and Arab Studies Journal.
The Muslims of South Asia made the transition to modern economic life more slowly than the region’s Hindus. In the first half of the twentieth century, they were relatively less likely to use large-scale and long-living economic organizations, and less likely to serve on corporate boards. Providing evidence, this paper also explores the institutional roots of the difference in communal trajectories. Whereas Hindu inheritance practices favored capital accumulation within families and the preservation of family fortunes across generations, the Islamic inheritance system, which the British helped to enforce, tended to fragment family wealth. The family trusts (waqfs) that Muslims used to preserve assets across generations hindered capital pooling among families, and they were ill-suited to profit-seeking business. Whereas Hindus generally pooled capital within durable joint family enterprises, Muslims tended to use ephemeral Islamic partnerships. Hindu family businesses facilitated the transition to modern corporate life by imparting skills useful in large and durable organizations.
Timur Kuran is Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. His research focuses on social change, including the evolution of preferences and institutions. He has just completed a book, The Long Divergence (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2010), on the role that Islam played in the economic rise of the Middle East and, subsequently, in the institutional stagnation that accompanied the region's slip into a state of underdevelopment. Some of the archival work on which this book was based will be published, also in 2010, as a ten-volume bi-lingual set entitled Kadı Sicilleri. Among Kuran's earlier publications are Private Truths,(Harvard University Press, Işığında 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Ekonomik Yaşam / Economic Life in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul, as Reflected in Court Registers Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification 1995) and Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004), each translated into several languages, including Turkish.
Link to paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1656038
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Abbas Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He also holds a Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University since 2005. Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
His recent publications include: "a Case of Partial Cooperation: the 1920 Revolution and Iraqi Sectarian Identities" (forthcoming); "Forging a Third Way: Sistani's Marja‘iyya between Quietism and Wilāyat al-Faqīh, in Iraq, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, edited by Ali Paya and John Esposito, Routledge, July 2010; "Widows' Doomsday: Women and War in the Poetry of Hassan al-Nassar," in Women and War in Muslim Countries, ed. Faegheh Shirazi, Austin: The University of Texas Press, June 2010; "Opting for the Lesser Evil: US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq, 1958-2008," in Bob Looney (ed.) Handbook of US Middle East Relations, London: Routledge, 2009; and Shi`i Perceptions of the Iraq Study Group, Strategic Insights, vol. VI, issue 2 (March 2007).
His book translations include Shi‘a Sects: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes, London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (2007); Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar (Arabic Translation), Köln, Germany: Dar al-Jamal (2006); and Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives, by Anthony Giddens (Arabic Translation), with Dr. Hassan Nadhem, Beirut: (2003).
His current projects include editing the Routledge Handbook of Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge (forthcoming 2011) and finishing a manuscript on The 1920 Revolution and the Making of the Modern Iraqi State (under review).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
not in residence
Dr. Alexander Betts is the Hedley Bull research fellow in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he is also director of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Global Migration Governance project. He received his MPhil (with distinction) and DPhil from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the international politics of refugee protection and migration. His main academic focus is on understanding the conditions under which international cooperation takes place in the refugee regime and other areas of migration. In particular, the theoretical focus of his work is on the dynamics of international institutions: on a ‘horizontal' level (across issue-areas and policy fields) and on a ‘vertical' level (between the global and the national level). He has worked on a range of policy issues including forced migration and development, protracted refugee situations, and the protection of vulnerable irregular migrants. His research has a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, and he has carried out extensive fieldwork across the region, including in South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the DRC. He has taught a range of graduate courses including ‘International Relations Theory', ‘International Relations of the Developing World' and ‘Forced Migration and International Relations'. He is on the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). He has previously worked for UNHCR, and been a consultant to UNHCR, IOM, and the Council of Europe.
(Profile last updated in September 2011.)
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E203
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
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.
With the departure of the last U.S. combat brigade from Iraq, the Obama administration has taken a large stride toward its goal of complete American military withdrawal from Iraq by the end of next year. And there are many other signs of progress.
The rate of Iraqi civilian deaths in political violence has fallen by 90 percent from its awful peak in 2006, before "the surge" in American forces and strategy began to roll back the insurgent challenge.
American military deaths in Iraq have fallen to 46 so far this year, by far the lowest level since the American invasion in March 2003, and again a 90 percent decline from the pace of casualties in 2007. In March of this year, Iraq held the most democratic election any Arab country has held in a generation (with the possible exception of Lebanon).
Unfortunately, however, the new milestone in U.S. military disengagement from Iraq comes at a moment when the country is starting to slip backward on both the political and security fronts.
Since the March 7 parliamentary election results were announced, the country's major political alliances have remained hopelessly deadlocked on the formation of a new coalition government. Despite months of negotiations and repeated imploring from high-level U.S. government officials, Iraq's major leaders and parties remain unable to agree on who should be prime minister or how power should be shared.
As Iraq staggers on essentially without a government, electricity and other services remain sporadic, economic reconstruction is delayed and terrorist violence is once again filling the breach. In the deadliest single incident in months, at least 48 people died and more than 140 were injured on Tuesday when a suicide bomber struck outside an army recruiting center in downtown Baghdad.
As the American troops withdraw, Iraq is also losing top government officials, judges and police officers to a rising pace of targeted assassinations. All of this has the familiar signature of al Qaeda in Iraq, although it is difficult to attribute responsibility among the shadowy web of insurgent groups.
Complicating the political impasse are deep continuing divisions along sectarian lines. Iraq's Sunni Arab minority -- which ruled under Saddam Hussein but was marginalized in the wake of his downfall -- bet heavily on the electoral process this time, in marked contrast to the first parliamentary election in 2005.
But the Sunni Arabs were the main group affected when more than 400 parliamentary candidates were disqualified earlier this year for alleged Baathist ties. Now they feel doubly aggrieved in that the political alliance they overwhelmingly supported in March -- former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's al-Iraqiya list -- is being blocked from leading the new government, even though it finished a narrow first in the voting.
The obstacle to a political solution in Baghdad is not only the pair of Shiite-dominated political lists (including that of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who finished second in the vote), but, it is widely believed, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which cannot abide an Iraqi prime minister over whom it does not exercise substantial leverage. Indeed, the only two interests that benefit from Iraq's drift are al Qaeda in Iraq and the hardliners in Iran.
President Obama deserves more than a little sympathy as he confronts this thorny situation. Although he opposed the war in Iraq, he essentially accepted the Bush administration's measured timetable for American military drawdown. Particularly at a time when the budget deficit is soaring and the war in Afghanistan demands more military and financial resources, Obama and most other Americans would like to be out of Iraq completely by yesterday.
But accelerating or even completing the timetable for American military withdrawal in Iraq may only compound the gathering crisis there, for two reasons.
First, as the recent spike in violence is meant to suggest, it is not yet clear that Iraq's security forces are even close to being able to handle the country's security on their own. Privately, most Iraqi political actors (Sunni, Shia and Kurd) would like to see some sort of continued American military presence well beyond 2011. Many worry not only about Iraq's internal security but also about growing Iranian dominance once the United States is completely gone.
And second, U.S. political influence declines markedly as the American military presence phases out.
The worst thing the United States could do at the moment is to take Iraq for granted.
The Obama administration has had the right instinct in trying to press for and facilitate a political breakthrough in Baghdad, but more needs to be done and soon, while the United States still retains significant leverage.
The situation may now require the designation of a high-level American official or envoy to devote sustained attention to the stalemate in Iraq, while working closely with high-level representatives from the United Nations and the European Union. Such combined diplomatic leverage and mediation broke a dangerous political stalemate in Iraq in 2005 and might help again.
One thing should be clear. No matter what one may think of the original decision to invade Iraq (which I still believe was a mistake), Iraq has come too far and the United States has paid too dearly to now stand by and watch it sink back needlessly into chaos.
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C332
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Jonas Edman is a Curriculum Writer for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). In addition to writing curriculum, Jonas coordinates SPICE’s National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA) professional development seminars on East Asia for middle school teachers, and collaborates with FSI and other Stanford colleagues on developing curricula for community college instructors as part of Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative (SHREI). Prior to joining SPICE in 2010, Jonas taught history and geography in Elk Grove, California, and taught Theory of Knowledge at Stockholm International School in Stockholm, Sweden.
Jonas' professional interests lie in curriculum and instruction and teacher professional development, with a special interest in online education development. He received his Single Subject Teaching Credential in Social Science from California State University, Sacramento in 2010, and a bachelor degree in History from Stockholm University in 2008. He graduated high school from the American School in Japan in 1996.
Jonas has presented teacher seminars nationally for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in Omaha, Nebraska; the California Council for Social Studies in Anaheim and Burlingame, California; the National Council for the Social Studies in Washington D.C.; the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in East Lansing, Michigan; and the National Association for Multicultural Education in Oakland, California. He has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, and Bangkok, Thailand; and the European Council of International Schools in Nice, France.
Berggasse 7
A-1090 Vienna
Austria
Prof. Heinz Gärtner is academic director (since 2013) at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) in Vienna, Austria and senior scientist at the University of Vienna. He is Lecturer at the National Defense Academy and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the World Policy Institute as well as the Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University in 2001-2002. In 2008 he held again a Fulbright Professorship at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). In 2012 he was Visiting Professor at the FSI. Heinz Gärtner was visiting Professor at St. Hugh's College, Oxford (1992), and at the Institute for International Relations, Vancouver, Canada (1993), and at the University of Erlangen (Germany) (1994/95). He lectures often at other American, European, and Asian universities and research institutes. Heinz Gärtner has received international recognition for his work on European, international security, and arms control. He is also a frequent commentator on European and Austrian television, radio, and print media, including CNN Europe and the BBC. He also acts as a Special Adviser to the Austrian Ministry of Defense. He was academic member of the Austrian delegation of the Wassenaar arms export control arrangement in the framework of the Austrian presidency (2005). He supervised several large projects on NATO, and comprehensive security, and arms control. Heinz Gärtner received the Bruno Kreisky (legendary former Austrian Chancellor) Award for most outstanding Political Books: “Models of European Security“ (1998). Gärtner holds several international, and European, and Austrian academic memberships.
Heinz Gärtner is the author of numerous academic articles and books.
Some of his books are:
Heinz Gärtner also is editor of the books series “International Security” (Publisher: Peter Lang).
Some of his recent academic articles are:
The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) has announced that Helen Stacy, a scholar of international law and human rights, will become a full-time Senior Fellow at FSI. One of the founding participants in FSI's Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stacy last year became coordinator of the University's Program on Human Rights. "Helen has brought extraordinarily energetic leadership to interdisciplinary work on human rights at Stanford," said Coit D. Blacker, Director of FSI, "and we are delighted that FSI will be her home base for this important work going forward."
Among the highlights of the Program on Human Rights under Stacy's leadership have been lectures, colloquia, and seminars featuring such eminent speakers as Albie Sachs, former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, and Mary Robinson, former U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights. She also launched a workshop on Legalizing Human Rights in Africa that has drawn faculty and graduate students from many disciplines across campus.
Author of Human Rights for the 21st Century: Sovereignty, Civil Society, Culture (Stanford University Press, 2009), Stacy has written widely on international legal norms and their capacity for enforcement by international and regional courts. "Helen's work helps to show how the law can improve human rights standards while also honoring local social, cultural, and religious values," sHelen's work helps to show how the law can improve human rights standards while also honoring local social, cultural, and religious values" - Larry Diamond aid Larry Diamond, Director of CDDRL. "As an experienced lawyer and legal scholar, Helen adds an invaluable dimension to our empirical and normative work at CDDRL."
Stacy, an Australian lawyer and scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights who began teaching at Stanford Law School in 2002 and joined the Stanford faculty in 2008, has served Stanford in a wide variety of roles. At the Law School, she has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. In addition to teaching international law and human rights, she has trained international lawyers in the JSD and LLM programs.
"Helen's expertise on international law, especially with regard to human rights, and her dedication to advising our SPILS fellows and JSD candidates have brought enormous benefits to our graduate program," said Deborah Hensler, Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies.
As part of her interdisciplinary approach to teaching, research and service, Stacy has also co-taught undergraduate courses in Introduction to Humanities, supervised graduate students in the Program on Modern Thought and Literature, helped start a summer human rights internship program for undergraduates, and served as a researcher in the Forum on Contemporary Europe, an affiliated faculty member in the Center for African Studies, and a faculty fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
"Helen has been an important contributor at the Law School, but we are excited about the possibilities of enlarging and enhancing the Program on Human Rights," said Law School Dean Larry Kramer. "This is a key opportunity for law students and faculty interested in international human rights law, especially as its location in FSI brings lawyers together with students and faculty from other disciplines. Helen's move to FSI is the best of all possible worlds for both the Law School and the University."
Stacy's ongoing research will focus on how regional human rights courts can help bridge the gap between universalist international human rights norms and local custom in ways that have eluded international institutions. This work will take her to the Africa Court of Human and Peoples' Rights, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights and the European Union's Fundamental Rights Agency.