Gary Mukai, director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), was awarded the Foreign Minister's Commendation at the official residence of the Consul General of Japan in San Francisco on Oct. 5. The commendation recognizes Mukai for "greatly contribut[ing] to the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, especially in the field of education...[and] lend[ing] his energy and expertise to actively supporting and implementing the goals and objectives of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET Program) and the activities of the JET Alumni Association of Northern California."

Mukai has been developing curricula on Japan and U.S.-Japan relations for secondary school students since he joined SPICE in 1988. As part of his leadership of SPICE, he helps oversee the Reischauer Scholars Program, a distance-learning course co-sponsored by SPICE and the Center for Global Partnership at the Japan Foundation. Each year the program selects 25 exceptional high school juniors and seniors from the United States to engage in an intensive study of Japan. Though his own experience teaching English in Japan, from 1977 to 1980, predated JET, Mukai has been closely involved with the 20-year-old program. He has been an interviewer since 1989 and has also spoken at JET orientations and panel discussions.

In bestowing the commendation, Consul General Yasumasa Nagamine called Mukai a "bridge between our two countries."

Mukai accepted the commendation with characteristic graciousness, thanking the foreign minister and crediting his SPICE and FSI colleagues for the honor. "I am very humbled by this honor from the Japanese Foreign Minister," said Mukai. "I would like to say that none of my work at SPICE would be possible without my SPICE colleagues. Also, I truly feel indebted to my colleagues at FSI. Without them, SPICE wouldn't be what it is today and SPICE wouldn't have such an embracing home."

With regards to promoting cross-cultural understanding, Mukai said, "Since joining SPICE nearly 20 years ago, one of the highlights of my work has been working with Stanford faculty and the Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco, on helping young American and Japanese students better understand one another and appreciate the importance of U.S.-Japan relations."

Retired Stanford professor Daniel I. Okimoto, who recently received a medal of honor from the Japanese government for his role in U.S.-Japan relations, praised Mukai in a short speech. "No one deserves this honor more than Gary Mukai," Okimoto said. "I think Gary is a remarkable leader, mentor, entrepreneur, and friend."

Since 1976 SPICE has supported efforts to internationalize elementary and secondary school curricula by linking the research and teaching at Stanford University to the schools through the production of high-quality curriculum materials on international and cross-cultural topics. Housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, SPICE has produced over 100 supplementary curriculum units on Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the global environment, and international political economy. SPICE draws upon the diverse faculty and programmatic interests of Stanford University to link knowledge, inquiry, and practice in exemplary curriculum materials.

Once the jewel in the crown of the formidable British Empire, India has been surrounded by myth for years. After gaining independence in 1948, this often misunderstood country found itself faced with a new sense of freedom -- and along with it, enormous burdens and challenges. While exotic, mysterious, and seductive, it has also become an economic force to be reckoned with. With the fourth largest economy in the world, the largest youth population on Earth, and a thriving middle class, India is the second-most-preferred destination for foreign investment. But very few Americans truly understand what a rich and powerful country it has become -- or its role as a global power, center of outsourcing, and potential partner with the United States.

From the country's thriving film industry to its burgeoning high-tech industry, as well as its attempts to stabilize its economy, India Arriving offers a fascinating glimpse into the real India, with all of its assets and all of its faults.

Author Rafiq Dossani goes beneath the veil surrounding India and considers the many ways it has begun to emerge onto the world stage. He explores its birth as an independent nation and forces like political shifts, social reform, and education that have helped to shape a new India. Honest and revelatory, India Arriving provides a deeper understanding of a country that promises to be the next major player in the world economy.

Martha Crenshaw is a pioneer in terrorism studies, one of a handful of scholars worldwide who started investigating the subject long before Sept. 11, 2001.

Crenshaw, who joined CISAC this year as a senior fellow at FSI and a political science professor by courtesy, brings three decades of study to her current agenda of examining distinctions between so-called old and new terrorism, how terrorism ends, and why the United States is the target of terrorism.

"We are very fortunate to have Martha Crenshaw join CISAC as a senior fellow," said Scott Sagan, CISAC co-director. "Her detailed knowledge of the inside workings of terrorist organizations and her deep understanding of earlier counter-terrorist campaigns have brought much-needed historical perspective to contemporary policy debates after 9/11."

Associate professor of law Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who led the search that resulted in Crenshaw's hiring, said her "combination of attention to historical detail, interdisciplinary methods, and knowledge of institutional context has made her one of the nation's foremost scholars of terrorism. Her appointment is great news for CISAC and Stanford, where she will strengthen an already significant scholarly community working on homeland security and terrorism."

Coming to Stanford from Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought and a government professor, Crenshaw said she found the opportunity to join an interdisciplinary research center a welcome change.

"CISAC's and my interests merged perfectly," she said, as the center was looking to build its research expertise in terrorism. She said she looks forward to teaching graduate students in the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies as well as working with research colleagues at CISAC and across campus.

Crenshaw's terrorism studies began with a graduate seminar paper she wrote on actions by the FLN, or National Liberation Front, during Algeria's war for independence from France in the 1950s and 60s. She arrived at the topic the way many professors advise students to do--she noted in a study of Vietnam-era guerrilla warfare the comment that "no one has studied terrorism."

That seminar paper inspired her dissertation, which formed the basis of her 1978 book, Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962, a case study in the strategic use of terrorism by a revolutionary nationalist movement.

Having written numerous articles and edited four books on terrorism, Crenshaw is now editing a book tentatively titled The Consequences of Counterterrorist Policies in Democracies. The Russell Sage Foundation supported the research, which Crenshaw said illuminates issues such as "the strength of executive power, effects of counterterrorism legislation on minorities, and unintended consequences of counterterrorism policies."

As a lead investigator with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, Crenshaw is also researching why the United States is the target of terrorism, a study that could be especially useful in informing counterterrorism policy.

Crenshaw "trace[s] the evolution of anti-American terrorism over time--since the mid-1960s," she said, comparing groups that used terrorism to others with similar ideas that have not resorted to terrorism. Comparing case studies, she explained, allows her to "analyze incentives for the use of terrorism."

In "The Debate over 'New' versus 'Old' Terrorism," a paper Crenshaw presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in September--and which will be published as a chapter in an edited volume, she questions oft-heard claims that terrorism in recent years has taken on a new character to become more religious and lethal. She found the distinctions too hastily drawn and possibly dangerous.

"There is no fundamental difference between 'old' and 'new' terrorism," she said.

"Rejecting our accumulated knowledge of terrorism by dismissing it as 'obsolete'" would be a mistake that could lead to bad policy choices, she added. Before 9/ll, assumptions that "new" terrorism would forsake the "old" technique of hijacking and turn to weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong, she pointed out.

Crenshaw said researchers and policymakers should "ask why some groups cause large numbers of civilian casualties and others do not, rather than assuming that religious beliefs are the explanation for lethality."