Stanford University

To Be Announced

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Hendrik M.J. Maier received traditional training in philology and textual criticism of the languages of Indonesia at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, where he held the chair of Malay and Indonesian Language and Literature before moving to UC Riverside in 2003. His major interests are the languages and literatures of Indonesia and Malaysia, which he now tries to understand within wider networks, in particular the socio-political and cultural interactions within the Southeast Asian region. Some of his secondary interests include so-called "colonial literature."

Philippines Conference Room

Hendrik M.J. Maier Professor, Literature of Southeast Asia and Indonesia Speaker University of California, Riverside
Seminars

Rome Rather than You

A film in the San Francisco International Film Festival. Presented in association with the Arab Film Festival. SKYY Prize Contender. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Mediterranean Studies Program, and Abassi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.

About the Film

Kamel dreams of returning to Italy, where he once baked pizzas, this time leaving Algeria for good and bringing his girlfriend Zina with him. For this they will need papers, so the couple embarks on a journey from the urban center to deserted suburbs in search of the immigrant smuggler who can help them. The couple has grown up among the violence that has plagued Algeria for more than a decade and taken more than 100,000 lives. Ongoing strife between government forces and Islamist opposition is so much a part of day-to-day living that Kamel and Zina ignore the danger they face on the road and turn their quest into a kind of holiday. Director Tariq Teguia calls his debut feature "a slow-motion road movie," but it is a road movie only in abstract. Much of the travel takes place on streets without names or numbers and through a maze of buildings - a symbolic dead end. Short asides into the lives of Islamic fundamentalists and other would-be emigrants limn Algeria's dire situation and underline the desperation behind Kamel's desire to leave. Yet even as the pair's languid odyssey grows ever more quixotic, the drama never quite slips into tragedy, buoyed on by the lovers' uncomplaining acceptance of whatever fate throws them and an embrace of life that contains happiness and the possibility of a brighter future. In similar fashion, Teguia has fashioned a portrait of Algeria stunned and stunted by war that is more hopeful than bleak. - Pam Grady

Showtimes

Friday, April 27 / 9:15 / Kabuki / ROME27K

Saturday, May 5 / 2:00 / Kabuki / ROME 05K

Sunday, May 6 / 8:45 / Kabuki / ROME 06K

Tuesday, May 8 / 6:30 / Aquarius / ROME 08A

For more information, go to: http://fest07.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=94

Conferences

Russian Rationalism, At Home and Abroad

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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This week, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov unveiled a new foreign policy doctrine for Russia. As a written document, the doctrine underscores all the right themes. Two themes stand out. First, Russian policymakers plan to follow a rational and realistic foreign policy that will serve Russian economic and political interests. Such a strategy includes active engagement with the West. Second, Russian leaders see an intimate relationship between domestic and foreign policy. The document stresses the need to use foreign policy to help solve Russia's domestic problems, including first and foremost Russia's economic woes.

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Unfinished Business in Europe

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
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Michael A. McFaul - To make his case, [Bush] has a powerful historical experience to draw upon: the end of the Cold War. Regime change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union fundamentally enhanced American national security. If Iraq possessed Russia's nuclear arsenal today, the United States would be in grave danger. Two decades ago we feared this same arsenal in the hands of the Kremlin. Today we do not. The reason we do not is that the regime in Russia has become more democratic and market-oriented and therefore also more Western- oriented.
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Democracy Promotion by Multilateral Organizations: the Case of the OSCE

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The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was one of the first multilateral bodies where its members states, including the US, Russia, all other post-Soviet and European countries, agreed that democracy, rule of law, and human rights were an indivisible part of security. In the mid-1990s the star of the OSCE was on the rise: the organization deployed large multi-disciplinary field missions throughout the former Yugoslavia; it was involved in the protection of rights of ethnic minorities in the Baltics; it was designated to lead conflict-resolution efforts in the post-Soviet space. In addition, the OSCE was conducting election observation and democracy-promotion efforts in the region. With time, however, the consensus of the 1990s has eroded and the effectiveness of the organization is increasingly put into question by some of its member states. What can be learned from the OSCE's experiences? Can multilateral organizations effectively promote democracy in absence of consensus among its member states? The presenter will give a practitioner's perspective on these questions.

About the speaker
Dr. Vladimir Shkolnikov has served as the Head of Democratization Department in the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ODIHR/OSCE) since spring 2004. He is responsible for direction and management of ODIHR's democracy-promotion technical assistance programs in areas of rule of law, parliamentary support, political party development, gender equality, and migration policy development in the former Soviet states and in Southeastern Europe. Prior to assuming his post he held positions of migration adviser and election adviser at the ODIHR. He has traveled extensively, including to most of the conflict areas in the post-Soviet space. Prior to joining the ODIHR he was resident research consultant at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. He received his Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Policy Studies.

CISAC Conference Room

Vladimir Shkolnikov Head of Democratization Department Speaker Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, OSCE
Conferences

Clinton's Moscow Mission

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
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When presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin meet in Moscow next month, issues such as

START II, NATO expansion, trade with Iran and Iraq, and Russia's new draconian law on

religion are likely to dominate the agenda. To historians of US-Soviet relations, this agenda

should sound familiar as arms control, European security, regional conflicts, and human rights were the main components of most summit agendas between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This old agenda suggests that the promise of a new post-communist strategic partnership between the United States and Russia has not been realized. Especially as Russia continues to struggle in reforming its economy, many in the US have now concluded that engagement with this "basket case" is not worth the trouble--better to walk away from the failing project of internal reform and prepare instead to contain future external aggression.

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A Half-Democratic Russia Will Always be a Half-Ally to the United States

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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The improvement in Russian-American relations is one of the few positive factors in the muddled picture of international relations today. Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for the American struggle against international terrorism has elevated communications between two former enemies to a new level. The upcoming November summit will be yet another sign of this. Politicians on either sides of the ocean are even calling the US and Russia "allies." Noting the decisiveness with which President Putin supports the US and Washington's extremely positive reaction to this, many Russian politicians and public figures have began speaking openly of Russia's entry into Western organizations and unions. Membership in the World Trade Organization is discussed in Moscow as an obvious reward Russia should receive for supporting American military actions; entry into the European Union is brought up as a relatively near goal, and so forth. The hopes are great, but do they reflect reality? Inflated expectations and skewed assessments of the speed and character of Russia's integration into the West are dangerous.

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West or East for Russia?

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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Between a continuation of engagement and a return to containment is a third path: realistic engagement. [Bush] needs to communicate to [Putin] that he believes in the possibility of Russia's integration into Europe and the Western community of states. But he also needs to clearly articulate the real terms of integration, terms that will require Russia to undergo serious political and economic changes. To help Russia integrate into the West, the American strategy must still be engagement, but with more realistic expectations about when, and with real standards for how this integration might occur.

President Bush thus must express his faith in Russia's ability to rejoin Europe as a democratic state with a market economy. Many within Russia do not believe the United States and the new administration in particular want to see Russia as part of the West. Bush should even be so bold as to present NATO membership for Russia as a real goal for the long term. Europe will only be whole and free, a goal Bush's father once articulated, if Russia is a member.

Most Russians still hope their country can become a full-fledged member of Europe. They do not want to become an autocratic ally of China seeking to confront the West. But a decade of disappointed expectations about democracy and markets, coupled with seemingly hostile acts from the West, has fueled doubts about Russia's place in the world. President Bush cannot eliminate this self-doubt overnight, but he can make clear American intentions toward Russia. By articulating a positive but realistic vision for Europe -- whole, free and including Russia -- he can help to reverse Russia's dangerous anti-Western drift.

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Two Out of Three Is Not Good Enough

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
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Michael A. McFaul - Ten years ago, President Boris Yeltsin and his newly minted government launched a set of revolutionary changes comparable in scale and scope with the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Like these earlier social revolutions, Yeltsin and his band of revolutionaries sought to transform the fundamental organization of the polity and economy within Russia. Their aim was to destroy the Soviet command economy and replace it with a market economy. They also aspired to crush Soviet dictatorship and replace it with a democratic polity. Unlike their counterparts in France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, Russia's anti-communist revolutionaries added an additional task -- the dissolution of the Soviet empire. In some respects, then, the agenda of change introduced a decade ago in Russia was even more far reaching than that which the Jacobins or Bolsheviks sought to achieve.
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McFaul
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Staying Power

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
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%people1% - When the bronze statue of Saddam Hussein crashed to the ground more than a week ago, the image joined a long series of unforgettable mental pictures marking the end of tyrannical rule. In much of the former colonial world, the retiring of a European flag followed by the hoisting of a new flag of independence captured the moment. And more recently, the chiseling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the crane uprooting secret-police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky's statue in Moscow in 1991.
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