Film screening and panel discussion

About the speakers:

Coit D. Blacker (Opening Remarks)

Coit D. Blacker is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, an FSI Stanford senior fellow, and a professor of political science, by courtesy.

Professor Blacker is the author or editor of seven books and monographs, including Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985-1991 (1993). During the first Clinton administration, Professor Blacker served as a special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian, Ukranian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.

Blacker is a graduate of Occidental College (AB, Political Science) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (MA, MALD, PhD).

Larry Diamond (Moderator)

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtsey; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

During 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

Charles Ferguson (Film Director and Producer)

Charles Ferguson is founder and president of Representational Pictures, LLC, and director and producer of No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which is his first film. Ferguson was originally trained as a political scientist. He holds a BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a PhD in political science from MIT in 1989. Following his PhD, Ferguson conducted postdoctoral research at MIT while also consulting for the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms. From 1992-1994 Ferguson was an independent consultant, providing strategic consulting to the top managements of U.S. high technology firms including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, and Texas Instruments.

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Ferguson is the author of three books on information technology. He is also co-founder of Vermeer Technologies, the developers of FrontPage.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gibson (Panelist)

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gibson is a national security affairs fellow for 2006-2007 at the Hoover Institution. He comes to Hoover from the 82nd Airborne Division, U.S. Army, where he commanded the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne, an assignment that included two tours to Iraq in support of all three national elections there to date. Earlier in his career, Gibson fought in the Persian Gulf War, served in the NATO peace enforcement operation to Kosovo, taught American Politics at West Point, and served two liaison tours with the U.S. Congress. He holds several graduate degrees from Cornell University (MPA, MA, and PhD in government) and was the Distinguished Honor Graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Among his personal awards and decorations are three Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge with Star, and the Ranger Tab. He was recently selected for promotion to Colonel. His research at Hoover focuses on civil-military relations.

David M. Kennedy (Panelist)

Professor David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War (1999) recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. In 2000, the book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador's Prize, and the California Gold Medal for Literature.

About the film:

From the Sundance Film Festival - 2007 Documentary Competition:

"On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared an end to combat in Iraq. More than three years later, 3,000 American soldiers and an estimated 790,000 civilians are dead, and Iraq still burns. What happened? The first film to examine comprehensively how the Bush administration constructed the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq exposes a chain of critical errors, denial, and incompetence that has galvanized a violent quagmire.

Drawing on jaw-droppingly frank interviews with an impressive array of high-level government officials, military personnel, and journalists, many on the ground in 'postwar' Iraq, Charles Ferguson zeroes in on the months immediately before and after toppling Saddam. Despite intelligence strongly warning that transforming Iraq into a democracy would be long and brutal without careful planning, massive troops, and international support, Bush launched the invasion after only 60 days of preparation. Baghdad's infrastructure fell along with the city, leaving large-scale looting, lawlessness, and violent chaos in its wake. Installing neither police forces nor self-governing institutions at this crucial juncture, Rumsfeld's inexperienced team disbanded Iraq's military and intelligence, marginalizing 500,000 armed men--only one of a relentless stream of ill-advised moves that ignited resentment, fomented desperation, and fueled a still-raging Iraqi insurgency.

Ferguson's surgical analysis of the way the U.S. government sparked disaster in Iraq is riveting, information packed, and airtight. In his capable hands, the situation has never been so transparently clear, which makes it even more shocking and tragic."--Caroline Libresco

The 2007 Sundance Film Festival Documentary Jury presented a Special Jury Prize to No End In Sight "in recognition of the film as timely work that clearly illuminates the misguided policy decisions that have led to the catastrophic quagmire of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq."

For more information about the film, please visit:

www.noendinsightmovie.com

This is a CDDRL's Special Seminar, co-sponsored with Shorenstein APARC.

Dr. Fu-Kuo Liu is currently a Visiting Fellow at Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution and is an Associate Research Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations. Additionally, he serves as the Executive Director of the National Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) Taiwan.

Previously, Dr. Liu was Chairman of the Research and Planning Board at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002-2004) and a Consultative Advisor for the Mainland Affairs Council (2004-2006). He has taught at the Chinese Culture University and National Chung Shing University. He was a Visiting Fellow at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and Georgetown University. His research mainly covers Taiwan security and foreign policy, regional security, and the cross-strait development. He received a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom in 1995.

Sonja Schmid (speaker) is a social science research associate at Stanford University. Having received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University, she is now a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and affiliated with the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford. Her research has focused on understanding complex decision-making processes at the interface between science, technology, and the state in the Cold War Soviet context, and is based on extensive archival research and narrative interviews with nuclear energy specialists in Russia. She is currently working on a book about reactor design choices and the development of the civilian nuclear industry in the Soviet Union. In addition, she is involved in an international research project on Cold War Technopolitics and Colonialism, where she works on Soviet technology transfer to Central and Eastern Europe. Her research interests also include risk communication, and the popularization of science and technology, subjects on which she has published in the past.

Rebecca Slayton (respondent) is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she recently completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988. As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe (speaker) is a visiting scholar at CISAC. Her PhD dissertation, entitled "Humanitarian Military Intervention: the Moral Imperative Versus the Rule of Law," focused on conflicting ethical and legal justifications for humanitarian military intervention. In an earlier publication, The Promise of Law for the Post-Mao Leadership in China, she examined the prospects for the development of the rule of law in China. Future projects will address the rule of law with respect to norms on use of force.

Donahoe earned her PhD in ethics and social theory from the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California Berkeley. She holds a JD from Stanford law school and an MA in East Asian studies from Stanford. She also earned an MA in theological studies from Harvard and spent a year studying Mandarin at Nankai University in Tianjin. After law school, Donahoe clerked for the Hon. William H. Orrick of the United States Federal District Court for the Northern District of California. She served as a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School and practiced high-tech litigation at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, CA. She is a member of the California Bar.

Laura Donohue (respondent) is a fellow at CISAC and at Stanford Law School's Center for Constitutional Law. Donohue's research focuses on national security and counterterrorist law in the United States, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Israel, and the Republic of Turkey. Prior to Stanford, Donohue was a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she served on the Executive Session for Domestic Preparedness and the International Security Program. In 2001 the Carnegie Corporation named her to its Scholars Program, funding the project, "Security and Freedom in the Face of Terrorism." At Stanford, Donohue directed a project for the United States Departments of Justice and State and, later, Homeland Security, on mass-casualty terrorist incidents. She has written numerous articles on counterterrorism in liberal, democratic states. Author of Counter-terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom 1922-2000, she is completing a manuscript for Cambridge University Press analyzing the impact of British and American counterterrorist law on life, liberty, property, privacy, and free speech. Donohue obtained her AB (with honors, in philosophy) from Dartmouth College, her MA (with distinction, in war and peace studies) from University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and her PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. She received her JD from Stanford Law School.

David Patel (speaker) is a 2006-2007 predoctoral fellow at CDDRL (fall quarter) and postdoctoral fellow at CISAC (winter and spring quarters). His dissertation examines questions of religious organization and collective action in the Middle East, with a theoretical focus on the relationship of organization and information in particular. Empirically, his study looks at Islamic institutions and their role in political action in a wide range of settings including 7th century garrison cities of the early Islamic empire, through the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Patel has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East over the last several years, including extended visits to Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, and Iraq, where he spent seven months in Basra conducting research beginning in the fall of 2003. He works with David Laitin, Jim Fearon, and Avner Greif at Stanford.

Patel received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in March 2007. In fall 2007 he will join the faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor of political science.

Walter W. Powell (respondent) is a professor of education and affiliated professor of organizational behavior, sociology, and communications at Stanford University. He is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. At Stanford, he is director of the Scandinavian Consortium on Organizational Research. Powell works in the areas of organization theory and economic sociology. He is coauthor of Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing (1983), an analysis of the transformation of book publishing from a family-run, craft-based field into a multinational media industry, and author of Getting Into Print (1985), an ethnographic study of decision-making processes in scholarly publishing houses. He edited The Nonprofit Sector (1987, referred to by reviewers as "the Bible of scholarship on the nonprofit sector"). Powell is currently directing a large scale study, Stanford Project on the Evolution of the Nonprofit Sector, of the circulation of managerial practices in the Bay Area nonprofit community, mapping the flow of ideas among consultants, philanthropists, founders, business leaders, government officials, and nonprofit managers. Powell is widely known for his contributions to institutional analysis, beginning with his article, with Paul DiMaggio, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields" (1983) and their subsequent edited book, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (1991). At Stanford, he is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business, a member of the Public Policy faculty, and serves on the governing board of the France-Stanford program.