Lorenz M. Lüthi is an Assistant Professor of the History of International Relations at the History Department at McGill University. Professor Lüthi's teaching interests include the History of International Relations, Cold War, Communist World, Soviet Union, and Communist China. In August of 2006, Professor Lüthi finished a manuscript on the Sino-Soviet Split which is based on Chinese sources and archival research in the former East Bloc and will be published with Princeton University Press in 2007. His current book project addresses the rise of the post-Cold War world in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.

This seminar is a special International History event cosponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Department of History.

Dr. David Heymann is the Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases and Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication. From July 1998 until July 2003, he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster. Dr. Heymann was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases from October 1995 to July 1998, and prior to that was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS. Before joining WHO, Dr. Heymann worked for thirteen years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He also worked for two years in India as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.

Dr. Heymann holds a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. from Wake Forest University, a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has completed practical epidemiology training in the two-year Epidemic Intelligence Service of CDC. In 2004, he received the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence and was named to the United States Institute of Medicine. In 2005, he was awarded a Welling Professorship at the George Washington University School of Public Health and the 2005 Donald Mackay medal by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Peter Maurer is Switzerland's first Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, assuming the position in September 2004, when Switzerland became the body's 190th member. He was a leader of the ultimately successful effort to establish the Human Rights Council in early 2006.

Maurer studied history, political science and international law at universities in Berne and Perugia, obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Berne in 1983. After lecturing at the university's Institute for Contemporary History, he joined Switzerland diplomatic service in 1987. He was immediately posted to Switzerland's embassy in South Africa. There he witnessed the violent last throes of the Botha regime, and the first steps towards reforming and ultimately eliminating apartheid.

Maurer returned to Switzerland and became Secretary to the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1996 he was posted to New York where he served as Deputy Permanent Observer of the Swiss Mission to the UN. In May 2000 he assumed the rank of Ambassador and returned to Berne to become head of Political Affairs Division IV (Human Security). In that capacity, Maurer managed Switzerland's increasingly robust and innovative human rights diplomacy, launching, among other initiatives, the Berne process, a grouping of countries engaged in human rights dialogues with China.

Ambassador Maurer will talk about the UN Human Rights Council, of which Switzerland was in the forefront of creating. He will address questions related to Europe: how European human rights and security issues are being treated within the UN, and will attempt to answer the question of why the Swiss people have embraced the UN but have been reluctant to join the European Union.

Sponsored by Forum on Contemporary Europe and Stanford Law School.

Event Synopsis:

Ambassador Maurer describes Switzerland's decision to join the United Nations and outlines the achievements it has made in the 5 years since gaining membership. These achievements encompass a broad human security agenda and include developing mine detection technology, combatting small arms dealing, improving natural disaster preparedness, and promoting accountability for crimes against humanity and for the actions of UN peacekeeping troops. Switzerland was a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court and has pushed for improvements to the UN's mediation processes. It has also shaped discussion about the reform of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Ambassador Maurer then offers prospects for issues such as engagement with North Korea, trans-regional alliances on issues of human rights, and the future of the Human Rights Council. He also describes recent cooperation with China and Russia on the topic of human rights. Moving forward, Ambassador Maurer believes Switzerland's best option for making its voice heard on the international stage will be to expand existing partnerships with European universities and to mobilize applied scientific research to help solve the world's most pressing issues.

A discussion session following the talk raised such issues as: What is Switzerland's approach to the areas of the world, for example those under Sharia law, where international human rights are not a common value? How will the western and non-western parts of the world bridge their very different approaches to human rights? Can cultural influence be more effective than formal multilateral institutions like the UN on certain issues? Should existing organizations like the ICRC deal with refugees from environmental degradation (like rising sea levels)? Is there conflict between different international organizations who deal with the same agenda items, such as between the EU and UN?

In the eyes of many observers of globalization today, its origins are recent and Western. In fact, Indians, Chinese, and Southeast Asians pioneered globalization long before the colonial era. In the 1st century CE, discovery of the monsoon wind brought increasing number of Indian, Roman, and Arab traders to Southeast Asia in search of spices and precious metals. In the 16th century, the port of Malacca emerged as a crucial nexus - the vital transshipment point of commerce between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The discovery of the New World and the ensuing boom in silver bound Southeast Asia even more tightly with India and Europe in triangular trade. Malacca's early importance as an entrepot is akin to the role that Memphis, Tennessee, plays today as the global air-cargo hub for Federal Express. Against this rich background, Nayan Chanda will contend that "calls to shut down globalization are pointless, because nobody is in charge," while at the same suggesting ways in which "we can attempt to nudge our rapidly integrating world toward a more harmonious course."

Nayan Chanda is director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and editor of YaleGlobal Online. In April 2007 Yale University Press will publish his new book on globalization, Bound Together. In 2005 Stanford and Harvard Universities awarded him their joint Shorenstein Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia. In 1990-92 he edited the Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly. His many writings include a widely admired book on Indochina, Brother Enemy: The War After the War (1986). Earlier in his career he worked for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review as its reporter, diplomatic correspondent, and editor.

Co-sponsored with the Global Management Program at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

This is the Southeast Asia Forum's ninth seminar of the 2006-2007 academic year.

In his annual testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2006, then - Pacific Commander Admiral William Fallon characterized Southeast Asia as "in the front line of the War on Terrorism." While some in the region welcomed this indication of official American interest, many would have wished to be singled out for more positive reasons. Yet, for many Americans, it took an event as dramatic as the Bali bombings of October 2002 to realize that there were more Malay-speaking Muslims in Southeast Asia than Arabic-speaking ones in the Middle East. Using the little-known sultanate of Brunei as a point of departure, Ambassador Christy will analyze how political Islam in the Malay Muslim world has changed, and how one American diplomat went about shaping US policies to respond to these changes.

Ambassador Gene Christy is a career foreign service officer. At the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI, he teaches in the National Security Decision-Making Department, including courses on Asian security perspectives and on Southeast Asia. In Washington D.C. he worked in the State Department on island Southeast Asia issues (2001-02 and 1985-89) and as director for Asia at the National Security Council (2000-01). His diplomatic posts in Southeast Asia prior to serving as ambassador to Brunei included Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, Jakarta in the 1980s, and Surabaya in the 1970s.

This is the Southeast Asia Forum's eighth seminar of the 2006-2007 academic year.