The Yaqui Valley is the birthplace of the Green Revolution and one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world, using irrigation, fertilizers, and other technologies to produce some of the highest yields of wheat anywhere. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. In short, the Yaqui Valley represents the challenge of modern agriculture: how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production while protecting the environment.
CISAC affiliated faculty member Amy Zegart has launched a biweekly intelligence column at www.foreignpolicy.com. The inaugural column examines the new book by an ex-Navy SEAL about the Osama bin Laden raid and the challenges of operating within our 20th century secrecy regime in the increasingly wired world of the 21st century. The column will run every other Wednesday.
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
cmac2232@stanford.edu
Fulbright Visiting Scholar 2012-13
Maclennan_HS.jpg
Christopher MacLennan is currently the Director General of Thematic and Sectoral Policy at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He is responsible for leading the Agency’s policy development related to various sectors of international development programming including democracy promotion, food security, economic growth, governance and human rights. Dr. MacLennan led the team that built the policy framework for the G8 Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in 2010 and represented Canada’s contribution to the 2012 G8 New Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security at Camp David. Previous to working at CIDA, Christopher has held various positions in the Government of Canada, including at the Privy Council Office, the arm of the Canadian government that directly supports the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Research interests include donor approaches to democratic assistance, international human rights development and federalism in multinational states. Dr. MacLennan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario specializing in constitutional development and international human rights and has numerous publications including Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929-1960.
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
The Governance Project Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-15
Boittin_HS.jpg
Margaret Boittin has a JD from Stanford, and is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation is on the regulation of prostitution in China. She is also conducting research on criminal law policy and local enforcement in the United States, and human trafficking in Nepal.
The Governance Project Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-15
Roland Benedikter, Dott. Dr. Dr. Dr., is European Foundation Fellow 2009-2013, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, with duties as the European Foundations Research Professor of Political Sociology. His main field of interest is the multidimensional analysis of what he calls the current “Global Systemic Shift”, which he tries to understand by bringing together the six typological discourses (and systemic order patterns) of Politics, Economy, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography. Roland is currently working on two major book projects: One about the “Global Systemic Shift”, and one about the “Contemporary Cultural Psychology of the West”, the latter comparing culturo-political trends in the European and American hemispheres. With both projects he is also involved in European Policy Advice.
We study the dynamics and logic of extortion in Mexico’s drug war. Mexican drug trafficking organizations have diversified into a host of other illicit activities, protection rackets, oil and fuel theft, kidnapping, human smuggling, prostitution, money laundering, weapons trafficking, auto theft and domestic drug sales. The project seeks to measure, through the use of list-experiments, patterns of extortion by both criminal organization and the police, and the extent to which drug cartels coopt civil society and become embedded in the social fabric.
This year is one of elections and leadership changes throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Earlier in 2012, Taiwan reelected President Ma Ying-jeou to a second term. North Korea and Russia have already seen transfers of power this year; it will be China’s turn in the fall. The United States holds its presidential election in November. And South Korea will elect a president in December. Individually and collectively, these leadership changes hold crucial implications for Northeast Asian nations as well as the United States.
In this article, Gi-Wook Shin explores the possible implications of South Korea's upcoming presidential election.
May 2013 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Over the three decades of the Center’s existence, immense change has taken place in the Asia-Pacific.
The early 1980s were a time for tremendous, transformative ripples of social, political, and economic change in many Asian countries; many of those changes set in motion trends, institutions, and events that are prominent aspects of the Asian landscape today.
In Northeast Asia, China embraced market reforms and opened its doors to foreign investment and trade, setting the stage for its role as a contemporary global leader. Japan experienced the peak of its post-war boom, consolidating its role as a pioneer in technology and manufacturing. South Korea underwent a dramatic transformation that, paired with its rapid economic growth, created a regional powerhouse. Southeast Asia emerged from the shadow of war to become a region of economic tigers and emerging powers.
At Stanford, the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy and the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) were established in May 1983 as independent, but complementary, entities. The Northeast Asia-United States Forum later grew into the Asia/Pacific Research Center and, in 2005, was endowed as the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). The two centers still closely collaborate on research and events. In the ensuing three decades, Shorenstein APARC expanded its reach beyond core expertise on Northeast Asia to the fast-developing region of Southeast Asia and to South Asia, which has emerged as a new center of power in the Asia-Pacific. The Center has focused increasingly on the crosscurrents of growing economic, cultural, and institutional integration in the region alongside a troubling rise of tensions driven by intensifying nationalism.
Today, Shorenstein APARC boasts five vibrant programs focusing on contemporary Asia and engaged in policy-oriented research, training, and publishing: the Asia Health Policy Program, Japan Studies Program, Korean Studies Program, Southeast Asia Forum, and the Stanford China Program. It also takes great pride in its unique Corporate Affiliates Program, whose alumni roster of over 300 Asian business, government, and media professionals continues to expand. Rounding out Shorenstein APARC’s Asia expertise, its South Asia Initiative has produced many important publications and events for over a decade.
On May 2, 2013, Shorenstein APARC will celebrate its anniversary with a special public symposium exploring Asia’s transformation over the past three decades, developments in U.S.-Asia relations, and the trajectory of Shorenstein APARC’s own history. You are invited to join us in marking this historic occasion.
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street, C205-4
Stanford, CA 94305
0
vsmetana@stanford.edu
Visiting Scholar, The Europe Center
Smetana_3x4_Fotka.jpg
Vit Smetana is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History – Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and also teaches modern international history at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. His professional interest lies primarily in the policies of the great powers towards Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. His research during his stay at Stanford focuses on the topic “The Czech, Slovak and other Central European exiles in the Second World War and beyond”.
Dr. Smetana is the author of In the Shadow of Munich. British Policy towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement (1938-1942) (2008) and co-author of Draze zaplacená svoboda. Osvobození Československa 1944-45 (Dearly Paid Freedom. The Liberation of Czechoslovakia 1944-45) in two volumes (2009). He also edited the Czech version of the Robert F. Kennedy memoir of the Cuban Missle Crisis, Thirteen Days (1999).
