Xueguang Zhou: Details about the school attacks remain to be sorted out — whether they are isolated or copycat acts; whether they are triggered by mental illness or based on some malicious motives. But one thing is clear: these incidents reflect widespread and rapidly rising social anxieties, frustrations and tensions in the Chinese society today.

Thirteen fellows, including three first-time Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows, will be in residence at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Fellows and their research topics include:

• Alexander Betts, a post-doc from Oxford University. "Global Migration Governance: Multiple and Contested Institutions."
• Edward Blandford, a post-doc from the University of California at Berkeley. "Scaling of Hierarchical Engineered Systems."
• David Blum, a Stanford pre-doctoral candidate. "Probabilistic Early Warning Systems for National Security Crises."
• John Downer, a post-doc from the London School of Economics. "Administering Aircraft: The Security Implications of Technological Ecosystems." Zukerman Fellow.
• Matthias Englert, post-doc, CISAC. "Managing the Proliferations Risks of Gas Centrifuges-Analysis in View of Possible Solutions."
• Katherine D. Marvel, post-doc, CISAC. "Understanding the Regional Consequences of Global Climate Change" and "Game Changers for Nuclear Energy."
• Aila Matanock, a Stanford pre-doctoral candidate. "Reformed or Reconfigured? Explaining why Militant Groups Participate in Elections."
• Brenna M. Powell, pre-doc from Harvard. "Normalizing Security after Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods."
• Jan M. Stupl, post-doc, CISAC. "Controlling the Spread of Ballistic Missiles."
• Michael Sulmeyer, D.Phil candidate, Oxford University; law student, Stanford Law School; teaching assistant for CISAC Honors Program. "Weapons under Fire: Terminating Major Weapons Contracts for the U.S. Military."

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows and their research areas include:

• Anne Harrington de Santana, a post-doc from the University of Chicago. "The Fetishism of Force: Nuclear Weapons as a Currency of Power."
• Gaurav Kampani, a Cornell pre-doctoral candidate. "The Weaponization Paradox: Why some Emerging Nuclear Weapons Powers Delay Building Operational Forces."
• Riqiang Wu, a pre-doc from Tsinghua University in China. "How to Establish and Maintain an Asymmetric Deterrence: China-U.S. Strategic Relations."

The Stanford Humanities Center and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) are pleased to announce that four international scholars have been chosen to come to Stanford in 2010-11 as part of a jointly sponsored international program entering its second year. Nominated by Stanford departments and research centers, the international scholars will be on campus for four-week residencies. They will have offices at the Humanities Center and will be affiliated with their nominating unit, the Humanities Center, and FSI.

A major purpose of the residencies is to bring high-profile international scholars into the intellectual life of the university, targeting scholars whose research and writing engage with the missions of both the Humanities Center and FSI.

The following four scholars have been selected for the upcoming academic year.

• Anies Baswedan, currently President of Paramadina University in Jakarta, is a leading intellectual figure in Indonesia. In 2008, the editors of Foreign Policy named him one of the world's "top 100 public intellectuals." As an advisor to the Indonesian government, he is a leading proponent of democracy and transparency in Indonesia, a creative thinker about Islam and democracy, as well as a charismatic leader in the educational field. He was nominated by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
• Stephane Dudoignon is a political scientist/senior research fellow at the EHESS in Paris. He is one of the world's leading scholars of Muslim politics and societies from the Caucasus to Central Asia. He is the author of pioneering work on Muslim movements, including the historical study of Sufi networks from the Volga River to China, Muslim intellectuals' debates about gender, and modern Sunni revivalist movements in Eastern Iran. While on campus, he will give lectures on Islam in Eurasia and Iran, among other things. He was nominated by CREEES, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
• Monica Quijada is a high-profile public intellectual and historian of Spain and Latin America at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Madrid. Her engagement with the UN in Argentina (working with refugees) and her directorship of the investigation carried out in the late 1990s regarding Nazi activities during the Second World War and in post-war Argentina shows her commitment to the public space. She has written extensively on dictatorship, populism, and war and their effect on the public sphere in Argentina and Spain as well as on the relationship between nineteenth-century Latin American states and their indigenous populations. She was nominated by the History Department and the Center for Latin American Studies.
• Patrick Wolfe is a historian at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a premier historian of settler colonialism, currently working on a comparative transnational history of settler-colonial discourses of race in Australia, Brazil, the United States, and Israel/Palestine. While at Stanford, he will give lectures based on his core work on Australia and also on his forthcoming book Settler Colonialism and the American West, 1865-1904 (Princeton University Press). He was nominated by the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

While at Stanford, the scholars will offer informal seminars and public lectures and will also be available for consultations with interested faculty and students. For additional information, please contact Marie-Pierre Ulloa, mpulloa@stanford.edu.

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Read below for a summary of the proposed study.

Investment in Vocational vs. General Schooling: Evaluating China’s Expansion of Vocational Education and Laying the Foundation for Further Vocational Education Evaluation

A key policy question in developing countries, including China, is how to balance investments between vocational and general education in a way that supports economic growth and reduces social inequality. There is no definitive study in any developing country on the returns to vocational education and training (VET). In the absence of information on how VET might affect the earnings of workers, it is unclear if recent efforts of the Chinese government to expand VET are sound. If the returns are negligible, the government might consider slowing the expansion or improving the quality of VET.

Additionally, it is estimated that only about 40% of the students that graduate from junior high school in poor, rural areas continue with their studies; the rest enter the unskilled labour force. Why are these rates so low? Surprisingly, little is known about the factors that keep students out of school. There is no systematic study of what is working in VET and what is not. Despite the rapid expansion of VET, China has set up few mechanisms to evaluate the quality of VET programs.

The goal of this project is to help the Chinese government evaluate the effectiveness of the expansion of VET. It aims to provide empirical evidence on the returns to VET; the factors that might keep disadvantaged students from receiving quality schooling; and measure the quality and cost-effectiveness of VET programs.

This study will estimate the returns from VET versus general schooling using various “quasi-experimental” methods. It will follow a randomized control trial design and randomly assign junior high students to programmes that provide vouchers for VET schooling, vouchers for academic schooling, and academic counselling for students to become better informed about their schooling/employment options. The project will assess if students work harder, perform better and matriculate to academic high school and VET at higher rates when they have sufficient financial aid and counselling. Finally, it will also develop an Entrance/Exit Examination that can be used by principals of VET institutions and local officials in charge of VET to assess the quality of their programs. The findings of these quality studies of VET will be useful in influencing policy on one of China’s most debated education issues.