Infectious diseases, especially those transmitted from person to person through the respiratory route, continue to pose a threat to the global community. Public health surveillance systems and the International Health Regulations are intended to facilitate the recognition of and rapid response to infectious diseases that pose the risk of developing into a pandemic, but the response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic illustrates the continuing challenges to implementing appropriate prevention and control measures. The response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic will be discussed and its implications examined.

Speaker biography:

Effectively addressing emissions from deforestation will require both an international policy - to address the global nature of the climate problem, and domestic policies - to effectively respond to the international policies and take unilateral action; Suzi will be focusing on the former. 

The key challenges in reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) policy are monitoring, permanence, and additionality - leakage and adverse selection as well as the risks involved if REDD is linked explicitly to international carbon markets.  They propose an international system based on national baselines, temporary rewards for protection and externally replicable monitoring and illustrate the potential outcomes in terms of  additional carbon storage, the cost of emissions reductions, and transfers of resources between countries.  Suzi will also briefly discuss how national governments might respond to an international policy of this type. 

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Suzi Kerr graduated from Harvard University in 1995 with a PhD in Economics. Following that she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland - College Park from 1995 through 1998. From 1999 to 2009 Kerr co-founded and was Director of Motu. She has been a visiting scholar at Resources for the Future (USA), Victoria University, and, from Jan - August 2001, in the Joint Center for the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT.

Suzi Kerr is a Visiting Professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University and a Senior Research Associate in Stanford's Program in Energy and Sustainable Development.  She is also a Senior Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research in New Zealand. 

Margot Gerritsen is an Associate Professor in Energy Resources Engineering. Originally from the Netherlands, she left the country after receiving her MSc degree from Delft University of Technology. She earned her PhD in Computational Mathematics from Stanford in 1996. After teaching at the University of Auckland in New Zealand for five years, she returned to Stanford in 2001. Together with her colleagues and students, Margot works to develop computational tools to optimize the development of energy resources. She is active in large-scale solar development, wind farm optimization, marine energy, as well as mitigation of the harmful environmental impacts of oil and gas production. Margot is an expert in energy resources, fluid dynamics and computational mathematics, and teaches courses in these areas. She regularly advises NGOs, VCs, policymakers and the energy industry. Margot produces a podcast show on energy issues at http://www.smartenergyshow.com.

Ian Hsu has been director of Internet Media Research at Stanford since 2007. A graduate of Stanford's class of 1998 in electrical engineering, Ian went on to earn a master's in management science and engineering in 2001. He previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices and Spansion, AMD's spinoff, the latter as a manager of internet marketing, before joining a startup called FilmLoop in 2006. For his work on Stanford's university Facebook strategy, Ian was awarded the 2009 Excellence in New Communcations Award by the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR), a global non-profit research and education think-tank dedicated to the understanding of new media.  Ian's work at Stanford has been covered by many educational and new media publications including The Chronicle of Higher Education, CASE Currents, Mashable and Inside Facebook.

Is Japan Adrift?

The political drift in Japanese politics and the meteoric rise of China have led many analysts to begin discounting Japan as a major player in the international system. However, beneath the frustration caused by Prime Minister Taro Aso's abysmal poll ratings and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa's campaign finance scandal, Japan continues moving steadily forwrd in pursuit of a more active national security strategy. While Japanese poliics are in structural paralysis, Japanese political thought is not. Indeed, a consensus is apparent in a series of unofficial strategic documents issued by scholars and politicians this last year. Meanwhile, the Japan Self Defense Forces have recently stood up their first fully independent and joint operational commands to deal with the North Korean missile launch and Somali pirates.

Japan has always been a conservative society, slow to change well established institutions and patterns of behavior in the face of new strategic circumstances. But Japan has also historically been finely attuned to three strategic coordinates:the power of the world's leading hegemon, the power of China, and the threat from the Korean peninsula. All three are in flux, and so too is Japan's future strategic trajectory

About the Speaker

Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) from January 2004 to December 2005. He joined the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. From 1997 to 2000, he was senior fellow for Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed the Independent Task Force on Korea and study groups on Japan and security policy in Asia. He served as senior adviser in the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of Defense in 1997 and as consultant to the same office until 2000. From 1995 to 1997, he was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and from 1994 to 1995, he was an assistant professor of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he remained a professorial lecturer until 2001.

Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group and is vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue.

In 2009, buffeted by the global economic slowdown, Malaysia’s economy is predicted to shrink.  Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to replace unpopular Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi as Malaysia’s top leader early in April.  On 23 March the government banned the two main opposition newspapers, Suara Keadilan and Harakah.  Earlier in March an opposition lawmaker was forced out of the national parliament after demanding that Najib answer allegations of involvement in the gruesome murder of a Mongolian model, Altantuya Shaaribuu, in 2006.  The killing has been linked to a 110-million-euro “commission” paid to a close confidante of Najib by a French firm for the sale of submarines to Malaysia.  In February Najib used local parliamentary defections to take over Perak, one of the five states won in March 2008 by the opposition in elections whose results embarrassed the government.  An independent poll shows that Najib is even less popular than Badawi.  Prof. Chin will address the implications of these and other aspects of current political turbulence in Malaysia.

James Chin has written widely on Malaysian politics and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, among other topics.  Minority rights, ethnic politics, and good governance are among his current interests.  Before his Monash appointment he headed a business school.  Before that he worked as a financial journalist.  He has a doctorate from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.