Maritime Issues in East Asia: Finding Peaceful Solutions
This seminar will discuss the current issues surrounding the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai Islets and the East China Sea peace initiative of the government of the Republic of China, Taiwan, through which ROC president Ma ying-jeou is calling for dialogue to resolve disputes over the archipelago.
Prof. Edward I–Hsin Chen, who earned his Ph.D. from Department of Political Science at Columbia University in 1986, is currently teaching in the Graduate Institute of Americas (GIA) at Tamkang University. He was a Legislator from 1996 to 1999, an Assemblyman in 2005, and the director of the institute from 2001 to 2005. He specializes in IR theories, IPE theories, and decision-making theories of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan.
His recent English articles include U.S. Role in Future Taipei-Beijing Relation, in King-yuh Chang, ed., Political Economic Security in Asia-Pacific (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2004); A Retrospective and Prospective Overview of U.S.-PRC-ROC Relations, in Views & Policies: Taiwan Forum, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 2005 (A Journal of Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation in Taipei); The Decision-Making Process of the Clinton Administration in the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-96, in King-yuh Chang, ed., The 1996 Strait Crisis Decisions, Lessons & Prospects (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2006); From Balance to Imbalance: The U.S. Cross-Strait Policy in the First Term of the Bush Administration, in Quansheng Zhao and Tai Wan-chin, ed.,Globalization and East Asia (Taipei: Taiwan Elite, 2007); The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Negotiations: A Taiwanese Perspective, in Jacob Bercovitch, Kwei-bo Huang and Chung-chian Teng, eds.,Conflict Management, Security and Intervention in East Asia. (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 193-216; and The Security Dilemma in U.S.-Taiwan Informal Alliance Politics, Issues & Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, March 2012, 1-50
Dr. Yann-huei Song is currently a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, and joint research fellow at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China.
Professor Song received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Kent State University, Ohio, and L.L.M. as well as J.S.D. from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, the United States. He has broad academic interests covering ocean law and policy studies, international fisheries law, international environmental law, maritime security, and the South China Sea issues. He has been actively participating in the Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea (the SCS Workshop) that is organized by the government of the Republic of Indonesia.
Professor Song is the convener of Academia Sinica's South China Sea Interdisciplinary Study Group and the convener of the Sino-American Research Programme at the Institute of European American Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of Ocean Development and International Law and Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs. He has frequently been asked to provide advisory opinions by a number of government agencies in Taiwan on the policy issues related to the East and South China Seas.
CISAC Conference Room
Maritime Issues in Asia, Finding Peaceful Solutions
Prof. Edward I–Hsin Chen, who earned his Ph.D. from Department of Political Science at Columbia University in 1986, is currently teaching in the Graduate Institute of Americas (GIA) at Tamkang University. He was a Legislator from 1996 to1999, an Assemblyman in 2005, and the director of the institute from 2001 to 2005. He specializes in IR theories, IPE theories, and decision-making theories of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan. His recent English articles include “U.S. Role in Future Taipei-Beijing Relations” in King-yuh Chang, ed., Political Economic Security in Asia-Pacific (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2004); “A Retrospective and Prospective Overview of U.S.-PRC-ROC Relations,” in Views & Policies: Taiwan Forum, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 2005 (A Journal of Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation in Taipei); “The Decision-Making Process of the Clinton Administration in the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-96,” in King-yuh Chang, ed., The 1996 Strait Crisis Decisions, Lessons & Prospects (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2006); “From Balance to Imbalance: The U.S. Cross-Strait Policy in the First Term of the Bush Administration,” in Quansheng Zhao and Tai Wan-chin, ed., Globalization and East Asia (Taipei: Taiwan Elite, 2007); “The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Negotiations: A Taiwanese Perspective,” in Jacob Bercovitch, Kwei-bo Huang and Chung-chian Teng, eds., Conflict Management, Security and Intervention in East Asia. (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 193-216; and “The Security Dilemma in U.S.-Taiwan Informal Alliance Politics, Issues & Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, March 2012, 1-50.
Prof. Yann-huei Song is currently a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, and joint research fellow at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China.
Professor Song received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Kent State University, Ohio, and L.L.M. as well as J.S.D. from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, the United States.
He has broad academic interests covering ocean law and policy studies, international fisheries law, international environmental law, maritime security, and the South China Sea issues. He has been actively participating in the Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea (the SCS Workshop) that is organized by the government of the Republic of Indonesia.
Professor Song is the convener of Academia Sinica’s South China Sea Interdisciplinary Study Group and the convener of the Sino-American Research Programme at the Institute of European American Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of Ocean Development and International Law and Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs. He has frequently been asked to provide advisory opinions by a number of government agencies in Taiwan on the policy issues related to the East and South China Seas.
CISAC Conference Room
CISAC honors students take on diverse global challenges
An American of Indian descent is focused on the economic impasse between New Delhi and Islamabad and a Polish immigrant is fascinated by the Soviet-era biological weapons program. A young woman from Taiwan wonders whether historical memory is fueling nationalism in China, and a Bahraini is investigating the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in his part of the world. Yet another intends to run for public office.
All this – and they’ve yet to graduate.
This year’s 12 honors students at the Center for International Security and Cooperation – Stanford seniors drawn to public policy and international affairs – represent the best of what the university offers: diversity, a passion for learning outside the classroom and a determination to make an impact once they venture out into the world.
Even two weeks in Washington, D.C., did little to dissuade them from potential careers in public policy. They met with dozens of politicians, journalists, military analysts, lobbyists and experts from the leading private organizations and government agencies in the nation’s capital. While congratulated on their ambitions, the students were cautioned that Washington has become a brutal and highly divisive place to work.
“You gravitate toward public policy and you’re likely to become a leader,” former U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Virginia, told the students at a meeting in the Beaux Art landmark that has housed the American Red Cross since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.
Robb listened to their thesis topics, offered advice and contacts, and took questions about world policy and events. He then joined the chorus of others inside the beltway lamenting the poisonous partisan politics of Capitol Hill.
“It’s just toxic,” said Robb, who now promotes common ground between Democrats and Republicans as a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “You just can’t get anything done. I think we’ll have a lame duck session in Congress and nothing will happen until March. Then, a full-scale depression next spring – and I think the markets will crash.”
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Former U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Virginia, speaks with 2012-2013 CISAC Honors Students in Washington, D.C. Photo credit: James Kamp. |
The students had heard likeminded pessimism earlier that day from Walter Pincus, who covers intelligence, security and foreign policy for The Washington Post. He said PR and TV now run Congress because candidates consistently worry about how their comments on camera will be used against them in their next re-election campaign.
“Politics are totally polarized in a way I’ve never seen before,” said Pincus, who teaches a seminar about government and the media in the Stanford-in-Washington program. Compounding the misery, he said, is the nearly $1 billion spent on political ads trashing opposing candidates in the exhaustive presidential campaign.
“We go off and tell the rest of the world they ought to have elections, but our elections have become a PR operation,” Pincus said. “So – that’s my happy view of the world.”
The students laughed nervously. That evening, they chatted in front of the White House about all the negativity they had heard that day. Some seemed spooked. Others made that clarion call of each new generation: It’s our turn to make things right.
“I believe that each of us has a duty and responsibility to do what is right, what is just, and to move the world – our country and our community – at least one step forward to make each day brighter than the last,” said David Hoyt, an international relations major who aspires to public office. “And I believe that students in CISAC, by coming together and addressing these … pressing issues of our time, are starting that process.”
The Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies at CISAC is a competitive program in which 12 seniors are chosen from among all Stanford majors to spend their final year investigating a global security issue. They are mentored and attend seminars and classes taught by CISAC faculty and researchers and present a thesis at the end of the year. They come to think of Encina Hall as a place where their ideas count.
“I always thought of CISAC as my intellectual home at Stanford,” said Jane Esberg, an honors student from the class of 2009 who is now at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and intends to pursue her Ph.D. in political science. “It was the first place where I felt like everybody thought about things that I really cared about. They never really treated me like a student – they always treated me like a colleague.”
Martha Crenshaw, a Senior Fellow at CISAC and its umbrella, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, is an expert on political terrorism and has directed the Honors Program for three years. She co-teaches s weekly honors seminar with Joe Felter, a senior research scholar at CISAC and retired U.S. Army colonel and Special Forces officer.
“It’s a special pleasure to work with a small group of very talented and imaginative students who have such diverse interests,” Crenshaw said.
The Washington leg of the program, known as Honors College, takes place in the two weeks before the academic year begins. The students also visit national battlefields to reconstruct war policy; a private tour of the National Portrait Gallery allows them to recount U.S. history through the individuals who shaped the great American story.
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2012-2013 CISAC Honors Student Flora Wang looks at a portrait of President George Washington at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo credit: James Kamp. |
The two weeks also helps them bond and unveil their thesis topics.
“The secret of the honors program is the interaction,” Tom Fingar, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI, told the students on their first night. They had gathered in a hotel conference room for the inaugural hashing out of their theses – some of which would change dramatically after two weeks of feedback in Washington.
“You are going to be one another's most valuable critics,” said Fingar, an East Asia expert and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council who spent 23 years in the U.S. government. “In the end, this is your product, but your product that is informed by a collaborative process.”
Fingar has been escorting the students around Washington since the program's inception in 2000. His years in intelligence and at the White House and State Department opened doors to counterterrorism and intelligence officials at State, the National Security Council, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. The students also met those who strive for public policy toward peace and reconciliation, at the Eurasia Group, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Amnesty International and the Stimson Center.
The students got an earful on how to operate if they gravitate toward capital careers and were encouraged to take time before determining what they wanted to do with their professional lives.
“I quickly realized that I don’t like doing law,” said Matthew Rojansky, a Stanford Law School grad who is deputy director of the Russia-Eurasia Program at Carnegie, when asked about the benefits of law school. “Don’t jump into it with any uncertainty or reservations. Take time after school. You guys have a lot of options in your lives.”
The next day, the students met national security and terrorism correspondents at The New York Times. They asked the reporters about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, the covert use drones, and whether cyberwarfare is the next big security challenge.
“The CISAC honors students are an amazingly talented group that we look forward to meeting every year,” said Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for the Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. “As journalists working in Washington, we’re able to give them insights from the front lines on the policies and politics of their research topics.”
From Planned Economy to Market Economy: Taiwan's Economic Transformation
Abstract:
This talk will unveil the story of Taiwan’s economic transformation between 1949 and 1960, as Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist leaders turned away from a command economy to build a market economy more productive than any in Chinese history.
The talk gives special attention to how a small group ofpolitical and economic leaders began to formulate and later implement a bold new economic vision for Taiwan. In the process, they embraced institutional and organizational innovations that led to a dismantling of Taiwan's earlier centralized command economy and the growth of a new market system.
Much information in this research was obtained from historical papers that were recently made available at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University: the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang party archives, and personal papers of Kuomintang leaders. It also makes use of first-hand oral interviews with former Nationalist officials and economists.
Speaker Bio:
Tai-chun Kuo is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. She was a Visiting Lecturer at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University (2003) and Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of American Studies, Tamkang University (Taiwan, 1997-2000). Prior to these positions, she served as Press Secretary to the President of the Republic of China (1990-1995), Deputy Director-General of the First Bureau of the Presidential Office (1989-1997), and Director of the ROC Government Information Office in Boston (1987-1988).
Outside of her own research, since 2003 she has assisted the Hoover Institution Archives in developing its Modern China Archives and Special Collections, including Kuomintang (Nationalist) party archives, diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, personal papers of T. V. Soong, H. H. K’ung, and other leading Chinese individuals.
Her major publications include Taiwan's Economic Transformation: Leadership, Property Rights, and Institutional Change; T. V. Soong in Modern Chinese History, China’s Quest for Unification, National Security, and Modernization; Breaking with the Past: China’s First Market Economy; Watching Communist China, 1949-79: A Methodological Review of China Studies in the United States of America and Taiwan; and The Power and Personality of Mao Tse-tung, among others.
CISAC Conference Room
Following Africa’s Lead: Opportunities and Threats of the Mobile Internet Revolution
***** NOTE: CHANGE OF LOCATION*****
Abstract
The mobile Internet — accessed through smartphones, tablets, and 4G technology — is now set to overtake the wired Net in usage and users. The implications of this shift are most obvious in Africa, where journalists have seized on mobile-driven innovations to transform newsgathering. But mobile networks also give repressive governments unprecedented powers to identify, locate, and harass journalists, their sources, and their audiences. The Committee to Protect Journalists invited a group of pioneering African journalists and entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley in October to talk about their work at the forefront of the media revolution. The group worked with executives and technologists from leading media and technology companies to find practical ways to protect free speech and privacy online. This panel will discuss their conclusions.
Erik Charas is an engineer, social entrepreneur, and founder of @Verdade, the largest-circulation newspaper in Mozambique. Hailing from northern Mozambique, Erik is passionate about his responsibility to work for his country. The inspiration to create @Verdade came from the realization that most people in Mozambique lacked access to quality information. He believes informing people about their government, country and the world is the first step toward engaging them as active participants in transforming the country. He is one of the most vocal advocates of anti-poverty activism in Africa today.Erik is also founder and CEO of Charas LDA, a company that invests in Mozambican entrepreneurs. Erik was voted a Hero of Africa in 2005 by media group MSN, named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2006, and served as an Archbishop Tutu African Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2007. He chairs several boards of companies and non-profit organizations in Mozambique and other countries. He has an engineering degree from the University of Cape Town. Follow him on Twitter @echaras.
Rafael Marques de Morais is an award-winning journalist, human rights activist, and founder of the anti-corruption watchdog website MakaAngola. The site is named for ‘maka,’ a Kimbundu world meaning "problem" or "trouble." Rafael’s writings on political economy, the diamond industry, and government corruption have earned him international acclaim, and have set the agenda for political debate in Angola by exposing the abuse of power. His most recent book, "Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola," published in September 2011, exposed hundreds of cases of torture and killings. Research for the book formed the basis of a criminal complaint Rafael filed against the shareholders of three private Angolan diamond mining companies for crimes against humanity. He now faces retaliatory legal action as company shareholders, including some of the country’s most influential generals, have countersued him in Portugal. Rafael was imprisoned for his work in 1999, and released after international advocacy efforts on his behalf. He was then charged with defaming the president and spent years in costly legal battles. His case was eventually taken up by the UN Human Rights Committee, which delivered a precedent-setting ruling in 2005 that Angola had violated the journalist’s fundamental rights. Born in Luanda, Rafael holds an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA Hons in Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Mohamed Keita is the Africa advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press freedom advocacy organization based in New York. Mohamed has written extensively on press freedom and social media for publications including The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Slate Afrique. He is regularly interviewed by international media including Al Jazeera, BBC, NPR, and Radio France Internationale. A native of Bamako, Mali, Mohamed also lived in Senegal before moving to New York. Prior to joining CPJ, Mohamed volunteered as a researcher with the nongovernmental World Federalist Movement-Institute of Global Policy, where he was responsible for a project on the structures and mechanisms of the African Union and helped organize outreach activities in West Africa for a project on the UN's "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine. Mohamed is a graduate of the City College of New York. Follow him on Twitter @africamedia_CPJ
Rebecca MacKinnon is a journalist and activist whose work focuses on the intersection of the Internet, human rights, and foreign policy. She serves on the board of directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Network Initiative. As a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, she is developing new projects focused on holding technology companies accountable to universally recognized human rights standards on free expression and privacy. Her first book, Consent of the Networked, was published in January 2012 by Basic Books. In 2012 she was named Hearst Professional-in-residence by Columbia Journalism School and listed by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of “40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years,” primarily due to her role as cofounder of Global Voices Online (globalvoicesonline.org) an international citizen media network. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked as a journalist for CNN in China for nine years, including as CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001. MacKinnon received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fullbright scholar in Taiwan in 1991-92. Follow her on Twitter @rmack.
This seminar is being co-sponsored by the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships and in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists https://www.cpj.org
Reception to follow in Mendenhall Library, McClatchy Hall, Bldg 120
History Corner
Bldg 200
Room 200-002
The Election That Could Reorder South Korea’s Politics
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.

