Anders Aslund has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2006. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He examines the economic policy of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, as well as focuses on the broader implications of economic transition. He worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1994 to 2005, first as a senior associate and then from 2003 as director of the Russian and Eurasian Program. He also worked at the Brookings Institution and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia in 1991–94 and Ukraine in 1994–97. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics. He has worked as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary professor of the Kyrgyz National University. He is chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw, and of the Scientific Council of the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT).
The case studies below are integral teaching tools for the Leadership Academy for Development workshops conducted around the world.
At the NATO Summit in Wales in September 2014, NATO leaders were clear about the security challenges on the Alliance’s borders. In the East, Russia’s actions threaten our vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. On the Alliance’s southeastern border, ISIL’s campaign of terror poses a threat to the stability of the Middle East and beyond. To the south, across the Mediterranean, Libya is becoming increasingly unstable. As the Alliance continues to confront theses current and emerging threats, one thing is clear as we prepare for the 2016 Summit in Warsaw: NATO will adapt, just as it has throughout its 65-year history.
In August 2013, Douglas E. Lute was sworn-in as the Ambassador of the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). From 2007 to 2013, Lute served at the White House under Presidents Bush and Obama, first as the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently as the Deputy Assistant to the President focusing on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. In 2010, AMB Lute retired from the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant General after 35 years on active duty. Prior to the White House, he served as the Director of Operations on the Joint Staff, overseeing U.S. military operations worldwide. He served multiple tours in NATO commands including duty in Germany during the Cold War and commanding U.S. forces in Kosovo. He holds degrees from the United States Military Academy and Harvard University.
A light lunch will be provided. Please plan to arrive by 11:30am to allow time to check in at the registration desk, pick up your lunch and be seated by 12:00 noon.
Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
As the world reacts to the death of Boris Nemtsov, FSI Director Michael McFaul adds his thoughts and commentary on the slaying of the Russian opposition leader. McFaul, who served as Washington’s ambassador to Moscow, knew Nemtsov well and called him a “real patriot who believed in the possibility of Russia’s greatness.”
The outspoken opposition leader was shot dead Friday evening in central Moscow, on a bridge near Red Square. His death came several days before he was to lead a public protest of the war in Ukraine.
International Education Initiative (IEI) Instructional Workshop
IEI is a new cross-campus initiative to increase dialogue and collaboration around international education at Stanford.
About the Topic: There is a wide variety of readily available secondary data sources that can be harnessed to provide rich descriptions and often meaningful causal explanations of interesting educational phenomenon in developing countries. Some of the larger data sources such as TIMSS, PIRLS or PISA are widely known, but in addition to these, many other under-utilized national and cross-national datasets are also available.
In this brief workshop I hope to a) introduce alternative secondary data resources that are useful and relevant for educational research b) discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of working with such large-scale data.
About the Speaker: Amita Chudgar is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration and Education Policy. As an economist of education, her long-term interest focus is on ensuring that children and adults in resource-constrained environments have equal access to high-quality learning opportunities irrespective of their backgrounds.
Lunch will be served.
Sponsored by: Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Rural Education Action Program, Center for Education Policy Analysis
Encina Hall East Wing, 5th Floor, Falcon Lounge
In the 25th anniversary edition of The Journal of Democracy, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond reflects on the current democratic recession and why this trend is so troubling.
Diamond, who serves as the founding co-editor of The Journal of Democracy, argues that the world is in a mild but protracted democratic recession, which raises alarm due to the rate of democratic failures and where they are occurring. In surveying global empirical trends, Diamond cites 25 breakdowns of democracy since 2000 that were not the cause of military coups but rather the slow erosion of democratic rights and procedures.
Another worrisome trend for Diamond is the declining freedom in a number of countries and regions since 2005. This is most notable in Africa where corruption and the abuse of power are leading to the decline of the rule of law and political rights across the region. It is also affecting countries of global strategic importance with large populations and economic influence– from Taiwan to Mexico – and leading to the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and China. Diamond also looks to the U.S. where the dysfunction and breakdown of American democracy sets a bad precedent for the rest of the world.
Diamond concludes on an optimistic note, stressing that strong public support for democracy may reverse many of these troubling trends and help sustain longer-term democratic progress.
From left to right: Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Hertie School of Governance (Berlin); Marc Plattner, National Endowment for Democracy; Larry Diamond, Stanford University; Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; and Lucan Way, University of Toronto.
Over the last two decades global production of soybean and palm oil seeds have increased enormously. Because these tropically rainfed crops are used for food, cooking, animal feed, and biofuels, they have entered the agriculture, food, and energy chains of most nations despite their actual growth being increasingly concentrated in Southeast Asia and South America. The planting of these crops is controversial because they are sown on formerly forested lands, rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders for their development, and supply export markets. The contrasts with the famed Green Revolution in rice and wheat of the 1960s through the 1980s are stark, as those irrigated crops were primarily grown by smallholders, depended upon public subsidies for cultivation, and served largely domestic sectors.
The overall aim of the book is to provide a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, chapters provide a comparative perspective from different producing regions for two of the world's most important crops, oil palm and soybeans in the tropics. The following chapters examine the drivers of demand of vegetable oils for food, animal feed, and biodiesel and introduce the reader to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of trade in linking consumers across the world to distant producers in a handful of exporting countries. The remaining chapters review evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics. While both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced trade-offs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to better managed land use changes and land rights.
