BIOGRAPHY OF VALI NASR

Vali Nasr is Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, Senior Advisor at Kissinger Associates, Senior Fellow at Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution, and a columnist at Bloomberg View. He served as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke between 2009 and 2011. He has previously served as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He is a specialist on political and social developments in the Muslim world and is the author of Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World (Free Press, 2009); The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2006); and Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2006); as well as a number of other books and numerous articles in academic journals and encyclopedias.

He has advised senior American policy makers, world leaders, and businesses including the President, Secretary of State, senior members of the Congress, and presidential campaigns, and has written for New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Newsweek, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and has provided frequent expert commentary to CNN, BBC, National Public Radio, Newshour, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and has been a guest on the Charlie Rose Show and Meet the Press, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, GPS with Fareed Zakaria, and This Week with Christiane Amanpour.

He is a member of Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and National Democratic Institute; and has been the recipient of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. He is a Carnegie Scholar for 2006.

He received his BA from Tufts University in International Relations summa cum laude and was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa in 1983. He earned his masters from the Fletcher School of Law in and Diplomacy in international economics and Middle East studies in 1984, and his PhD from MIT in political science in 1991.

S.T. LEE LECTURE

The S.T. Lee Lecture was established by Seng Tee Lee, a businessman and philanthropist located in Singapore, with the dual objectives of raising public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and increasing public support for informed international cooperation.  The S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader in international political, economic, social and health issues, and strategic policy-making concerns.

Previous S.T. Lee Lecturers have included John Prendergast, author and human rights activist, the Honorable Robert Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs, the Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, Joseph F. Nye, the Dean emeritus and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Dr. Paul Farmer, Professor of Medicine and Medical Anthropology, Harvard University and Medical Director of the Clinique Bon Sauveur in Cange, Hait.

Mark Juergensmeyer is director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than two hundred articles and twenty books, including the recently-released Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, is based on interviews with religious activists around the world--including individuals convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United States--and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. 

One of Juergensmeyer's earlier books, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, covers the rise of religious activism and its confrontation with secular modernity. It was named by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Abstract: In the lecture I will address the criticism that is current among some soldiers and academic strategists these days that if you try to fight an asymmetric war in accordance with the US rules of engagement or the requirements of just war theory, you will lose the war. I will argue that the good guys can win (not that they will certainly win) without adopting the methods of the bad guys.

One of America’s foremost political thinkers, Michael Walzer has written about a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy, including political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice, and the welfare state. He has played a critical role in the revival of a practical, issue-focused ethics and in the development of a pluralist approach to political and moral life. 

Walzer’s books include Just and Unjust Wars, On Toleration, and Arguing About War. He has served as editor of the political journal Dissent for more than three decades. Currently, he is working on issues having to do with international justice and the new forms of welfare and also on a collaborative project focused on the history of Jewish political thought.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Cecile Fabre is a political and moral philosopher whose work is located in Anglo-American normative thought. She is a tutorial fellow in Philosophy at Lincoln College, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy, at Oxford University. Prior to moving to Oxford, she held the Chair in Political Theory at Ednburgh University, and was a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the London School of Economics.

Fabre has written on distributive justice, rights, democracy, prostitution, organ transfers and surrogacy contracts. Her current work is on the ethics of war and recently completed the first of a two-volume research monograph. The first volume (published by OUP in the summer of 2012), defends a cosmopolitan theory of the just war. The second volume aims to defend a cosmopolitan account of the transition from war to peace and of peace after war.

Fabre is also on the steering committees of two research centres in Oxford, the Programme on the Changing Character of War and the Oxford Institute for the Ethics and Law and Armed Conflicts.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website

"The Fixer:The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi" is a feature-length documentary that follows the relationship between an Afghan interpreter and his client, American journalist Christian Parenti. This intimate portrait of two colleagues shifts dramatically when Ajmal is kidnapped along with an Italian reporter. The situation goes from bad to worse as foreign powers pressure for fast results, the Afghan government bungles its response and the specter of Taliban power looms in the background. What follows is the tragic story of one man forgotten in the crossfire: a brutal allegory of the proud land and perilous misadventure that is Afghanistan.

Following the screening, Ian Olds (the film's Director) will be in conversation with Robert Crews (History, Stanford).

This event is sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES). It is free and open to the public. 

The Fixer / View the trailer

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Priya Satia's research interests span modern British cultural and political history, colonialism and imperialism, the experience and practice of war, technology and culture, human rights and humanitarianism, the state and institutions of government, arms trade, political economy of empire, and environmental history.

Satia was raised in Los Gatos, California and educated at Stanford, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in 2004.  She is currently Assistant Professor of History at Stanford where she teaches courses on modern Britain and the British Empire.

Satia's latest book Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East has been the recipient of several book prizes including the 2009 AHA-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, the AHA Herbert Baxter Adams Book Prize in 2009, and the 2010 Pacific Coast Conference of British Studies Book Prize.

Her work can also be found in academic journals such as the American Historical Reviewand Past and Present. Her article, “The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control in Iraq and the British Idea of Arabia” won the Article Prize of the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies for 2005-2006 and the 2007 Walter D. Love Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies. 

Satia is currently researching the manufacture, trade, and use of small arms in the British empire for her book project, "Guns: The True History of the British Empire."

More information TBA. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.