The recent uprisings
in North Africa and the Middle East represent one of the most dramatic global
political developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What factors and
forces led to the sudden collapse of well-entrenched regimes and the emergence
of democratic reform movements across a region long accustomed to hereditary
succession and autocratic rule?
Does the current upheaval reflect unique circumstances in the Arab
World? Or should it be viewed in
the wider context of governance issues and challenges that have arisen in Asian
and other settings beyond North Africa and the Middle East? As a
governance specialist whose international career has spanned Arab and Asian
societies, David Arnold will share his insights regarding these questions.
David
D. Arnold became
the president of The Asia Foundation on January 1, 2011, after serving as the
president of the American University in Cairo (AUC) for seven years. At AUC he
superintended the construction of a new, state-of-the-art $400 million campus,
including the region's largest English-language library; spearheaded a $125
million fundraising campaign, the largest in the University's history; and
oversaw academic innovations including AUC’s first-ever PhD program and
master’s programs in education, biotechnology, gender studies, digital
journalism, and refugee studies.
Under his leadership, AUC also expanded its continuing education and
community outreach activities and created new scholarship opportunities for its
students. Mr. Arnold’s earlier
career included six years as executive vice president of the Institute of
International Education and more than ten years of service in the Ford
Foundation including stints in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. He earned his Master’s in Public
Administration at Michigan State University following a BA from the University
of Michigan.
Philippines Conference Room
David D. Arnold
President
Speaker
The Asia Foundation
Department of History
Building 200, Room 11
Stanford, CA 94305-2024
(650) 725-5560
(650) 725-0597
0
szipper@stanford.edu
Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History
Professor of History
Zipperstein_Web.jpg
PhD
Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He has also taught at universities in Russia, Poland, France, and Israel; for six years he taught Jewish history at Oxford University. From 1991-2007, he was Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. Zipperstein is the author and editor of nine books including The Jews of Odessa: A CulturalHistory (1986, winner of the Smilen Prize for the Outstanding book in Jewish history); Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (1993, winner of the National Jewish Book Award); Imagining Russian Jewry (1999); and Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing (2008, shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in Biography, Autobiography and Memoir). His work has been translated into Russian, Hebrew, and French. Zipperstein’s latest book, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, published by Liveright/W. W. Norton in 2018, has been widely reviewed in newspapers and magazines in the United States and England including The New York Times, NewYork Review of Books, TheNew Yorker, The New Statesman, Literary Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Economist, Ha-Aretz, San Francisco Chronicle and Mosaic Magazine have named it one of the best books of the year. It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (History) and Mark Lynton award for the best non-fiction book of 2018.
He has been awarded the Leviant Prize of the Modern Language Association, the Judah Magnes Gold Medal of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, and the Koret Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the American Jewish community. He has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Yitzhak Rabin Institute in Tel Aviv, and has twice been a Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales. In spring 2014, he was the first Jacob Kronhill Scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in New York. At Stanford, and earlier at Oxford and UCLA, he has supervised the dissertation work of more than thirty students now teaching at universities and colleges in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. He has delivered keynote addresses and endowed lectures at several dozen universities in the United States and abroad including the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Central European University, Budapest; Emory; UCLA; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Vanderbilt, and the National Yiddish Book Center.
Zipperstein’s articles have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Jewish Review of Books, Chronicle of Higher Education and in many scholarly journals. He was an editor of Jewish Social Studies for twenty years, and the book series Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture for a quarter of a century. He is immediate past Chair of the Academic Council of the Center for Jewish History, in New York. Together with Anita Shapira, he is series editor of the Yale University Press/Leon Black Foundation Jewish Lives volumes that were named in 2015 the best books of the year by the National Jewish Book Council -- the first time a book series has won this prize. Some forty-five Jewish Lives books have already appeared, and Zipperstein is currently at work on a biography of Philip Roth for the series. He and his wife Susan Berrin live in Berkeley.
One of the fastest-growing segments of livestock farming in the United States is aquaculture, according to Rosamond L. Naylor, a Stanford professor of environmental Earth system science and director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment. And like any other form of livestock, fish generate waste.
But just what happens to the waste produced by coastal aquaculture has largely been a matter of conjecture.
"For many years, people have assumed that because of the ocean's size, because of the energy in its currents, that any substance you introduced into the ocean would quickly be diluted into concentrations that were barely detectable," said Jeffrey R. Koseff, professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Now Koseff and Naylor, together with Oliver Fringer, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and a team of colleagues, have developed a computational model that allows researchers to predict where the effluent from a coastal fish farm would go. The answer may not always be appealing to down-current swimmers and surfers.
"We discovered that the state of the natural environment around fish pens can dramatically affect how far waste plumes travel from the source," Koseff said. "This suggests that we should not simply assume 'dilution is the solution' for aquaculture pollution."
The simulation incorporates the influence of variables such as tides, currents, the rotation of the Earth and the physical structure of the pens in calculating the dispersal pattern of the waste.
"These plumes actually remain quite coherent at very long distances from the source and could become a major pollution problem in coastal regions," Koseff said.
Naylor and Koseff said the model should prove valuable in selecting appropriate sites for future fish farms. Knowing the amounts of feces and uneaten food that are generated by pens, researchers will be able to predict how that dissolved waste will travel from a particular location, given local conditions.
Fish pens off the coast of Greece. Aquaculture projects such as this are expected to play an increasing role in producing fish for consumption as wild fisheries decline, but dealing with the effluent from fish farms is an increasing concern.
Naylor said the model will likely show that some locations previously thought appropriate for fish farms are actually not suitable, but she doesn't think the aquaculture industry will necessarily see that as a bad thing. Having clearly defined boundaries of where aquaculture is acceptable will help the industry avoid conflict with other users of coastal waters.
"A lot of the industry people that I have talked to are not working against the environment, they are really trying to make aquaculture work, and this would provide a useful tool for them," Naylor said.
Naylor, Koseff and their colleagues will be publishing their findings in an upcoming issue of Environmental Fluid Mechanics. The paper is online now.
Naylor said their findings are quite timely, in light of legislation in the works at both the state and federal levels.
In 2006, California passed the Sustainable Oceans Act, aimed at protecting the biologically rich waters off the coast while also recognizing the importance and economic value of providing fresh seafood.
Naylor said that a draft of the regulations to implement that legislation is currently under review and this new modeling tool should help in setting guidelines for locating and monitoring aquaculture.
At the federal level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking public comments through April 11 on a draft of a national aquaculture policy.
"After the bill is passed, rules and regulations will have to be written around it and what we are providing now is a tool to help with that," she said.
Koseff acknowledged that some people might balk at relying on a computer model to guide regulations.
"We understand and recognize the limitations of the simulations," he said. "But we have confidence that the physics that we are representing in the model are realistic and our results are very representative of what happens in a near-coastal environment."
Naylor said that for an aquaculture operation to be economically feasible, a lot of pens will likely have to be concentrated in one area, making waste a significant concern.
"I also work a lot in terrestrial livestock, and I think the dissolved wastes that come out are one of the worst aspects of intensive animal raising," she said.
"If we are really thinking about getting our animal protein from fish in the future, and it is coming from net pens that are in the ocean, one of the big fears is, are we going to have feedlots of the sea?
"We would really like to completely avoid the problems we have seen in terrestrial livestock. That would be the ultimate goal and this model can help achieve that."
Naylor is the director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment and a senior fellow at the university's Woods Institute for the Environment. Koseff is co-director of the Woods Institute and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
"The challenges Seoul faces in the coming years will be how to balance its military alliance with the United States and its economic partnership with China," suggested Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Stanford Korean Studies Program, in a recent interview with the Korea Times. Shin suggested the idea for involving universities more in regional diplomacy discussions, and he briefly described his new research project which explores an alternative approach for South Korean diplomacy.
On Friday, April 1, Stanford
University hosted twelve North Korean officials making an unprecedented
economic tour of the United States. Organized by Professor Susan Shirk of the
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the two-week tour of American businesses and academic institutions was an opportunity
for the visitors to see firsthand what improved relations with the United States
might mean in terms of economic cooperation.
The North Koreans included
senior and mid-level officials responsible for economic, trade, financial and
foreign affairs. Their visit took place despite the lack of diplomatic
relations between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) and the continuing U.S. and UN sanctions against the country for
its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Welcoming the visitors to a
luncheon in Encina Hall, David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), briefed them on the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (FSI)
and its research centers, including Shorenstein APARC and the Center for
International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Straub also introduced
representatives from FSI and the School of Medicine who have been involved in
policy, academic, and humanitarian engagement projects with the DPRK.
Mr. Henry S. Rowen, co-director
of the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE),
then outlined the history and organization of Stanford University and its
leading role in the development of Silicon Valley. Mr. John Sandelin, senior
associate emeritus of the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing, described
the university's policies on sharing university-generated intellectual property
with the private sector. Following the presentations, American guests at the
luncheon, including CISAC's Dr. William J. Perry and Dr. Siegfried S. Hecker,
had informal discussions with their North Korean tablemates about the
possibilities of, and obstacles to, economic collaboration between the two
countries.
The North Koreans' visit to
Stanford concluded with a stop at the Hoover Tower observation deck for a
panoramic view of the Stanford campus, where they were able to see how Stanford
graduates had developed Silicon Valley literally around the campus. DPRK
delegation members expressed appreciation for the hospitality they were shown
at Stanford and underlined their hopes for economic exchanges with the United
States.
The most recent previous visit to Stanford by a DPRK
delegation took place in January 2008, when CISAC Professor John W. Lewis,
Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin, and the School of Medicine's Dr.
Sharon Perry hosted five public health officials for discussions about
collaboration on tuberculosis control. Out of that visit evolved Stanford's
DPRK Tuberculosis Project, which, in association with the DPRK Ministry of
Public Health and NGO partners, is developing the country's first laboratory
with the capacity to diagnose drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Hero Image
North Korean economic delegation and Stanford hosts.
Europe dominated the 19th century. The 20th century saw the rise of the United States. Will the 21st century be "the Chinese Century"? Using a series of Harvard Business School Cases, this lecture will explore production, consumption, and education for China's new middle class, and think about China's future, in the light of its past.
William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. He serves as Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Harvard China Fund.
A historian of modern China, Professor Kirby's work examines China's business, economic, and political development in an international context. He has written on the evolution of modern Chinese business (state-owned and private); Chinese corporate law and company structure; the history of freedom in China; the international socialist economy of the 1950s; relations across the Taiwan Strait; and China's relations with Europe and America. His current projects include case studies of contemporary Chinese businesses and a comparative study of higher education in China, Europe, and the United States.
This talk is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS).
Philippines Conference Room
William C. Kirby
T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration
Speaker
Harvard Business School
Lyushun Shen earned his doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career at the School of Law, University of Maryland before deciding to become a professional diplomat. He has enjoyed a distinguished career serving Taiwan in its overseas missions in America and Europe, including in Washington D.C., Kansas City, Geneva and Brussels. Prior to his current appointment he was Taiwan’s representative to the European Union. His publications include: “The Republic of China’s Perspective on the US Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1989), The Issue of US Arms Sales and Peking’s Policy toward Taiwan (Taipei, 1986), “Is Peking’s Claim over Taiwan Internationally Recognized?” Monograph Series of the Asia and World Forum (Taipei, 1984), “The Washington-Peking Controversy over US Arms Sales to Taiwan: Diplomacy of Ambiguity and Escalation” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1982), and “The Taiwan Issue in Peking’s Foreign Policy during the 1970’s, A Systematic Review” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1981).
In this special event, Vice Foreign Minister Shen will reflect on the century-long relationship between the Republic of China and the United States, and address the future prospects and challenges of this relationship.
Bechtel Conference Center
Lyushun Shen
Vice Foreign Minister
Speaker
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)
