REGISTRATION FULL. No walk-ins, no substitutions. Door opens at 3:45pm for registered guests.

Ursula von der Leyen studied economics at the University of Göttingen, the University of Münster and the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1980 to 1987 she attended Hanover Medical School (MHH). After obtaining her license to practise medicine, she worked at the Clinic for Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She obtained her Dissertation in Medicine in 1991 and was awarded the degree of Dr. med.. In 1992, Ursula von der Leyen and her family moved to the United States. She returned to Germany in 1996. From 1998 to 2002 she worked as a research assistant at the Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health System Research at Hanover Medical School and completed her Master’s degree in Public Health in 2001.

Ursula von der Leyen started her political activities in 1990 when she became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). From 2001 to 2003 she held various political offices at municipal level in the Hanover region. In 2003 she became a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament and was appointed State Minister of Social Affairs, Women, Family Affairs and Health. In 2005 Ursula von der Leyen started her career in federal politics as Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. In 2009 she became a Member of Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) and was appointed as Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. After her election as member of the CDU Executive Committee she was elected as party vice chairwoman in 2010. In 2013 she was appointed as Minister of Defense of the Republic of Germany.

Ursula von der Leyen was born in Brussels in 1958. She lives near Hanover. She is married with Professor Heiko von der Leyen and the couple has seven children.

Space reports back these days ― in a brutal way. While we are told that Europe's external borders have stopped to exist, old legal-political concepts loom in the background of the current discussion on the Decline of the West: mare nostrum, mare clausum, res omnium, and the (impossible) Nomos of the Sea.

With the dangerous concept of res omnium an ominous figure is back, too: the pirate, the enemy of mankind, the terrorist in the disguise of the refugee. Linked inseparably to the birth of the concept of the state itself (by means of exclusion), this abysmal figure underwent a number of significant shifts since the enlightenment era, like the sea itself. Already in JF Cooper the pirate became a metasign, designating the readability of signs as such, the recognizability of figures, and the birth of the nation. The lecture therefore pushes forward the thesis (by drawing on art, literature, and media history at the same time) that the media and crisis history of the nomos of the sea underlies the concepts of representation and aesthetics of our modernity. The order of sense making, the order of the recognizable (i. e. aesthetics) and the possibility to discriminate between friend and foe are neither ontologically nor transcendentally "given" in the modern era but dependent on media, and therefore are permanently related to the danger of becoming indiscriminate. Hence, the ultimate metasign is the seascape.

Bernhard Siegert is the Gerd Bucerius Professor for the Theory and History of Cultural Techniques at the Department of Media Studies at Bauhaus-University Weimar and Director and Co-Founder of the International College of Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy at Weimar. His books include Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real (2015) and Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (1999). He is a leading scholar of German Media Studies.

Hans Gumbrecht, the Albert Guerard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature and of French & Italian at Stanford and TEC affliliate faculty, will be the respondent. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center, Department of Comparative Literature, and The Europe Center at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Abstract

Under Secretary Sewall will deliver remarks on Countering Violent Extremism, the U.S. Government’s comprehensive approach for preventing the spread of ISIL and emergence of new terrorist threats. The Under Secretary will describe how the evolution of violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks necessitates a “whole of society” approach to prevent people from aligning with terrorist movements and ideologies in the first place. Drawing on recent travel to Indonesia, India, and Egypt, the Under Secretary will describe the vital role of actors outside government in this approach, including women, youth, religious leaders, businesses, and researchers. She will also elaborate on new steps the U.S. Government is taking to intensify its CVE efforts around the world. The Under Secretary will also take questions from the audience.

Speaker bio

Image

Dr. Sarah Sewall is the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights at the U.S. State Department, and is a longtime advocate for advancing civilian security and human rights around the world. Dr. Sewall was sworn in on February 20, 2014. She serves concurrently as the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. Over the previous decade, Dr. Sewall taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she served as Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and directed the Program on National Security and Human Rights.

Dr. Sewall has extensive experience partnering with the U.S. armed forces around civilian security. At the Kennedy School, she launched the MARO (Mass Atrocities Response Operations Project) to assist the U.S. military with contingency planning to protect civilians from large-scale violence. She was a member of the Defense Policy Board and served as the Minerva Chair at the Naval War College in 2012. She also led several research studies of U.S. military operations for the Department of Defense and served as the inaugural Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance in the Clinton Administration. Prior joining the executive branch, Dr. Sewall served for six years as the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell and earned a Ph.D at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

This event is co-sponsored by Stanford in Government and CISAC. 

[[{"fid":"222126","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"Sewall Flyer","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","attributes":{"width":"870","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]

The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) is honored to offer the 2016 Drell Lecture with Dr. William J. Perry, 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense, who will take attendees on "A National Security Walk Around the World."

Drell Lecture Recording: NA

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

Speaker's Biography: William Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University. He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution, and serves as director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is an expert in U.S. foreign policy, national security and arms control. He was the co-director of CISAC from 1988 to 1993, during which time he was also a part-time professor at Stanford. He was a part-time lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Santa Clara University from 1971 to 1977.

Image

Perry was the 19th secretary of defense for the United States, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as deputy secretary of defense (1993-1994) and as under secretary of defense for research and engineering (1977-1981). Dr. Perry currently serves on the Defense Policy Board (DPB), the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB). He is on the board of directors of Covant, Fabrinet, LGS Bell Labs Innovations and several emerging high-tech companies. His previous business experience includes serving as a laboratory director for General Telephone and Electronics (1954-1964); founder and president of ESL Inc. (1964-1977); executive vice-president of Hambrecht & Quist Inc. (1981-1985); and founder and chairman of Technology Strategies & Alliances (1985-1993). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From 1946 to 1947, Perry was an enlisted man in the Army Corps of Engineers, and served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1948 and was a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves from 1950 to 1955. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1997 and the Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1998. Perry has received a number of other awards including the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1980 and 1981), and Outstanding Civilian Service Medals from the Army (1962 and 1997), the Air Force (1997), the Navy (1997), the Defense Intelligence Agency (1977 and 1997), NASA (1981) and the Coast Guard (1997). He received the American Electronic Association's Medal of Achievement (1980), the Eisenhower Award (1996), the Marshall Award (1997), the Forrestal Medal (1994), and the Henry Stimson Medal (1994). The National Academy of Engineering selected him for the Arthur Bueche Medal in 1996. He has received awards from the enlisted personnel of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force. He has received decorations from the governments of Albania, Bahrain, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, and Ukraine. He received a BS and MS from Stanford University and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by CISAC Co-director Dr. David Relman. 

The Drell Lecture is an annual public event sponsored by CISAC. By tradition, the Drell speaker addresses a current and critical national or international security issue that has important scientific or technical dimensions. The lecture is named for Sidney Drell, CISAC's founding science co-director. Albert and Cicely Wheelon generously endowed the lectureship.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Monica Martinez-Bravo is an associate professor at CEMFI in Madrid, Spain. She received her Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 2010. Her research interests are in the fields of Political Economy and Economic Development.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

**This event has been cancelled**

Torben Iversen is Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. His research and teaching interests include comparative political economy, electoral politics, and applied formal theory. He is the author of Capitalism, Democracy, and Welfare (Cambridge UP 2005), Contested Economic Institutions (Cambridge UP 1999), and co-author (with Frances Rosenbluth) of Women, Work, and Power: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality (Yale UP, 2010). He is also the co-editor of Unions, Employers and Central Bankers (Cambridge UP 2000) and has published more than three dozen articles in leading journals and edited volumes. His work has won numerous American Political Science Association prizes including the Victoria Schuck Award, Best Book on European Politics and Society Award, the Luebbert Best Article Award, and the Gabriel Almond Best Dissertation Award. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is currently completing a book-length project with David Soskice on the political representation of economic interests in historical perspective.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

This event is now full.  We are no longer able to accept further RSVPs. 

The Russian Economy is in a recession due to a perfect storm of the low oil prices, sanctions and the lack of reforms. First time since 1998, Russians see a major fall in their real incomes. How long will the recession continue?  What can the Russian government do? What will happen after the recession is over?
 

Sergei Guriev is a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris, France. From 2004 to 2013, Dr. Guriev was a tenured professor of economics and rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. He will begin an appointment as Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2016.

The Russian System of personalized power has been demonstrating an amazing capacity for survival even in the midst of decay. It has defied many predictions and ruined many analytical narratives. Today the Russian authoritarian rule is trying to prolong its life by turning to repressions at home and by containing the West. Russia, kicking over the global chess board with the war in Ukraine, returns to the international scene as a revisionist and revanchist power. The Russian Matrix demise will be painful, and it already has brought about  Russia’s confrontation with the West.  The challenge posed by Russia’s decaying petro –nuclear state is huge, and it is sure to be one of the dominant problems of the twenty-first century.

RSVP

Lilia Shevtsova is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington), and an Associate Fellow at the Russia-Eurasia Program, Chatham House - The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London). She is the member of the boards of the Institute for Humanities (Vienna), the Finnish Centre for Excellence in Russian Studies (Helsinki), the Liberal Mission Foundation, and the New Eurasia Foundation (Moscow); a member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies’ Research Council(Washington); a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals: “American Interest,”“Journal of Democracy,” and “New Eastern Europe.“ Shevtsova was Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington) and the Moscow Carnegie Center, founding chair of the Davos World Economic Forum Council on Russia’s Future, and a member of the Council on Terrorism. “Foreign Policy” magazine included Shevtsova in the list of 100 Global Public Intellectuals. She was a participant at the Bilderberg Club meetings; served as Chair of the Program on Eurasia and Eastern Europe, SSRC (Washington) and member of the Social Council for Central and Eastern European Studies. She contributes to global leading media, including: Foreign Policy, FT, Washington Post, Le Monde, Monde Diplomatique, Die Zeit, Fokus, El Pais, American Interest, Survival, Journal of Democracy, Diplomaatia. 

Shevtsova is author of twenty books, including Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality; Putin’s Russia; Russia –Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies; Lonely Power (Why Russia Has Failed to Become the West and Why the West Is Weary of Russia), Russia: Change or Decay (in co-authorship with Andrew Wood), Crisis: Russia and the West in the Time of Trouble.

A Lecture-Concert by

Professor Jindong Cai, Music Director and Conductor, Stanford Symphony Orchestra

In collaboration with members of

The Peking University Symphony Orchestra

NOV 12, 2015

19:30 – 21:00

Stanford Center at Peking University

At the turn of the twentieth century, the foundations of traditional Chinese society were crumbling. Many patriotic and idealistic young people went overseas to seek inspiration and education, determined to learn from the outside world and forge a new path forward for China. Beethoven was introduced to China during this period by a series of remarkable artists and intellectuals who learned about the composer while studying in Japan. The polymath artist, writer, and monk Li Shutong was the first Chinese to write about Beethoven in a short, but revealing, article called  “The Sage of Music.”  Xiao Youmei was the first Chinese to bring the sound of Beethoven to Chinese people.  After his studies in Japan and Germany, Xiao came back to China in 1921 and began promoting music education at Peking University, where he created the first Chinese symphony orchestra to perform Beethoven’s music. Since then, Beethoven has become an iconic figure in China and played a role in many major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US-China relations.  Beethoven became a hero to reformers, intellectuals, music lovers, and party cadres alike. The new Penguin Special “Beethoven in China,” by Stanford professor and orchestra conductor Jindong Cai and culture journalist Sheila Melvin tells the compelling story of Beethoven and the Chinese people.

In the first part of this special lecture-concert, Professor Cai will share his own experience of hearing Beethoven’s music for the first time in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. He will also briefly tell the story of how Beethoven and his music became so deeply rooted in modern China. The second part of the event will feature a 15-member ensemble of musicians from the Peking University Orchestra – a first-ever re-creation of the 1922 orchestra that premiered Beethoven in Beijing. The performance, conducted by Maestro Cai, will give the audience a unique historical experience and allow them to travel back in time and hear how Beethoven’s music sounded when it was first performed at Peking University.