International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University formally changed many of its program names in tandem with the website project led by our parent organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In its 31st year, Shorenstein APARC continues to expand its research agenda as the Asia-Pacific region sees dynamic change and greater global significance. The Center has six key programs that support vibrant research, training and outreach goals focused on developing a greater understanding of Asia and improvement of U.S.-Asia relations.

The programs include:

  • Asia Health Policy Program: the Program promotes the comparative understanding of health and health policy in the Asia-Pacific region through research, seminars and collaboration with scholars at Stanford and across Asia.

 

  • China Program: the Program is a university-wide initiative to facilitate multidisciplinary, social science-oriented on contemporary China, with an emphasis on basic and policy-oriented research.

 

  • Corporate Affiliates Program: established in 1982, the Program introduces Asia-based fellows to American life and institutions. Shorenstein APARC hosts a class of fellows each year, and allows them to interact daily with scholars and students from Stanford and abroad while conducting research and auditing courses.

 

  • Japan Program: the Program facilitates multidisciplinary, social science-oriented research on contemporary Japan through both academic scholarship and policy-relevant research.

 

  • Korea Program: the Program focuses on multidisciplinary, policy-relevant projects on Korean Peninsula-related topics, and supports teaching and fellowships that encourages collaborative research.

 

  • Southeast Asia Program: the Program explores the histories, cultures and international relations of Southeast Asia’s ten countries and over half a billion people.

Further information about the programs can be found on the Shorenstein APARC website.

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CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E210
Stanford CA 94305-6165

(650) 724-5687 614-961-9670
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MacArthur Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow
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David Traven joined CISAC as a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow in July 2014. He received his PhD. in Political Science at Ohio State University in 2013. From January 2013 to June 2014 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. His research examines the evolution of the law and ethics of war in international relations, and he is particularly interested in understanding how moral cognition and emotion shape the creation of norms that protect the victims of armed conflict, especially civilians. Dr. Traven is currently working on a book manuscript that examines how moral intuitions influence the creation and the effectiveness of the norms of war across cultures.

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Under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has embarked on a historically important shift in its defense policy, taking on a more active regional security role and re-interpreting the Japanese constitution to allow for the country to participate in acts that are no longer strictly defined as defense of Japan's own territory. What do these changes mean for Japan's relations with its neighbors? For the alliance with the United States? Are these changes truly within the bounds of the Japanese constitution? And what are the politics of the debate within Japan over this historic change in defense and security policy?

 

Panelist:
Ryo Sahashi - Visiting Associate Professor, Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University and Associate Professor of International Politics, Faculty of Law at Kanagawa University

Daniel C. Sneider - Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University

Moderator:
Takeo Hoshi - Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at FSI; Professor, by courtesy, of Finance, Graduate School of Business and Director, Japan Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University

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Former Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Former Professor, by courtesy, of Finance at the Graduate School of Business
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Takeo Hoshi was Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Professor of Finance (by courtesy) at the Graduate School of Business, and Director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), all at Stanford University. He served in these roles until August 2019.

Before he joined Stanford in 2012, he was Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in International Economic Relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he conducted research and taught since 1988.

Hoshi is also Visiting Scholar at Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research (TCER), and Senior Fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER). His main research interest includes corporate finance, banking, monetary policy and the Japanese economy.

He received 2015 Japanese Bankers Academic Research Promotion Foundation Award, 2011 Reischauer International Education Award of Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana, 2006 Enjoji Jiro Memorial Prize of Nihon Keizai Shimbun-sha, and 2005 Japan Economic Association-Nakahara Prize.  His book titled Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001) co-authored with Anil Kashyap (Booth School of Business, University of Chicago) received the Nikkei Award for the Best Economics Books in 2002.  Other publications include “Will the U.S. and Europe Avoid a Lost Decade?  Lessons from Japan’s Post Crisis Experience” (Joint with Anil K Kashyap), IMF Economic Review, 2015, “Japan’s Financial Regulatory Responses to the Global Financial Crisis” (Joint with Kimie Harada, Masami Imai, Satoshi Koibuchi, and Ayako Yasuda), Journal of Financial Economic Policy, 2015, “Defying Gravity: Can Japanese sovereign debt continue to increase without a crisis?” (Joint with Takatoshi Ito) Economic Policy, 2014, “Will the U.S. Bank Recapitalization Succeed? Eight Lessons from Japan” (with Anil Kashyap), Journal of Financial Economics, 2010, and “Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan” (Joint with Ricardo Caballero and Anil Kashyap), American Economic Review, December 2008.

Hoshi received his B.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Tokyo in 1983, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.

Former Director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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Moderator

Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Encina Hall, Rm. E313
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-5781
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Visiting Associate Professor
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Ryo Sahashi is a visiting associate professor of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from April 2014 to March 2015. He joins APARC from Kanagawa University, where he concurrently serves as an associate professor of international politics. He will be writing a book on U.S. strategy toward China, Taiwan, and Northeast Asia since the Cold War.

Sahashi is a specialist on the regional security architecture in East Asia and Japan’s international relations. His articles are published in Chinese, English, and Japanese, including “Security Arrangements in the Asia-Pacific: a Three-Tier Approach,” William T. Tow and Rikki Kerstain (eds.); Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, pp.214-240; “Security Partnership in Japanese Asia Strategy: Creating Order, Building Capacity, and Sharing Burden,” ifri Policy Papers, February 2013; “The rise of China and the transformation of Asia-Pacific security architecture,” William T. Tow and Brendan Taylor (eds.); Contending Cooperation: Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and Asia-Pacific Security, London and New York: Routledge, 2013, pp.135-156. His newest articles on Japan-Taiwan relations and on Japan’s foreign policy since DPJ era (2009-) will soon be available.

He also serves as Research Fellow at Japan Center for International Exchange. In the past, he was the visiting researcher at the Japanese House of Councilors and German Fund of the United States. His early academic career as faculty started with the University of Tokyo and Australian National University.

He is an active commentator and contributor to international media, including NHK (Asian Voice & Newsline), CCTV, APF, Newsweek, Defense News, Stars and Stripes, Global Times, China Dairy, Asia Pacific Bulletin, and East Asia Forum.

Sahashi is a graduate from International Christian University, spending junior year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and earned his LL.M. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo.

Panelist

Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Lecturer in International Policy at the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy
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Daniel C. Sneider is a lecturer in international policy at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford. His own research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea.  Since 2017, he has been based partly in Tokyo as a Visiting Researcher at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, where he is working on a diplomatic history of the creation and management of the U.S. security alliances with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Sneider contributes regularly to the leading Japanese publication Toyo Keizai as well as to the Nelson Report on Asia policy issues.

Sneider is the former Associate Director for Research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. At Shorenstein APARC, Sneider directed the center’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory in East Asia. He is the co-author of a book on wartime memory and elite opinion, Divergent Memories, from Stanford University Press. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, of Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, from Routledge and of Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, from University of Washington Press.

Sneider was named a National Asia Research Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2010. He is the co-editor of Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, distributed by Brookings Institution Press, 2007; of First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier, 2009; as well as of Does South Asia Exist?: Prospects for Regional Integration, 2010. Sneider’s path-breaking study “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan” appeared in the July 2011 issue of Asia Policy. He has also contributed to other volumes, including “Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era” in Towards Sustainable Economic and Security Relations in East Asia: U.S. and ROK Policy Options, Korea Economic Institute, 2008; “The History and Meaning of Denuclearization,” in William H. Overholt, editor, North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2019; and “Evolution or new Doctrine? Japanese security policy in the era of collective self-defense,” in James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston, eds, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, December 2017.

Sneider’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, National Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Oriental Economist, Newsweek, Time, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Yale Global. He is frequently cited in such publications.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Sneider was a long-time foreign correspondent. His twice-weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News looking at international issues and national security from a West Coast perspective was syndicated nationally on the Knight Ridder Tribune wire service. Previously, Sneider served as national/foreign editor of the Mercury News. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, covering the end of Soviet Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1985 to 1990, he was Tokyo correspondent for the Monitor, covering Japan and Korea. Prior to that he was a correspondent in India, covering South and Southeast Asia. He also wrote widely on defense issues, including as a contributor and correspondent for Defense News, the national defense weekly.

Sneider has a BA in East Asian history from Columbia University and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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David Straub, the associate director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC, spoke with the Voice of America about the three American citizens being held as prisoners in North Korea. On 1 Sept. 2014, the detainees called for U.S. help in videotaped interviews released by the North Korean government.

“If I were still in the U.S. government, I would be reluctant to be a party to sending extremely senior Americans to pick up Americans who have been incarcerated. At what point can you continue to do that? At what point does this become a benefit to the North Koreans, allowing them at any point to blackmail the United States?” said Straub.

Straub was part of the 2009 diplomatic mission with former U.S. president Bill Clinton to free two American journalists.

 

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In 2009, David Straub (back row 2nd from right), associate director of the Korea Program, pictured with former U.S. president Bill Clinton, met North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to free two U.S. reporters.
Reuters/KCNA
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Taylor Johnson joined CISAC as research assistant to Amy Zegart in September 2014. Taylor graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in International and Area Studies.  She received her master’s degree in International Affairs from the Elliott School at The George Washington University in May 2015.

Taylor moved to the Bay Area from DC, where she worked as communications assistant at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. She has also completed internships at the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth and the U.S. Department of State. 

National Security Affairs Program Manager
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The Honorable Park Won Soon is the 35th mayor of Seoul, South Korea. He was initially elected in Oct. 2011, and recently reelected for another four-year term in June 2014. Park was elected as an indepedent candidate, with the support of the Democratic Party and Democractic Labor Party.

In his keynote speech, Mayor Park will share his philosophy on civic participation and local governance, reflecting on his career in- and outside government. He will explore communication strategies that local government can employ to better engage citizens and motivate collective action, using best practices from Seoul to illustrate his point.

Before assuming office, Park was a human rights lawyer and passionate activist who founded several NGOs. In his early university years at Seoul National University, Park was arrested and expelled for participating in a student rally against the military dictatorship of President Park Chung Hee, and was subsequently imprisoned for four months.

Park passed the state bar exam in 1980, and worked as a public prosecutor in the Daegu District Court in Gyeongsang Province (1982–3), afterward launching a private law practice in Seoul. In 2006, Park founded the Hope Institute, a think tank that aims to apply policy alternatives based on ideas generated by Korea’s citizens.

He also founded the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in 1994, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting justice and human rights in Korean society through civic participation.

In 2000, Park founded the Beautiful Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to promote a culture of philanthropy and a just society in Korea, and in 2002, the Beautiful Store, a secondhand store that raises funds for the Foundation’s initiatives.

Park holds a diploma in international law from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in history from Dankook University. In 1993, he was a visiting research fellow in the Human Rights Program at the School of Law at Harvard University and from 2005-6 he was a distinguished practitioner at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.

This event is part of the Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum.

The video of this presentation is located on the Shorenstein APARC YouTube channel.

 

McCaw Hall

Stanford Alumni Association
Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
326 Galvez Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6105
Parking, Map & Directions.

 

Park Won Soon Mayor of Seoul
Lectures
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60 years have passed since Japan started its development cooperation in 1954.  Japan has undergone the process of a defeated country of World War II becoming an economic superpower in the 1970s-1980s to be stagnant in the succeeding two decades.  During these periods, Japan's financial contribution to development cooperation once reached the highest among the OECD countries in the 1990s. But recently Japan's financial contribution stays at 4th or 5th. How has the Japanese development cooperation evolved over the past six decades? What have been its characteristics? What are the current debates of future direction of Japan's development cooperation? What role does it play in overall Japan's diplomacy and international relations?

 

Mr. Ak

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ihiko Tanaka is President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Before assuming the present post, he was Professor of International Politics at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. Most recently he was Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2011-2012), Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2009-2011), and Director of the Division of International Affairs of the University of Tokyo (2008-2010).

He obtained his B.A. in International Relations at the University of Tokyo in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.

Mr. Tanaka’s specialties include theories of international politics, contemporary international relations in East Asia, and Japan’s foreign policy. He has numerous books and articles in Japanese and English including the New Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (Tokyo: The International House of Japan, 2002).

He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2012.

 

 

Akihiko Tanaka President Speaker President, Japan International Cooperation Agency
Seminars
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The 2008 global financial crisis came with fears - and, for some, hopes of a new wave of public mobilisation in industrialised countries. Large protests were particularly expected in the epicentre of the crisis, the European Union. Yet, the force with which social groups garnered their calls for strikes ebbed quickly away. Gerald Schneider provides new evidence for why this was the case. He claims that strikes, and particularly political strikes, are 'bad weather' phenomena and crises exacerbate them. In monetary unions, where currency adjustments are difficult, fiscal changes are not supported by easing monetary measures and should unchain social unrest unless supranational actors get involved. Schneider argues that the political actions of the European Central Bank (ECB) have countered the potential for strikes in the Eurozone. He provides evidence for his theory with yearly panel data and a new original data  set of monthly strikes between 2001 and 2013. His analyses support the thesis that the EU institution was successful at attenuating social indignation over the Eurocrisis and its political fallout.

This paper is based on co-authored work with Dr. Federica Genovese (Essex) and Pia Wassmann (Hannover).

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Professor Gerald Schneider, University of Konstanz

Gerald Schneider is Professor of International Politics and Executive Editor of “European Union Politics”. His main areas of research are European Union decision making, the causes and consequences of armed violence, the international political economy of financial markets, bargaining and conflict management.

Schneider defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich in 1991, worked as post-doc at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) for two years and was an assistant professor (1992 – 1995) at the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales in Geneva. Before joining the faculty at Konstanz in 1997, he was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Stuttgart (1996-1997) and Program Director at the University of Berne (1994 – 1997). Gerald Schneider has also been visiting scholar at Università Bocconi (Visiting Research Professor), Charles University Prague, Harvard University, University of Kobe, Sciences Po Paris (Grosser Chair) and Università Siena. He has published around 150 articles in various journals and volumes. Schneider is President of the European Political Science Association (2013-2015) and was also in 2003-2004 Vice President of the International Studies Association, and served as Program Chair for the 50th annual convention in New York City in 2009. Schneider has acted as a consultant and referee for various organizations, including the World Bank and the U.S. National Science Foundation. He has served for various selection committees of the the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2007 and was a member of the scientific board of the Swiss Network of International Studies (2008-2013). Besides his native German, Schneider speaks English, French and survives in Italian and Danish.

The Eurotower Strikes Back: Crises, Adjustments and Europe's Austerity Protests
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CISAC Central Conference Room
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
 

Gerald Schneider Professor of International Politics Speaker Universität Konstanz, Germany
Seminars
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Conference Agenda for Day 3, October 10, 2014:

 

9:00 – 10:15 AM Chair: Katherine Jolluck, Stanford University

  • Aigi Rahi-Tamm, Tartu University. Doubly Marginalized People: the Hidden Stories of Breaking Trust between People in Estonian Society (1940–1960)
  • Daina Bleiere, Rīga Stradiņš University. Women in the Soviet Latvian Nomenclature (1940–1987)

10:30 AM – 12:15 PM Chair: Darius Staliunas, Lithuanian Institute of History

  • Saulius Grybkauskas, Lithuanian Institute of History. The Second Secretaries of Communist Parties in the Soviet Baltic Republics during 1944–1990
  • David Beecher, University of California, Berkeley. A Tale of Two Scholars:  Paul Ariste and Yuri Lotman
  • Gail Lapidus, Stanford University. The Baltic National Movements and the End of the USSR

12:15 – 2:00 PM Break

2:00 – 3:15 PM Chair: Paul Roderick Gregory, Hoover Institution

  • Elga Zalīte, Green Library. The Rev. Richards Zariņš Collection in Stanford University Libraries as a Source for the Study of the Post-World War II Latvian Emigration in the United States
  • David Jacobs, Hoover Institution Archives. Stateless Representatives: Baltic Diplomats during the Cold War

3:30 – 4:15 PM Chair: Saulius Sužiedėlis, Millersville University, Pennsylvania

  • Maciej Siekierski, Hoover Institution Archives. Baltic Collections and Scholarship at the Hoover Institution
  • Liisi Esse, Green Library. The Baltic Studies Program of Stanford University Libraries

 

6:00 – 8:00 PM, Cubberley Auditorium, Education Building, 485 Lasuen Mall

Latvian film director Pēteris Krilovs will present his documentary Obliging Collaborators (2014)

 

Conference organizers:  Professors Lazar Fleishman (Slavic Department) and Amir Weiner (History Department)

Sponsored by: Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Office of the Provost, Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Global Studies Division, The Europe Center, Stanford University Libraries, Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center.

 

Stauffer Auditorium, Hoover Institution (9:00am - 4:15pm)
Cubberley Auditorium (for film screening, 6:00pm - 8:00pm)
 

Conferences
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