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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This event is being presented in partnership with CDDRL, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Hoover Institution, and a student led movement to end atrocities at Stanford (STAND).

Abstract:

Sixty-eight years after the Holocaust, governments continue to struggle with preventing genocide and mass atrocities. In 2005, United Nations member states agreed that nations share a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Join us for a discussion about how the responsibility to protect (or R2P) has been applied in recent crises.

 

Speakers bio:

Richard Williamson is a nonresident senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings and a principal in the consulting firm Salisbury Strategies LLP. His work focuses on human rights, multilateral diplomacy, nuclear nonproliferation and post-conflict reconstruction. Prior to those positions, Mr. Williamson served as U.S. special envoy to Sudan, under President George W. Bush. Earlier in the Bush administration, Mr. Williamson, who has broad foreign policy and negotiating experience, served as ambassador to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs, and as ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Previously, Mr. Williamson served in several other senior foreign policy positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including as assistant secretary of state for international organizations at the Department of State, and as an assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Michael Abramowitz is director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He joined the Museum in 2009 after nearly 25 years at the Washington Post, where he served as White House correspondent and previously as national editor, helping supervise coverage of national politics, the federal government, social policy, and national security. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow of the German Marshall Fund. He was also a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, based in Hoover’s Washington, DC, office. His areas of research are political theory, international relations, national security policy, and US politics. 

Lindberg is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the School of Foreign Service. From 1999 until it ceased publication in 2013, he was editor of the bimonthly journal Policy Review.

In 2007–8, Lindberg served as head of the expert group on international norms and institutions of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, a joint project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2005, Lindberg was the coordinator for the group Preventing and Responding to Genocide and Major Human Rights Abuses for the United States Institute of Peace's Task Force on the United Nations. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Princeton Project on National Security, for which he served as cochair of the working group on anti-Americanism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School. 

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Bechtel Conference Center

Richard Williamson Senior fellow in Foreign Policy Speaker Brookings
Michael Abramowitz Director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide Moderator U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tod Lindberg Research fellow at the Hoover Institution Speaker Stanford
Lina Khatib Program Manager Speaker Arab Reform and Democracy Program at CDDRL
Conferences
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John Sloan was appointed Canada’s ambassador to the Russian Federation, Armenia and Uzbekistan in August 2010.

From September 2006 until August 2010 he was Director General for Economic Policy in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In this capacity he was responsible for the coordination and delivery of Canadian objectives in the G8, G20 and APEC Summits, the OECD, for development policy and institutions and for the Department’s economic capacity building. He was Canada’s Senior Official (SOM) to the APEC process and Canada’s representative to the OECD Executive Committee in Special Session (ECSS). He was also Chair of the G8 Accountability Working Group which produced the G8 Accountability Report for the 2010 Muskoka Summit.

From July 2000 until September 2006 John Sloan worked at the Financial Services Authority in London, UK, the UK financial services regulator, where he was Special Advisor/Manager, Global Team. He was particularly involved in the work of the Financial Stability Forum and the Joint Forum and chaired the Joint Forum working group which produced the High-level Principles for Business Continuity for regulators and market participants, which were formally published in September 2006.

He has served as Canada’s Finance Counsellor in Tokyo and London. Other foreign postings include Geneva, Beijing and a first assignment in Tokyo, including two years at the FSI Japanese language school. Ottawa assignments include Senior Departmental Assistant to the Minister of International Trade and a secondment to the Department of Finance where he coordinated Canada’s Paris Club strategy.

John Sloan has a BA from Stanford University in Chinese Studies, and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in International Relations and an MBA from Business School Lausanne. In 2000 he taught a course on contemporary Canada at Keio University, Tokyo.

John Sloan is the author of The Surprising Wines of Switzerland, published by Bergli Books, Basel. He also co-editedLa nouvelle Europe de l'Est, du plan au marché, published by Editions Bruylant, Brussels. An article he co-authored, The Structure of International Market Regulation, appeared in Financial Markets and Exchanges Law, published by Oxford University Press in March 2007.

CISAC Conference Room

His Excellency Mr. John Sloan Canadian Ambassador to the Russian Federation Speaker
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Speaker bio:

Jonathan Rodden is a professor in the political science department at Stanford who works on the comparative political economy of institutions. He has written several articles and a pair of books on federalism and fiscal decentralization. His most recent book, Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism, was the recipient of the Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative politics in 2007. He frequently works with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on issues related to fiscal decentralization.

He has also written papers on the geographic distribution of political preferences within countries, legislative bargaining, the distribution of budgetary transfers across regions, and the historical origins of political institutions. He is currently writing a series of articles and a book on political geography and the drawing of electoral districts around the world.

Rodden received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright student at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2007, he was the Ford Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Jonathan Rodden Professor of Political Science Speaker Stanford University
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Speaker bio:

Martin Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University School of Education. Prior to coming to Stanford, he was a Research Associate in Economics, Foreign Policy Division, at the Brookings Institution. He is also a consultant to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, IEA, OECD, UNICEF, International Labour Office.

Dr. Carnoy is a labor economist with a special interest in the relation between the economy and the educational system. To this end, he studies the US labor market, including the role in that relation of race, ethnicity, and gender, the US educational system, and systems in many other countries. He uses comparative analysis to understand how education influences productivity and economic growth, and, in turn, how and why educational systems change over time, and why some countries educational systems are marked by better student performance than others'. He has studied extensively the impact of vouchers and charter schools on educational quality, and has recently focused on differences in teacher preparation and teacher salaries across countries as well as larger issues of the impact of economic inequality on educational quality.

Currently, Dr. Carnoy is launching new comparative projects on the quality of education in Latin America and Southern Africa, which include assessing teacher knowledge in mathematics, filming classroomsm and assessing student performance. He is also launching major new project to study changes in university financing and the quality of engineering and science tertiary education in China, India, and Russia.

Dr. Carnoy received his BA in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Martin Carnoy Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University Speaker
Seminars
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Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Amr Adly has a Ph.D. from the European University Institute-Florence, Department of political and social sciences (Date of completion: September 2010). His thesis topic was "The political economy of trade and industrialization in the post-liberalization period: Cases of Turkey and Egypt". The thesis was published by Routledge in December 2012 under the title of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt.

He has several other academic publications that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Politics, Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to articles in several other periodicals and newspapers in English and Arabic.

Before joining Stanford, he worked as a senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, heading the unit of social and economic rights, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

At Stanford, he is leading a research project on reforming the regulatory environment governing entrepreneurship after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, which will result in policy papers as well as conferences in the two countries.

Adel Iskandar is a scholar of media and international communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazerra: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (co-authored with Mohammed el-Naway, Basic Books, 2003). Iskandar's work deals with the intersections of media (pring, electronic, and digital) culture, identity, and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universateries worldwide. His latest publications include two coedited volumes titled Edward SAid: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (co-edited with Hakem Rustom, University of California Press, 2010) and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween, 2013). His just published title the uthored anthology Egypt In Flux: Essay on an unfinished Revolution (OUP/AUC Press, 2013. Iskandar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Hesham Sallam is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University and co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).

CISAC Conference Room

Lina Khatib Program Manager, Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker CDDRL
Amr Adly Postdoctoral Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Adel Iskandar Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Encina Hall, E105
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Research Scholar
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Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

 

Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development
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Hesham Sallam Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL
Panel Discussions
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Abstract
The American government is at a crossroads in its relationship with the people it governs. Despite long-standing official denials, documents leaked to the press by 29-year-old government contractor Edward Snowden show that the United States has a vast domestic spying program in which it indiscriminately collects information on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans in the name of foreign intelligence and counterterrorism. These revelations impact our domestic law and policy as well as commercial and international interests.  In this talk, Granick will review what we now know about government surveillance, discuss the legality of these programs and discuss principles to help lawmakers and the public understand and respond to mass surveillance. 

Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer returns to Stanford after working with the internet boutique firm of Zwillgen PLLC. Before that, she was the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security, electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. From 2001 to 2007, Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet intermediary liability, and Internet law and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. She was selected by Information Security magazine in 2003 as one of 20 "Women of Vision" in the computer security field. She earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida.

Wallenberg Theater

Jennifer Granick Director of Civil Liberties, Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
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Abstract:

In the coming decade new oil discoveries in Africa will leave fragile democracies vulnerable to corruption, patronage and rent seeking behavior. In a piece co-written in Foreign Affairs, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Research Associate Jack Mosbacher advocate a new scheme to directly distribute oil revenue to citizens in the form of taxable income. This oil-to-cash system would strengthen accountability and increase citizens ownership of state resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

At Stanford University, Diamond is also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology. He teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, and advises many Stanford students. In May 2007, he was named "Teacher of the Year" by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that "transcends political and ideological barriers." At the June 2007 Commencement ceremony, Diamond was honored by Stanford University with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education. He was cited, inter alia, for fostering dialogue between Jewish and Muslim students; for "his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education; for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual, sharing his passion for democratization, peaceful transitions, and the idea that each of us can contribute to making the world a better place; and for helping make Stanford an ideal place for undergraduates."

Jack Mosbacher is a Research Associate at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he works with Larry Diamond on democratization trends in Africa. A 2012 Stanford graduate, Jack participated in the Undergraduate Honors Program with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His thesis, "Bracing for the Boom: Translating Oil into Development in Uganda," won the Departmental Best Thesis Award, and his work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Quarterly.

 Please click on link to read article that appeared in Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/136843

CISAC Conference Room

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab WorldWill China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
Date Label
Larry Diamond Director Speaker CDDRL
Jack Mosbacher Research Associate Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
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Counterinsurgency strategy, as applied in Afghanistan, rested on the assumption that it was feasible for the U.S. military to protect the Afghan population, that foreign aid could make the Afghan government more accountable, and that the Karzai administration shared U.S. goals. But all three assumptions turned out to be spectacularly incorrect.

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Koret Distinguished Lecture Series: Lecture I

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement but the situation on the Korean peninsula remains tense and uncertain. Eight months after stepping down as the Republic of Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kim Sung-Hwan will address the difficult challenges to achieving sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Minister Kim will examine North Korea’s policies toward South Korea and the United States in light of major developments on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. He will also address international efforts to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. He will share his insights into the current situation in North Korea, including the differences in North Korea’s policies and behavior since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father Kim Jong Il two years ago as the supreme leader. Minister Kim will conclude by offering his policy recommendations for dealing with the North Korea of today.

Minister Kim completed thirty-six years as a career diplomat in the Republic of Korea’s foreign service in March of this year. His final two positions in government were as Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs and National Security (2008 to 2010) and as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2010-2013). Earlier assignments in the ministry headquarters included vice minister (2010) and deputy minister for planning and Management (2005). From 2001 to 2002, he served as director-general of the North American Affairs Bureau, in charge of the Republic of Korea’s relations with the United States. Overseas, Minister Kim’s postings included service in the United States, Russia and India. He was Ambassador to the Republic of Austria and Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna (2006-2008) and Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan (2002-2004). In July 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appointed Minister Kim as a member of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Minister Kim graduated from Seoul National University and studied at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Currently, Minister Kim is Chair of the Institute for Global Social Responsibility and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.

The Koret Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 2013 with the generous support of the Koret Foundation

Philippines Conference Room

Sung-hwan Kim Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the Republic of Korea Speaker
Lectures
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