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.
This curriculum unit offers students the opportunity to consider civil rights issues in the context of the Japanese-American experience during World War II. Lessons focus on the immigration years, the role of the media, diverse perspectives on the internment years, Japanese Americans and the military during World War II, and legacies of internment.
Physically aligned as they are toward Mecca, the daily prayers and lifetime pilgrimages of Muslims around the world--hundreds of millions of spokes of religious practice--surround and sustain the Arabian hub of Islam as religious practice. Yet the demographic center of gravity of the Muslim world could hardly be farther from the Middle East. For it is in the vast arc of Asia, in countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia, that the great majority of the world's Muslims live. How, if at all, does this striking difference between ritual focus and social fact affect the outlooks and actions of Asian Muslims? What, roughly, is the balance of militancy and toleration in this Asian context, especially in ethnically and religiously plural societies such as Malaysia? Is it realistic to think that Asian attitudes and behaviors could form the basis for a 21st-century reformation and renaissance of Islam in which the jihadist passions of Al Qaeda and the purist strictures of the House of Saud would be refuted and shunned in favor of intercultural cooperation and liberal democracy? Or has the American-Afghan crisis, on the contrary, ignited a chain reaction of sympathy for Arab (and Pashtun) resentments that will inflame Asian Muslims against unbelievers? Finally, what relevance do these questions have for the people and policies of the United States? Karim Raslan is one of Southeast Asia's leading public intellectuals. His diverse interests run from constructing fictional plots to restructuring all-too-real bankruptcies. When he is not writing short stories and newspaper commentaries, or appearing on CNN or the BBC, he partners a highly regarded Malaysian law firm, Raslan Loong. His first novel, Desire--the first of four planned volumes about a family of Malay Muslims--will be published next fall. A third collection of his short stories should be out next spring. His syndicated column, "Eye in Asia," appears weekly in newspapers in Malaysia and Singapore, and is often reprinted elsewhere in Asia and Australia. The specialties of his law firm include corporate finance, capital markets, and information technology. He is presently a visiting scholar at Columbia University. When he is not traveling, Mr. Raslan lives in Malaysia.
Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, third floor, East Wing
As China is gradually integrated into the international economic, security, and politics system, the tension between technological self-reliance and the need to build its technological enhancement on what is available in international market, will inevitably increase. Reflecting this tension, China's encryption policy was thrust into the international limelight in late 1999 and the first half of 2000. The early encryption regulations were announced and later were clarified. A wide range of international media has covered controversies related to the encryption policy. For every nation in the world, encryption's multifaceted nature requires a painstaking effort balancing potentially competing interests. It is even more so for China, the country which will officially join the WTO at the end of 2001. The concerns of multiple stakeholders about the future of encryption technology and its impact have raised policy questions about the management and control of encryption technology. Among the questions Chinese decision makers face are the following: --How to evaluate China's current encryption policy from an international perspective? --How to justify the toughness of the original encryption regulations and the relaxation afterwards in China's complex and rapidly changing domestic and international context? The purpose of Dr. Yuan's study is to assist Chinese policymakers in analyzing the status quo of the policy, objectives, and factors affecting encryption policymaking and to offer suggestions for the future. It provides an integrated assessment of how encryption policy decisions can and might affect diverse military, commercial, and political interests in China and suggests how those interests might be balanced most effectively.
Okimoto Conference Room, Third Floor, Encina Hall, East Wing
Topics to be covered: 1. Case Studies of different ventures undertaken by the speaker for different projects in China, looking at reasons for the organization structure, access to local capital, technology and talent, infrastructure availability and government relations; and outcomes relative to expectations. 2. Comparative view of India 3. Summary of how capitalism is managed in China versus India. Mr. Vivek Ragavan, who has more than twenty years of executive management experience in the telecommunications industry, was most recently president and CEO of Redback Networks. Before that he was president and CEO of Siara Systems, which merged with Redback in March 2000. Prior to Siara, Ragavan was president of the Residential Broadband Group of ADC Telecommunications, Inc., where he was responsible for ADC's telecommunication equipment businesses, focused on the broadband communication access and transport markets. Earlier, Ragavan was vice president of Engineering at General Instrument where he led the development of that company's leading digital video transport system. He has a BSEE from Northwestern University and an MSEE from Cornell University.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
This seminar addresses developing an analytical framework for a comparative study of the emergence and growth dynamics of regions of high tech industrial clusters in different national contexts. We review the empirical and theoretical literature on determinants of national and regional competitiveness in high tech industries. We conclude that, while innovation and entrepreneurship have both been given increasing attention in various international benchmarking studies in recent years, their interaction and joint effects on economic dynamism -- especially at the regional and specific industrial cluster level -- have not been well-investigated. Moreover, while the number of empirical studies of specific high-tech regions has increased, especially in the United States, the influence of different national contexts and international linkages has received inadequate attention. To address these gaps, we propose the development of conceptual measures and empirical benchmark indicators that focus specifically on the regional nexus of innovation and entrepreneurship, and identify possible secondary data sources and primary data collection methodology for deriving these indicators. Some preliminary benchmarking findings comparing a number of Asian nations/regions with Silicon Valley are presented.
Poh-Kam Wong is an associate professor at the Business School, National University of Singapore, where he directs the Centre for Management of Innovation and Technopreneurship. He obtained his BSc., MSc. and Ph.D. from MIT. His current research interests include management of technological innovation, S&T policy, and high tech entrepreneurship. His publications have appeared in, among others, Information Systems Research, International Journal of Technology Management, Journal of Asian Business, and Industry and Innovation, as well as chapters in books published by Stanford University Press, MIT Press, and Oxford University Press. He has consulted widely for international agencies, government agencies in Singapore, and high tech firms in Asia. He has co-founded three technology companies and currently serves on the advisory board or board of directors of several high tech start-ups in Singapore and Malaysia. He is an advisor to two VC funds and chairman of the Business Angel Network (South East Asia). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley in 1984 and is currently on sabbatical leave as a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC.
Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor
In his first public appearance at Stanford University since being elected governor, Stanford graduate Gray Davis gave a speech on Asia-California ties. The address inaugurated the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum on Asia/Pacific Studies at Stanford University's Asia/Pacific Research Center.
Dinkelspiel Auditorium
All-day conference on Japanese institutional reform sponsored by the Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.
Bechtel Conference Center
Mr. Tai is on leave from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taipei, Taiwan while he is here at Shorenstein APARC. To attend the luncheon program please respond to Leigh Wang by Wednesday, September 26, 2001. You can reach her at 650-724-6405 or via email at lzwang@stanford.edu.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
This unit allows students to gain a broader perspective on child labor and become more familiar with the issues, controversies, and debates that surround it.
Bechtel Conference Center, Encina Hall