This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

November 9, 4-5 p.m. California time/ November 10, 9-10 a.m. Japan time
(Note:  Daylight Saving Time in California ends November 7)

In April 2021, then Prime Minister Suga announced to the world that Japan will strive to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, seemingly setting the country on a path toward accelerated energy transition primarily by renewables. Under Prime Minister Kishida, Japan’s commitment may be on a more shaky ground, as demands for steady energy supply by old industries gained more traction and calls for restarting nuclear power plants are becoming louder. In this new political environment, in which Japan’s energy policy seems to be in flux, what is the future of renewables, nuclear energy, and fossil fuels, and what is the best energy mix for Japan considering its unique geopolitical position?

Panelists 

Phillip Lipscy is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, the Chair in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.  His research addresses substantive topics such as international cooperation, international organizations, the politics of energy and climate change, international relations of East Asia, and the politics of financial crises.  He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy.  Lipscy's book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations.  Before arriving to the University of Toronto, Lipscy was assistant professor of political science and Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University.  Lipscy obtained his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University and received his M.A. in international policy studies and B.A. in economics and political science at Stanford University. 

 

Mika Ohbayashi is the Director at Renewable Energy Institute since its foundation in August 2011.  Before joining the Institute, she worked in Abu Dhabi for the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) as Policy and Project Regional Manager for Asia Oceania. She is one of two founders of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) and served as Deputy Director for 8 years following its establishment in 2000. She also worked as Advisor for Climate Change Projects and Policies for UKFCO at the British Embassy to Japan. She started her career in the energy field by joining Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in 1992.  She was awarded the Global Leadership Award in Advancing Solar Energy Policy by the International Sola Energy Society (ISES) in 2017. 

 

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021). 

 

 

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This event is part of the 2021 Fall webinar series, Perfect Storm: Climate Change in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

PART OF THE FALL SEMINAR SERIES

Join us on October 5th at the Cyber Policy Center seminar from 12 PM - 1 PM PST featuring Becca Lewis, PhD Candidate in Communication at Stanford University. The session will be moderated by Kelly Born, Director of the Cyber Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Conventional wisdom suggests that conspiracy theories and far-right propaganda thrive mainly at the end of algorithmic rabbit holes, in the deep, dark corners of the internet. This presentation will show that the opposite is true by explaining how in fact, harmful ideas gain traction through the charisma and popularity of internet celebrities in mainstream social media contexts. Through her extensive research on far-right YouTubers, Becca Lewis argues that instead of merely focusing our responses on the threat of algorithmic rabbit holes, we must also understand the power of amplification through thriving alternative media systems on- and offline.

Speaker Profile:

Becca Lewis is a Stanford Graduate Fellow and PhD candidate in Communication at Stanford University, as well as a research affiliate at Data & Society Research Institute and the University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. Her research has been published in the journals Society Media + Society, Television and New Media, and American Behavioral Scientist, and her public writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, New York Magazine, and Columbia Journalism Review. She holds an MSc in Social Science from the Oxford Internet Institute.

 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share it with others.

October 18, 4-5:00 p.m. California time/ October 19, 8-9:00 a.m. Japan time

The recent LDP Presidential Election ended with Fumio Kishida defeating Taro Kono in the final round to become the LDP President and then Prime Minister of Japan, succeeding Yoshihide Suga, who stepped down amidst mounting political challenges dealing with COVID and its economic consequences. This was a closer election than most other LDP Presidential elections with a great deal of intrigue about how the publicly popular Kono might fare against Kishida, who the senior LDP leadership preferred. What does this election process tell us about Japanese politics today, and how will LDP fare in the upcoming House of Representatives Election? Will Kishida last longer than Suga as Prime Minister, and what do opposition parties have to do to stop the dominant LDP to change Japanese politics? In this webinar, two leading experts on the topic, Rieko Kage (University of Tokyo) and Dan Smith (Columbia University), address these questions, moderated by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program.

Panelists

Rieko Kage is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tokyo.  She graduated from the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University and earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University.  She is the author of Civic Engagement in Postwar Japan (2011) and Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe (2010), both of which have been published from Cambridge University Press, and she has published broadly on issues relating to judicial politics, political participation, and public opinion.  Her most recent article, "War, Democratization, and Generational Cohort Effects on Participation in Japan" is forthcoming from Electoral Studies.

 

 

 

Daniel M. Smith is the Gerald L. Curtis Visiting Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2018), and numerous articles on Japanese politics, party politics, and elections. He is also a co-editor of the Japan Decides election series. From 2012 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University.

 

 

 

 

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021). 

All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. This event is part of the year-long initiative on “Ethics & Political Violence” jointly organized by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. This event is hosted by CISAC and is co-sponsored by McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

                                                                                           

 

Seminar Recording

About the Event: We consider how the U.S. news media reports on international affairs. Analyzing ≈40 million news articles published between 2010 and 2020, we explore whether the American news media report differently on various international affairs topics based on partisan leanings. We then analyze ≈25 million articles published by top online news sites to determine whether collective reporting shows disparities between the level of attention afforded major global issues and objective measures of their human costs (e.g. numbers of individuals killed). We find that left- and right-leaning news outlets tend to report on international affairs at similar rates but differ significantly in their likelihood of referencing particular issues. We find further strong evidence that the frequency of reporting on the international issues we study tracks only modestly with their associated human costs. Given evidence U.S. public and policymakers dependence on news reports for foreign affairs information, our findings raise fundamental questions about the influence of these reporting biases.

Draft Paper

 

About the Speakers: Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. He is a CISAC affiliate and a former postdoctoral research fellow within Stanford’s political science department. He is the founding director of the Political Violence Lab and focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict. His research appears in outlets including the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Journal of Politics. Dr. Shaver has served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government. He completed his PhD in Public Affairs at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.

Amarpreet Kaur is a recent graduate of University of California, Merced with a bachelor in Public Health and a minor in Political science. Kaur has been working the lab for a year under the guidance of Professor Shaver. Kaur has aspirations to go on and get a PhD in Health Policy.

Robert Kraemer is a graduate student of data science at the University of Denver. Prior to this, Kraemer earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has been working in the Political Violence Lab with Professor Shaver for over a year, developing his research and analytic skills.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

                      

About the Event: How do rising powers like China manage to build power in international systems dominated by one or more established great powers? International relations theory provides some answers, but most assume emulation of successful approaches. This paper leverages the established business literature on how new companies gain market share in markets dominated by established companies to develop a new theory of power accumulation. I argue that only under very narrow circumstances can rising powers build power and influence through emulation. Instead, China has built enough power over the past 25 years to be considered a great power competitor by doing things differently. Specifically, it exploits US blind spots, maneuvers in areas of strategic uncertainty and engages in entrepreneurial actions. I demonstrate that Chinese military strategy exhibits these components in its responses to key pillars of US foreign policy strategy like global power projection, foreign military intervention, and in conventional and nuclear posture decisions. The findings have significant implications for great power competition as well as for power transition theory.

 

About the Speaker: Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow. She continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019) won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found on twitter @osmastro and www.orianaskylarmastro.com.

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

                                                                                           

 

Seminar Recording

About the Event: There is never a good time for a pandemic but Covid-19 may have hit at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions heightened—not just between China and the United States but also within the west; and the very notion of an objective truth was increasingly called into question. In Aftershocks, Colin Kahl and Tom Wright draw on interviews with officials from around the world to document how the world responded, or failed to respond, to a global crisis in an age of rivalry and nationalism. They shed new light on China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, how the Trump administration failed to rally an international coalition to deal with the pandemic, how Covid-19 brought the EU close to collapse, the role of central banks in averting a financial crisis, and the impact on the developing world. They also provide a pathway for how the world can prepare for the next pandemic. 

Purchase Book

 

About the Speaker: Thomas Wright is the Director for the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Strategy, Security, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a non-resident senior fellow at the Lowy Institute. His latest book, co-authored with Colin Kahl, is Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (St Martin’s Press, 2021). He is also the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21^st Century and the Future of American Power (Yale University Press 2017).

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

 

Seminar Recording                                                                                           

 

About the Event: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 to provide scientific background for the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, it has released six major assessment reports. The Sixth Assessment, released in August 2021, prompted the UN Secretary-General to call it a “code red for humanity.”

As one of 234 Lead Authors of the IPCC Sixth Assessment’s physical science report, I will present some of its main conclusions. We’ll dive below the level of headline statements to examine some major scientific innovations since the last IPCC report in 2013. I’ll talk about my personal experience of the 3-year assessment process, including the most intensive peer review in the history of science; here I will also talk about the significance and the future of peer review in general. Finally, I’ll showcase some tools this new report provides for policy analysis at the regional scale, and discuss its implications for international and global security.

 

About the Speaker: Paul N. Edwards is William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Stanford University. and Professor of Information and History (Emeritus) at the University of Michigan. Edwards is the author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010), The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996) and co-editor of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001), as well as other books and numerous articles. He edits the MIT Press book series, Infrastructures, and co-directs the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. Edwards served as one of 234 lead authors for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group I), released in August 2021.