FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
Does India have what it takes to be a military player in Asia?
CISAC Fellow Vipin Narang and Paul Staniland are doubtful; India's bureaucracy and domestic politics overshadow its ambitions.
CISAC Co-Director Tino Cuéllar talks about how borders shape our society and how they impacted a young boy who was born just a few blocks from the U.S. border-- himself.
Human exposure to lead in the environment causes irreversible impairment of intellectual function. In Bangladesh, where some rural residents have unexpectedly high levels of lead in their blood, the source is proving difficult to pinpoint. This project will evaluate the severity of lead poisoning in rural Bangladesh and identify the pathway of exposure to help develop focused prevention strategies.
The Europe Center's 2-day multidisciplinary dialogue on migration -- the subject of great and growing consequence in the contemporary world. Conference participants from a wide range of theoretical, case-study, and comparative approaches will address the phenomenon of population movement and the experience of migration in its various qualities.
The agenda for this conference is below.
Co-sponsored by the University of Vienna, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Bechtel Conference Center
SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson recently joined a panel of experts for a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference on managing tensions in the South China Sea.
CISAC Faculty Member and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry tells the story of how he became a nuclear weapons abolitionist. He recounts six personal experiences that led him to turn away from his lifelong career of developing and managing nuclear weapons, and pursue the goal of eliminating them.
Haifa, the so-called "mixed city" of Jews and Arabs during the British Mandate period, also called the city of "co-existence" in the minds of its Jewish residents today, this city real and imagined will be the focus of this lecture, which suggests an archeology of memory of a conflict which is over and a conflict which still lingers.
Yfaat Weiss is professor in the department of the History of the Jewish People and Head of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of various studies on German and Central European History, as well as on Jewish and Israeli History.
Philippines Conference Room
On June 6, the National Security Agency acknowledged the existence of a massive public surveillance program, called PRISM. Dan Auerbach, Jonathan Mayer, and Peter Eckersley pose three important questions necessary to understand the scope of the program and have an informed policy debate about security vs. privacy.
The event will be a dialogue with Justice Sachs about contemporary human rights challenges in South Sfrica and the role South Africa plays in the region. It will be moderated by David Palumbo- Liu, professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and Tim Stanton, director of the Overses Studies Program at Stanford University will be a discussant.
Sachs will also be offering guest lectures in Professor Helen Stacy’s course, INTNLREL 144: New Global Human Rights, and ANTHRO 125S: International Criminal Courts and the Question of Global Justice with Professor Ron Jennings. Sachs is further available – and eager – to speak with interested students and faculty throughout his visit. Interested parties should contact Jessica Matthews at jess.matthews@stanford.edu.
Albert Sachs’s career in human rights activism started when he was 17 years old, continuing through college and into his law practice in Cape Town. In defending people charged under the state’s racist statutes, he attracted the displeasure of authorities and was initially subjected to “banning laws” restricting his activities, then arrested, and finally put into solitary confinement. Upon release from prison, he went into voluntary exile but never discontinued his human rights work. In 1988 in Mozambique, Sachs lost his arm and the sight of one eye when a bomb placed under his car by South African security agents exploded, but emerged from the ordeal with renewed idealism for his cause and what he describes as simple joy at being alive.
In 1990, Sachs returned to South Africa, where he worked to draft the constitution for the newly democratic country. In 1994, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court, where he served as judge until 2009, writing decisions that changed the face of human rights in South Africa, including a decision against the death penalty in 1995, a decision in favor of same-sex marriage in 2005, and several significant decisions about health care, access to clean water, housing and infrastructure.
He is the author of Soft Vengence of a Freedom Fighter, wich chronicles his response tothe 1988 car bombing, and five other books including The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, which was dramatized for the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast by the BBC.
CISAC Conference Room