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.
Justice Sachs will deliver the keynote address for Summer Session's Human Rights Intensive in CEMEX Auditorium on Wednesday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m. A courageous anti-apartheid campaigner in South Africa, Justice Sachs's talk is entitled: HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICA TODAY.
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.
This event is free and open to the public
CEMEX Auditorium
Knight Management Center
Albie Sachs
Former Judge in Constitutional Court in South Africa
Speaker
Amy Zegart, one of the nation’s leading experts on national security, intelligence and foreign policy, has been appointed the next co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Zegart, a CISAC faculty member and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, will take up her new role July 1. She succeeds Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was named director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, CISAC’s parent organization.
“Amy Zegart is an award-winning scholar, an accomplished professional with public and private sector experience, and a trusted voice on national security and foreign policy,” said Cuéllar. “Her multi-disciplinary scholarship, diverse experiences, and commitment to getting it right will complement the Freeman Spogli Institute's growing focus on governance problems, and will make her a dynamic leader for CISAC as the center continues its vital work on international cooperation and security.”
Zegart, once named one of the 10 most influential experts in intelligence reform by the National Journal, said she intends to continue expanding the center’s focus on emerging security issues, such as cybersecurity, drones and challenges to governance while building on CISAC’s distinguished reputation in nuclear security.
“The international threat environment is changing faster and in more profound ways than anyone could have imagined 10 or 20 years ago,” said Zegart, who is also a professor of political economy (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she co-teaches a course on managing political risk with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“CISAC will continue to be at the forefront of addressing these new challenges with the same secret sauce it’s had since its founding in 1983: world class talent; a commitment to teaching the next generation; and a deep belief that bridging the natural and social sciences is vital to solving the world’s most dangerous problems,” she said.
CISAC, more than any other institution, provided a scholarly environment that was intellectually challenging and personally supportive at the same time. That’s quite a rare cultural combination."
Zegart’s research examines the organization of American national security agencies and their effectiveness. She served on the Clinton administration's National Security Council staff and as a foreign policy adviser to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. She has testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, provided training to the Marine Corps, and advised officials on intelligence and homeland security matters. From 2009 to 2011 she served on the National Academies of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis. Her commentary has been featured on national television and radio shows and in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
Zegart writes regular commentary for Foreign Policy about national security issues. In this excerpt from one of those posts about the privatization of American intelligence and the growing businesses of political risk management, her approach accentuates her ability to bring complex issues to a general audience:
In the old days, the ‘free world’ and ‘Soviet bloc’ were two different universes. Not anymore. Now everything is connected. Sweden’s Ikea has stores in Russia. My CIA alarm clock was made in China. Unrest in Cairo can cause legging shortages in California. And communications happen everywhere. Wifi can be found in Bedouin tents, on the top of Mount Everest, and on buses in rural Rwanda. Kenyan fisherman may lack electricity, but they can check weather conditions and fish market prices on their cell phones. All of this connectedness means that political risks – civil strife, instability, insurgency, coups, weak legal standards, corruption – have more spillover effects. What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.
Zegart recalls being fascinated with politics since she was a kid. She spent her childhood tracking election night tallies and writing her congressman. When she was 13, she followed on TV the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s historic visit to the United States in 1979 and was thrilled when he donned a cowboy hat at a Texas rodeo.
“I was enthralled,” Zegart said. “My mother, an antique dealer who can find anyone and anything, tracked down a local Taiwanese graduate student and convinced her to teach me Mandarin after school.”
She would continue studying Chinese at Andover, majored in East Asian Studies at Harvard, and would win a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to China and study the 1989 Chinese democracy movement and Tiananmen Square tragedy. Zegart then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford and became a full professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs as well as a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations.
Zegart notes she’s been connected to CISAC for more than two decades. She first showed up at the center’s former Galvez House headquarters during her first quarter as a Stanford graduate student. She kept coming back even after she got her Ph.D.; both of her award-winning books were germinated in presentations she gave to CISAC seminars.
“CISAC, more than any other institution, provided a scholarly environment that was intellectually challenging and personally supportive at the same time,” Zegart said. “That’s quite a rare cultural combination.”
This academic year, she co-taught with Martha Crenshaw the popular CISAC-sponsored class International Security in a Changing World, which culminates in a U.N. Security Council simulation in which students debate a pressing global issue.
CISAC has a tradition of appointing co-directors – one from the social sciences and the other from the natural sciences – to advance the center’s interdisciplinary mission to conduct and promote cutting-edge research to make the world a safer place.
“Amy brings to CISAC a wealth of expertise in international security issues, a deep commitment to scholarship and a sincere desire to strengthen and expand the center’s activities and impact,” said David Relman, CISAC’s other co-director, a Stanford microbiologist and professor of infectious diseases, as well as expert on emerging biological threats. “We share an interest in emerging technologies and the effective international mechanisms that address 21st century challenges and threats.”
Zegart is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design, which chronicles the development of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Council, won the highest national dissertation award in political science. Spying Blind, which examines why American intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the terrorist threat before 9/11, won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading academic journals. She serves on the editorial boards of Terrorism and Political Violence and Intelligence and National Security. Her most recent book is Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community.
Before her academic career, Zegart spent three years at McKinsey & Company advising Fortune 100 companies about strategy and organizational effectiveness.
She serves on the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association National Advisory Board and the Los Angeles Police Department’s Counter-terrorism and Community Police Advisory Board and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Sustainability Science Award Subcommittee was unanimous in its recommendation that the Seeds of Sustainability team of authors (which included seven FSE affiliates) receive this year's award, citing the following:
Seeds of Sustainability tackles a central challenge of sustainable development: agricultural modernization. It is cutting edge not because the issue itself is new, but rather the level of integration the authors attempted and the innovative process they used. The volume summarizes the findings and reflects on the process of a highly interdisciplinary team of researchers, integrating perspectives from: biogeochemistry, atmospheric sciences, land-use change, institutions, agronomy, economics, and knowledge systems. The foundation of the work is rigorous, grounding its findings in multiple peer reviewed publications, while not hesitating to point out gaps or unresolved issues. Seeds of Sustainability includes an in depth historical analysis, which captures issues of path dependence. It demonstrates both originality and critical reflectiveness in its efforts to engage practitioners in the conceptualization and execution of its research, and the implementation of its findings. And almost uniquely in our collective experience, it speaks seriously, frankly, and insightfully to the challenges of institutionalizing the sort of work it reports on.
Barry Weingast will present findings from a paper he co-authored with Douglass C. North from Washington University and Gary W. Cox from Stanford University. "The Violence Trap: A Political-Economic Approach to the Problems of Development" examines the problems of development – with a billion people mired in poverty and governments resistant to economic reform – economists and political scientists have proposed a wide range of development or poverty traps: self-reinforcing mechanisms that prevent developing countries from embarking on the path of steady development.
Please see attached paper.
Speaker Bio:
Barry R. Weingast is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; he served as chair of that department from 1996 to 2001. Weingast is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has written extensively on problems of political economy of development, federalism, legal institutions and the rule of law, and democracy. He is co-author of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (with Douglass North and John Wallis, 2009, Cambridge University Press); editor (with Donald Wittman) The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2006); and author (with Douglass North) of "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England" Journal of Economic History (1989). He has won numerous awards, including the William Riker Prize for scholarly achievement in political science; the James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics; the Distinguished Scholar Award in Public Policy, Martin School of Public Policy, University of Kentucky, and the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award (with Kenneth Schultz: the American Political Science Association’s prize for the best paper at the annual meetings).
Previous estimates of the land area available for future cropland expansion relied on global-scale climate, soil and terrain data. They did not include a range of constraints and tradeoffs associated with land conversion. As a result, estimates of the global land reserve have been high. Here we adjust these estimates for the aforementioned constraints and tradeoffs. We define potentially available cropland as the moderately to highly productive land that could be used in the coming years for rainfed farming, with low to moderate capital investments, and that is not under intact mature forests, legally protected, or already intensively managed. This productive land is underutilized rather than unused as it has ecological or social functions. We also define potentially available cropland that accounts for trade-offs between gains in agricultural production and losses in ecosystem and social services from intensified agriculture, to include only the potentially available cropland that would entail low ecological and social costs with conversion to cropland. In contrast to previous studies, we adopt a “bottom-up” approach by analyzing detailed, fine scale observations with expert knowledge for six countries or regions that are often assumed to include most of potentially available cropland. We conclude first that there is substantially less potential additional cropland than is generally assumed once constraints and trade offs are taken into account, and secondly that converting land is always associated with significant social and ecological costs. Future expansion of agricultural production will encounter a complex landscape of competing demands and tradeoffs.
On May 23, FSE hosted its final symposium of a two-year series on global food policy and food security in the 21st century. The series was designed to look at the growing nexus of food, water and energy and to understand the disparities in agricultural productivity amongst developed and developing countries. What lessons can be learned from history, and how can these be applied to inform an effective and sustainable effort to eliminate food insecurity in sub-Saharan Asia and South Asia?
FSE thanks the series participants and funder, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This summer FSE will be publishing a synthesis volume as a final product of the series. Past talks and papers are available for download on the FSE website. We hope you enjoyed the series!
Food and water security in sub-Saharan Africa remain a challenge despite the region’s abundance of arable land and untapped water resources. In FSE’s final global food policy and food security symposium, water expert John Briscoe drew upon his many years of international field experience (including a 20-year career at the World Bank) to deliver a personal assessment of the issues facing Africa and suggestions for the way forward.
Improvements in infrastructure, agricultural productivity and investment are crucial for tapping Africa’s agricultural and development potential. And middle-income countries, such as Brazil, may have the most lessons to share.
Dams and the quest for water security
“Africa’s infrastructure is lousy,” said Briscoe, an environmental engineer and director of Harvard’s Water Security Initiative. “Crumbling roads, patchy supplies of electricity, and inadequate water storage are some of Africa’s biggest impediments to growth.”
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Sub-Saharan Africa has tremendous surface and groundwater resources, yet only 4 to 5 percent of cultivated land is irrigated. Most agricultural land relies on rainfall and is often limited to a three to six month rainy season. For many countries in Africa, economic growth and rainfall are closely linked.
Africa has the potential to irrigate an additional 20 million hectares of land, but building that infrastructure is expensive and finding funding has become more difficult. Historically, the World Bank and wealthy countries like the United States have helped. But funding dams is now unpopular.
Meanwhile, middle-income countries - such as Brazil, India and China - are building infrastructure for water-enabled growth, and are filling the funding gap left by rich countries. Whereas the World Bank now finances about five dams, the Chinese finance over 300 dams outside of China in the developing world.
Sub-Saharan Africa has benefited from some of these projects, but still contends with an international NGO and donor community resistant to dam development.
Big is beautiful – the case of Brazil
“Africa must increase its agricultural productivity, and a romantic emphasis on small, local, organic farming is not going to get it there,” said Briscoe.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural growth rate remains very low. In some countries, yields for staple crops like maize are actually falling. A deficit in knowledge to increase agricultural productivity is part of the problem.
Briscoe shared a telling observation of a Ghanaian CEO of a multinational company: ‘Once the best and the brightest Ghanaians went into engineering. Now they become anthropologists because NGOs dominate the job market and this is the skill they want.’
Briscoe pointed to Brazil as a compelling case for greater investment in agriculture and agricultural research. Between 1985 and 2006, Brazilian agricultural production grew by 77 percent.
“Much of this growth did not come from cutting down the Amazon, but by doing things smarter than it did before,” said Briscoe. “Over the last 30 years, through financial crises and changing political parties, Brazil sustained public investment in agricultural research.”
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Better farming practices led to improved soil quality, high yielding grasslands, and the transformation of soybeans into a tropical crop. Brazil is now the largest exporter of soybeans.
Additionally, Brazil pioneered the use of “no-till” agriculture, now practiced by over 50 percent of its farmers. The culmination of these activities increased productivity while farming more sustainably.
An important contribution to Brazil’s productivity has been its utilization of genetically modified crops. Brazil chose not to eulogize the “small and organic” philosophy of many NGOs, but embraced new technology. Middle-income countries are currently eight of the 10 largest users of GMOs.
Brazil was also pragmatic when it came to scale. Brazilian farms are large. Thirty percent are large commercial operations producing 76 percent of the country’s output. Many environmentalists and small farmers perceived large agrobusiness as the enemy, but these large enterprises were also the grey geese laying the golden eggs for the country.
Understanding that there are no silver-bullet solutions, the Brazilian government sought innovative ways to support smaller farmers. For example, concessions for a large irrigation project in the Pontal were awarded to agribusiness operators that integrated at least 25 percent of irrigable land to small farmers as part of the company’s production chain.
Sugarcane
By 2009, Brazil had become the world’s number one exporter of orange juice, sugar, chicken, coffee, and beef.
“Brazil’s success did not happen over night,” said Briscoe. “African countries must be patient and persistent, particularly with respect to public investment in agricultural research…and pragmatic and realistic about scale.”
Role for foreign investors
In the face of low levels of public investment in agriculture and non-existent or shallow domestic capital markets, there is a role for foreign direct investment (FDI) to play. FDI projects, such as international land deals, can help create implementation capacity by bringing capital and know-how, creating employment and developing infrastructure.
“But it is easier said than done,” said Briscoe. “Foreign investors, including the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), have struggled in sub-Saharan Africa because farming is a complex business.”
Briscoe noted a shortage of indigenous entrepreneurs, the small size of potential investments, and lack of access to markets have constrained IFC engagement and performance in sub-Saharan Africa.
While there are no shortcuts for Africa, Briscoe insisted optimism and a determination to move faster are needed. Africa must decide whether to follow the prescriptions of the advocacy community or, like Brazil, pursue an opposite strategy.
“Will Africa focus on its real problems, ‘the politics of the belly’?” asked Briscoe. “Or will it succumb again, to the western ‘politics of the mirror’?”
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
jbrunner@stanford.edu
PHR Assistant
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Following her undergraduate studies in journalism and Spanish at U.C. Berkeley, Brunner spent six years in the professional arena, first as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and then in public relations/marketing for two nonprofit organizations. She came to Stanford University this fall to undertake her master’s degree in international policy studies, concentrating in global justice. Her professional pursuits have long been coupled with passionate activism in the arenas of human rights advocacy, conflict resolution in Israel, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and poverty reduction. Brunner was an active participant in the winter quarter’s Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Speaker Series: The International Criminal Court: The Next Decade. Brunner recently returned from a study trip to Rwanda where she delved into issues of human rights, governance, and economic development through meetings with government officials, NGOs, and the business community.
Despite hundreds of aboveground nuclear tests, the effects of a ground-level, low-yield nuclear detonation in a modern urban environment remain the subject of scientific debate. In support of the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Office of Health Affairs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has provided detailed consequence modeling in support community preparedness activities. Details on effects specific to several cities was provided to that community's emergency response personal and managers. Block by block detailed analysis of observable effects, potential casualties, infrastructure effects, and response issues. Additionally, visualization aids for response organizations trying to understand the event was requested and developed at the community's request. These products provide first person points of view and described the dynamic nature of the event as it changes in both time and space and have greatly enhanced Federal, State, and local planning efforts.
Brooke Buddemeier is an associate program leader in the Global Security Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He supports the Risk and Consequence Management Division in their efforts to evaluate the potential risk and consequence of radiological and nuclear terrorism. Brooke is a council member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) and served on the scientific committees which developed Commentary No. 19 - Key Elements of Preparing Emergency Responders for Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism (2005) and NCRP Report # 165 – Responding to a Radiological or Nuclear Terrorism Incident: A Guide for Decision Makers (2010).
From 2003 through 2007, Brooke was on assignment with the Department of Homeland Security’s as the WMD emergency response and consequence management program manager for Science and Technology’s emergency preparedness and response portfolio. He supported FEMA and the Homeland Security Operations Center as a radiological emergency response subject matter expert. He also facilitated the department’s research, development, test, and evaluation process to improve emergency response through better capabilities, protocols, and standards. Prior to that, he was part of LLNL’s Nuclear Counterterrorism Program and coordinated LLNL’s involvement in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Radiological Assistance Program for California, Nevada, and Hawaii. RAP is a national emergency response resource that assists federal, state and local authorities in the event of a radiological incident. As part of RAP’s outreach efforts, Brooke has provided radiological responder training and instrumentation workshops to police, firefighters, and members of other agencies throughout the nation and abroad. Brooke has also provided operational health physics support for various radiochemistry, plutonium handling, accelerator, and dosimetry operations.
He is Certified Health Physicist who received his Master’s in Radiological Health Physics from San Jose State University and his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
CISAC Conference Room
Brooke R. Buddemeier
Associate Program Leader, Global Security Directorate
Speaker
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Stanford's Karl Eikenberry and David Kennedy discuss the implications of America's switch to an all-volunteer force. The consequences go beyond the military itself, impacting Congress, Presidents, and the general public. They conclude that the growing civil-military divide threatens the health of the American democracy.
Sugarcane
