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.
This project seeks to promote the collaboration between the Center for Latin American Studies and the Program on Human Rights in conducting an interdisciplinary faculty/graduate student research that seeks to better understand the human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America.
In Western scholarship, governance is equated with democracy, and its institutional attributes of transparency and accountability. The apparent effectiveness of the Chinese state is thus an enigma. Are the Chinese able to control corruption better than in other developing countries? How responsive is the state to the demands and concerns of citizens? In what ways do the quality of state institutions vary across governmental levels, policy areas, and regions?
The purpose of the workshops is to bring together a group of Chinese and Western academics and experts who have done empirical research on how Chinese government works to address these and other questions on governance in China.
Sonoma, CA
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
In Western scholarship, governance is equated with democracy, and its institutional attributes of transparency and accountability. The apparent effectiveness of the Chinese state is thus an enigma. Are the Chinese able to control corruption better than in other developing countries? How responsive is the state to the demands and concerns of citizens? In what ways do the quality of state institutions vary across governmental levels, policy areas, and regions?
The purpose of these workshops is to bring together a group of Chinese and Western academics and experts who have done empirical research on how Chinese government works to address these and other questions on governance in China.
Stanford Center at Peking University
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
On May 7, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted Egyptian activist Ahmed Salah who spoke about the series of events that led up to the Egyptian revolution and the current struggles the country faces in realizing its revolutionary goals. Salah, an alumni of the 2011 Draper Hills Summer Fellowship at CDDRL, has been at the forefront of the revolutionary movement in Egypt. He has been involved in the launch of opposition groups and movements since 2005, including the April 6 Youth Movement and Kifaya (Enough!), both of which played roles in organizing and mobilizing the forces behind the revolution.
Salah returned to Stanford as part of a larger speaking tour across the U.S., to raise awareness and support for the democratic development of Egypt. With the military undermining the goals of the revolution, the constitution-writing process stalled, and a rush towards presidential elections, Salah emphasized the critical moment Egypt faces in its transition towards democracy.
Forced into exiled for his activism, Salah has sought temporary refuge in the U.S. and is dedicating his time to building awareness and advocacy for his cause through the Coalition of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in Washington D.C. and beyond.
Addressing the CDDRL seminar, Salah recalled the defining moments of the January revolution, “Getting into Tahrir in the morning, the stench of tear gas was so strong, all these burning vehicles and buildings all around - blood - pools of blood in different locations, and protestors were coming in, again.”
Salah was instrumental in co-devising and implementing the plan leading up to the revolution and has been subject to arrest, incarceration, and abuse as a result of his actions. He described being beaten and his nose broken when a gang of thugs surrounded him in Tahrir Square, and another incident when he was targeted by a sniper firing into a crowd of protestors. He escaped with his life but was not as lucky as thousands of other activists.
As the country faces a crucial period of political transition with presidential elections approaching, Salah emphasized the fact that candidates have not had enough time to campaign, leaving voters with an incomplete picture of the competing platforms. He cited examples of direct vote rigging and manipulation in the parliamentary elections and stressed the importance of ensuring a transparent process when electing Egypt's first post-revolutionary president. While Salah recognizes the shortcomings of the transition period, he endeavors to ensure that the goals of the revolution and the activists who made great sacrifices are fully realized in the long-run.
The president, surrounded by his Cabinet members and senior national security and foreign policy advisors, appears grim as he declares: “This is certainly the greatest crisis I’ve ever faced as a president.”
He has ordered the deployment of U.S. forces into Syrian territory to protect civilians and establish safe zones. His Cabinet must now determine whether to order a pre-emptive strike against Syrian troops on word from the CIA that the Bashar al-Assad regime appears ready to use chemical and biological weapons stored in underground bunkers east of Damascus.
After a military briefing by the commander of CENTCOM, the president cautions those assembled at the classified briefing: “Remember, history will judge us, in part, by how thoroughly we discuss all the options today.”
With imagined top-secret memorandums from the CIA and the White House – as well as the real-deal Obama Nuclear Posture Review – some 20 Stanford undergraduate and law students dressed in suits and armed with laptops and position papers spend three hours debating the merits of an attack on Syrian forces.
Scott Sagan, a political science professor and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), plays Obama in the class co-taught by Allen Weiner, director of the Center on International Conflict and Negotiation at the Law School.
The Ethics and Law of War class presents law and political science students with some of the political, legal and moral consequences of war. For their final simulation, they must stay in character, grill one another as policymakers and world leaders might do behind closed doors – and then defend their final decisions.
“Instead of simply learning abstract just-war theory or international law doctrine, the simulations encourage students to apply what they've learned to real problems,” says Weiner, once a legal adviser at the State Department. “This provides for much deeper awareness of the subject matter and richer appreciation of the nuances and complexities.
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| Scott Sagan as President Obama |
Ethics & War
The class grew out of Stanford’s hugely successful, two-year War & Ethics lecture series, which concluded last month. Philosophers, writers, journalists, historians, social scientists, human rights activists and policy makers came together several times a month to grapple with the complex ethical equations of war. Co-sponsored by a dozen centers and departments across campus, the series drew big names and big crowds.
Vietnam War veterans and award winning authors Tobias Wolff – a Stanford English professor – and Tim O’Brien told a sold-out audience that writing about war was both therapeutic and heartbreaking. O’Brien was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for “The Things They Carried,” a harrowing string of stories about a platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam.
How do you write about war? “You do it sentence by sentence, line by line, character by character, even syllable by syllable,’ O’Brien told a mesmerized audience. “You dive into that wreck and try to salvage something.”
Journalist Sebastian Junger spoke at the screening of “Restrepo,” his documentary about the Afghanistan War. Stanford students and faculty performed in George Packer’s play, “Betrayed,” which illuminated the U.S. abandonment of young Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives for Washington during the Iraq War. For the final event, Debra Satz, a philosophy professor and director of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Sagan, and Charles Dunlap, a retired Air Force general who now leads the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University, debated the future ethical challenges of war.
Sagan, an expert in nuclear policy and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction who worked at the Pentagon and was a consultant to the Secretary of Defense, said the lecture series enriched his students by forcing them to pay attention and question the moral and legal underpinnings of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I was stretched, intellectually, by this series,” he said. “It encouraged me to read and discuss both fiction and philosophy that raises the same ethical issues – from a very different perspective – that we analyze in political science.”
Back to class
Weiner, as stand-in for Vice President Joe Biden, tells those assembled they must consider that within 24 hours, 6,000 American troops will be in danger. The CIA has a “high degree of confidence” that Assad has ordered the removal of the chemical weapons from the underground bunkers and transport trucks have been spotted at the sights.
“As we head into an election cycle, the difficulties of the decision that we make today will be placed under even greater scrutiny,” Weiner says.
That decision will be to make one of these hard choices:
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| U.S. Army Col. Viet Luong as CENTCOM Commander Gen. James Mattis |
The students know Americans are weary of war after the WMD fiasco in Iraq and a decade-long war in Afghanistan, both of which have claimed countless lives and a trillion-plus in taxpayer dollars. Their decision – as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, among others – is weighted by the concern that Americans likely won’t re-elect a president who drags them into another costly warm, and by the fear that a successful president cannot let American troops be exposed to deadly chemical attacks.
The mock military briefing by Gen. James Mattis – played by visiting CISAC military fellow, U.S. Army Col. Viet Luong, himself a commander in Afghanistan – lays out the risks and probabilities of casualties under each scenario.
A student asks Luong which military option he would recommend.
The general prevaricates: “I’m a military guy; I tend to lean toward success and then I also consider civilian casualties. But I’m also very concerned about putting my soldiers at risk.”
Clinton, voiced by international policy student Micaela Hellman-Tincher, says she’s concerned about mission creep. “Consider the international implications of us entering into conflict,” she says.
The fake Samantha Power of the National Security Council, played by Ashley Rhoades, urges diplomatic measures and a stand-down from military conflict. “I’m not advocating in any way for inaction,” she says. “There are several diplomatic solutions. We ask that you give us 24 hours to be able to work on these diplomatic options and multilateral diplomacy.”
Such as what? Such as calling on Moscow to mediate or seeking a U.N. envoy.
The legal team from the law school lays out their arguments for why a preventive strike would be illegal under certain conventions; while a pre-emptive strike based on imminent and unavoidable threats of attack might be permissible.
Then Stanford law student Alex Weber – playing Avril Haines, legal advisor to the National Security Council – addresses the elephant in the room: the nuclear option.
“If you use a nuclear weapon, regardless of whether the Syrians use chemical weapons against our troops, you are, as Colin Powell said in the 1991 Gulf War, opening a Pandora’s Box, particularly because Syria has no nuclear weapon,” Weber says. “You are the nuclear nonproliferation president. There is a psychological button that you push that will prompt the media to take the ethical debate to new levels.”
In the end, consensus appears to be growing around an immediate preventive strike against the storage bunkers using conventional forces. The Cabinet knows this could lead to deaths on both sides, but allowing the Syrians to use chemical weapons could lead to even more.
“You can’t cut and run, Mr. President,” insists student Torry Castellano, playing White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew.
Obama says he will take their advice under advisement and all rise as he leaves the war room.
More photos of the student simulation are available at CISAC's Facebook page.
This research area explores the national and international land and water laws that govern land tenure and property rights in sub-Saharan African countries, with the aim of understanding how large-scale land investments influence the tenure security, and therefore food security, of local farmers. The World Bank and others have identified a large agro-ecological region of African known as the Guinea Savannah as well-positioned for major agricultural development.
In a special edition of Elements journal that covered the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, CISAC Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Edward Blandford and Joonhong Ahn outline the factors that led to the meltdown: site selection, hazard assessment and site preparation, approaches to managing risk, and reactor design. The paper analyzes how the earthquake and tsunami unleashed a chain of events that eventually led to the meltdown and release of radioactive material.
Blandford and May review the major lessons learned from nuclear power accidents, and assess the impact those lessons have had on nuclear power, specifically, which measures were put into place to prevent similar accidents from occurring. They then make observations and recommendations for future safety and security measures.
