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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. 

New Brookings-Stanford scholarly collaboration provides recommendations for Arab transitions

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce a joint venture with the Brookings Doha Center (BDC) to examine democratic transitions underway in the Arab world. The BDC-Stanford “Project on Arab Transitions” will engage both Arab and Western scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to generate comprehensive analysis and offer recommendations to help inform policymaking and development assistance in both the Arab world and the broader international community. The collaboration was born out of the need to generate cross-regional scholarship and address the ongoing transitions in a more systematic manner.

“This partnership brings together the complementary strengths of two great institutions to generate original scholarship that unites the scholarly and policy worlds during a critical period of transition underway in the Arab world," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "We are hopeful that it will provide guidance to the international community and Arab governments as they work to build democratic institutions in post-revolutionary societies."

The BDC-Stanford scholarly collaboration seeks to provide concrete and practical recommendations to Arab governments and the international policy community. The series of policy papers produced will analyze and illuminate the key issues facing the transition period, including electoral design, constitution-drafting, political party development, and national dialogue processes.

“We are excited to be working with a top university like Stanford University to produce cutting-edge research on the critical issues facing transitional countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya,” said Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center. “This will be a vital addition to the literature surrounding these transitions and policymakers’ understanding of them.”

The first paper in the BDC-Stanford Project on Arab Transitions series released today is authored Dr. Tamir Moustafa of Simon Fraser University in Canada and author of The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt. Using Egypt as a case study, Moustafa highlights the deficiencies of the constitution-writing process to serve as an example to other Arab countries as they embark on their own national projects. In addition, Moustafa offers key recommendations to the international community, as well as to Egypt’s Constituent Assembly on the various statutes, provisions, and conditions that should be included in the document to ensure that human rights protections, judicial independence, and institutions of governance are enforced.

A forthcoming paper in the series will be authored by Ellen Lust from Yale University on the topic of electoral processes during democratic transition, drawing on recent experiences in Egypt and Tunisia.

For more information on The Project on Arab Transitions and the BDC-Stanford collaboration, please click here. 

 

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Some unexplored topics relating to cyber conflict

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About the topic: This talk will present four important but largely unexplored topics in regarding conflict in cyberspace – two in some detail and two in a passing mention. These include escalation dynamics, uncertainties in threat assessment, offensive cyber operations for the private sector, and attribution in practice.

About the Speaker: Herbert Lin is chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council of the National Academies, where he has been study director of major projects on public policy and information technology. Of particular note are two recent studies: a 2009 study on offensive information warfare (Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities), and a 2010 study on cyber deterrence (Proceedings of a Workshop on Deterring Cyberattacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options for U.S. Policy). Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT. 

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Herbert Lin Chief Scientist, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council of the National Academies Speaker
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Education Under Fire event

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Please join the Stanford Baha'i Club, in collaboration with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; the Center on Philanthrophy and Civil Society, Stanford Amnesty International, Stanford Six Degrees in defending Article 26 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on

Friday, April 6 from 7:00-9:00pm

We will be screening Education Under Fire, a moving documentary about this issue. Following the screening, we will be having a panel discussion.

Imagine you are sitting in class at Stanford University when armed guards come into the classroom and arrest everyone in your class. Your professor is sentenced to five years in prison; you are expelled not only from Stanford, but from any institution of higher education in the country. Your crime? Gaining a higher education. Your professor’s crime? Providing higher education. Fortunately, this is not happening today at Stanford, but it is happening right now to many young people in Iran.

Since its inception, the Baha’i community of Iran has been suffering different forms of human rights violations, from intense persecution to being denied employment, the ability to bury their dead, access to higher education. Their crime? Being a Baha’i. The Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was founded in 1987 in response to the Iranian government's continuing campaign to deny Iranian Bahá'ís access to higher education. The need to create a new university for those who were denied access to higher education captivated the talents and minds of exceptional faculty and staff from within Iran and abroad. For twenty years they have dedicated their efforts to building an exemplary institution and cultivating a student body prepared for fulfilling careers, future study, and social responsibility. But this has come with constant struggles and limited resources. In May 2011, the government launched a coordinated attack against the BIHE–raiding dozens of homes, confiscating computers and materials and detaining eighteen professors and administrators. Seven of those arrested received four or five-year prison terms. Their only crime: educating the youth in their community.

We also have a facebook event here - http://www.facebook.com/events/291432670928509/

  
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Conferences

Institution-building in Hard Places: Challenges, Contexts, Pathways

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Abstract: 

This talk draws on case study evidence from Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies to reflect on some current theories about building accountable government.  The focus is on settings where geography, insecurity, and limited resources render conventional management strategies unworkable.

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer Widner is professor of politics and international affairs and director of the Mamdouha S.Bobst Center for Peace & Justice at Princeton University. She runs a research program on institution building and institutional reform called Innovations for Successful Societies, a joint initiative of the Bobst Center and  the Woodrow Wilson School. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2004-5, she taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan.  Her current research focuses on the political economy of institutional reform, government accountability, and service delivery.  She also remains interested in constitution writing, constitutional design, and fair dealing—topics of earlier research. She is author of Building the Rule of Law (W. W. Norton), a study of courts and law in Africa, and she has published articles on a variety of topics in Democratization, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Development Studies, The William & Mary Law Review, Daedalus, the American Journal of International Law, and other publications.  She is completing work on a book about making government work in challenging settings, drawing on experiences in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America. 

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Jennifer Widner Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School Speaker Princeton University
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The United States and the Arab Awakening -- An Early Assessment

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Tamara Cofman Wittes, who helped manage the State Department's response to the Arab Awakening and now directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, will reflect on the US government's reactions to the dramatic change underway in the Arab world -- how the Obama Administration viewed the uprisings, and how its policy evolved over time as different cases emerged from Tunisia to Libya and Syria. What were the key concerns shaping the US policy response to events? How much difference did American policy make to outcomes on the ground? And, given the complex variety of outcomes now visible in the region, where is American policy toward Arab political change headed over time? 

Speaker Bio:

Tamara Cofman Wittes directs the Middle East Democracy and Development (MEDD) Project at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, a regional policy center at The Brookings Institution. The MEDD Project conducts research into political and economic reform in the region and US efforts to promote democracy there. It also hosts visiting fellows from the Middle East.


Before joining the Saban Center in December 2003, Dr. Wittes served as Middle East specialist at the US Institute of Peace and previously as director of programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington. She has also taught courses in International Relations and Security Studies at Georgetown University. Dr. Wittes was one of the first recipients of the Rabin-Peres Peace Award, established by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

 
Dr. Wittes’s latest book is Freedom’s Unsteady March: America’s Role in Building Arab Democracy (Brookings Press). She is also editor of How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process (USIP, 2005). Her recent work includes “What Price Freedom? Assessing the Bush Administration’s Freedom Agenda,” and “Back to Balancing in the Middle East,” co-authored with Martin Indyk.

 Her analyses of US democracy promotion, Arab politics, the Middle East peace process, and other policy topics have been published in the Washington Post, Policy Review, Political Science Quarterly, the American Interest, the Weekly Standard, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Dr. Wittes holds a B.A. in Judaic and Near Eastern Studies from Oberlin College; her M.A. and Ph.D. in Government are from Georgetown University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Tamara Wittes Director, Middle East Democracy and Development (MEDD) Project Speaker Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
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Democratic Transitions and Development in Africa: Beyond Prebendalist Systems

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Systemic corruption undermines state capacity, imperils socio-economic development, and diminishes democracy. In his Nairobi speech as a U.S. senator in August 2006, Barack Obama described the struggle to reduce corruption as "the fight of our time". An international conference in Lagos, Nigeria, in September 2011 was devoted to Richard Joseph's influential 1987 book, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic.Transforming prebendalist systems must be at the center of strategies to strengthen democracy and achieve poverty-reducing economic growth in Africa and other regions.

 Speaker Bio: 

Richard Joseph is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University and Non resident Senior Fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution. As a Fellow of The Carter Center, he participated in democracy and peace initiatives in Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Liberiaand Sudan. He has written extensively on issues of democracy, governance and political economy. His books include Radical Nationalism in Cameroun (1977), Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987) and edited books, Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978), State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (1999), and (with Alexandra Gillies), Smart Aid for African Development (2009). He served as Principal Investigator of the Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS (REACH), a collaborative program in Nigeria, 2006–2011. His current writing and policy projects concern growth, democracy and security. To address these issues, he is designing a collaborative project, AfricaPlus (http://africaplus.wordpress.com/), whose first focus country is Nigeria.

Here is the link to Richard Joseph remarks and the PowerPoint for the talk.

http://africaplus.wordpress.com/author/africaplus/

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Richard Joseph John Evans Professor of International History and Politics Speaker Northwestern University
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Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship program grows

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“A postdoctoral program is crucial to the intellectual development of any strong academic institution. I am proud the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center will serve as a home next year for these four talented emerging Asia scholars. Not only will they benefit from taking part in our vibrant research and publishing activities, but they will also bring new expertise and perspectives to our Center.”

-Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein APARC

 
In the coming academic year, the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship program will double in size.

The four incoming fellows represent the best of the next generation of contemporary Asia scholars. Their research ranges from civil society and authoritarian governance in China to ethnic conflict in South Asia, and Korean migration and identity to election politics in Japan.

During their time at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), the fellows will conduct their own research and writing, present their work at public seminars, and take part in the research and publishing activities of the Center. Postdoctoral fellows will also have the chance to exchange ideas with Shorenstein APARC experts and interact with the many distinguished visitors who visit each year from throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, the Asia Health Policy Program at Shorenstein APARC will welcome two postdoctoral fellows in the 2012–13 academic year: an Asia Health Policy Fellow and a Developing Asia Fellow.

Postdoctoral fellows are a vital part of the academic life of the Center, and their relationships with Shorenstein APARC will continue throughout their entire careers.

The Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is made possible through the generosity of Walter H. Shorenstein.

“This fellowship has changed the trajectory of my academic career. It has given me the intellectual space to be highly productive and the freedom to expand my understanding of world events in order to enhance my future teaching and research. Thanks in large part to the fellowship, I was able to obtain an appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Boston University.”

-Jeremy Menchik, 2011–12 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow


2012–13 Shorenstein PostDoctoral Fellows

Diana Fu

Diana Fu will be joining Shorenstein APARC from Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she recently served as a political science research fellow. Her research interests encompass state-society relations in authoritarian regimes, civil society, governance, and labor contention. She will be completing a series of journal articles about civil society and authoritarian governance in China. Fu holds an MPhil in international development from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in global studies and political science from the University of Minnesota.

Jaeeun Kim
Jaeeun Kim is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. She is interested in issues of identity within the context of international migration, which she explores in her dissertation Colonial Migration and Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea. She is also developing a project focusing on ethnic Korean migrants from northeast China to the United States, including issues such as legalization strategies and conversion patterns. Kim holds an MA and a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in law from Seoul National University.

Daniel M. Smith
Daniel M. Smith, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), is completing his dissertation on the causes and consequences of political dynasties in developed democracies, with particular focus on Japan. He has conducted research in Japan as a Japanese Ministry of Education research scholar (2006–2007), and as a Fulbright dissertation research fellow (2010–2011). Smith holds an MA in political science from UCSD, and a BA in political science and Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles. After completing his fellowship at Shorenstein APARC, he will join the Department of Government at Harvard University as an assistant professor.

Ajay Verghese
Ajay Verghese is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at The George Washington University. His work focuses on comparative politics and international relations, and his research interests include South Asia, ethnicity, ethnic conflict, historical analysis, and qualitative methods. Verghese has conducted language training and fieldwork in India, with support from organizations such as the American Institute of Indian Studies and the U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarship Program. He will be turning his dissertation into a book entitled The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence: India and the Indian Ocean Region. Verghese holds a BA in political science and French from Temple University.

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Peacemaker

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More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed gave rise to one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the twentieth century.

Published for the first time in English, Peacemaker is the memoir of Lim Dong-won, former South Korean unification minister and architect of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine policy toward North Korea. Lim will present a talk at Stanford in conjunction with the book’s U.S. release, highlighting major themes from it and discussing them within the context of recent developments on the peninsula.

As both witness and participant, Peacemaker traces the process of twenty years of diplomatic negotiations with North Korea, from the earliest rounds of inter-Korean talks through the historic inter-Korean summit of June 2000 and beyond. It offers a fascinating inside look into the recent history of North-South Korea relations and provides important lessons for policymakers and citizens who seek to understand and resolve the tragic—and increasingly dangerous—situation on the Korean Peninsula.

About the Speaker

Following a thirty-year career in the South Korean military, Lim Dong-won’s government service began with his tenure as ROK ambassador to Nigeria and then Australia; under the Roh Tae-woo administration, he served as chancellor of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security and director of arms control planning. During the Kim Dae-jung administration Lim held numerous key national-level posts, including head of the National Intelligence Service and minister of unification. He currently is chairman of the Korea Peace Forum and the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture.

This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.

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Dong-won Lim former Minister of Unification, South Korea Speaker
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Eikenberry receives George F. Kennan Award

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Karl Eikenberry, the 2012 Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute, has received the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP).

The award honors Americans who served the country in an exemplary fashion and have made seminal contributions to defining, illuminating, and promoting the country’s national interest.

Eikenberry was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011.  He served in the Army for 35 years, retiring in April 2009 as a lieutenant general. He was the commander of the American-led coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and has also served as deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels.

In a statement issued by the NCAFP, the organization praised Eikenberry for his accomplishments.

“We are particularly impressed by his widely respected and exemplary leadership in conceptualizing, designing, and articulating American military and foreign policy strategy and tactics involving and harmonizing both hard and soft power,” the statement said.

Other recipients of the Kennan Award include former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, CIA Director David Petraeus, and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

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