Abstract:
The peoples of Burma/Myanmar have faced military rule, human rights violations, and poor health outcomes for decades. The country Is now undergoing a political liberalization, and multiple changes in political, social and economic life. The human rights and health situation of the country's many ethnic nationalities remain challenging, and represent one of the clearest threats to the prospect of successful transition to peace, and to democracy. We will explore the current health and human rights situation in the country, the ongoing threats to peace, and ways forward for this least developed nation as it emerges from 5 decades of military rule.

Chris Beyrer MD, MPH, is a professor of Epidemiology, International Health, and Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the founding Director of the University¹s Center for Public Health and Human Rights, which seeks to bring the tools of population-based sciences to bear on Health and rights threats. Dr. Beyrer also serves as Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) and of the Center for Global Health. He has been involved in health and human rights work with Burmese populations since 1993. Prof. Beyrer is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, and author or editor of six books, including War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, and Public Health and Human Rights: Evidence-Based Approaches. He has served as a consultant and adviser to numerous national and international institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, WHO, UNAIDS, the Open Society Foundations, the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, amfAR The Foundation for AIDS Research, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Dr. Beyrer received a BA in History from Hobart and Wm. Smith Colleges, his MD from SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY, and completed his residency in Preventive Medicine, public health training, an MPH and a Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He received an honorary Doctorate (PhD) in Health Sciences from Chiang Mai University in Thailand, in 2012, in recognition of his 20 years of public health service in Thailand

Abstract
The most important post-Nuremberg health-related human right and bioethics principle is informed consent. A series of post-9/11 developments, including quarantine and forced vaccination proposals, "altered standards of care" for disaster responders, eliminating consent for "emergency research," the post-ACA rise of "standard of care research," whole genome screening guidelines for adults and children, and proposals for newborns, gene bank proposals for "broad" or no consent, and the force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo and in US prisons, all suggest that informed consent should be seen as optional, and judged by a physician-determined standard of care. It's time to kill these zombies, and save the life of informed consent, and thus of the individual person who retains dignity and human rights.

George Annas is the cofounder of Global Lawyers and Physicians, a transnational professional association of lawyers and physicians working together to promote human rights and health.  He has degrees from Harvard College (A.B. economics, '67), Harvard Law School (J.D. '70) and Harvard School of Public Health (M.P.H. '72).

Professor Annas is the author or editor of 18 books on health law and bioethics, including Worst Case Bioethics:  Death, Disaster, and Public Health(2010),Public Health Law (2007),American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries(2005),The Rights of Patients(3d ed. 2004),Some Choice: Law, Medicine, and theMarket (1999), Standard of Care: The Law of American Bioethics (l993), and Judging Medicine (1987), and a play entitled Shelley's Brain, that has been presented to bioethics audiences across the U.S. and in Australia. Professor Annas wrote a regular feature on "law and bioethics" for the Hastings Center Report from 1976 to 199l, and a regular feature on "Public Health and the Law" in the American Journal of Public Health from 1982 to 1992 and since 1991 has written a regular feature for the NewEngland Journal of Medicine (“Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights”).

He  is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Institute of Medicine, a member of the National Academies’ Human Rights Committee, and co-chair of the American Bar Association's Committee on Health Rights and Bioethics (Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section). He has also held a variety of government regulatory posts, including Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, Chair of the Massachusetts Health Facilities Appeals Board, and Chair of the Massachusetts Organ Transplant Task Force.

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President Emeritus

GERHARD CASPER

in conversation with

James Sheehan,

George Shultz and

Marilyn Yalom

about his new book

The Winds of Freedom: Addressing Challenges to the University

During his tenure as president of Stanford University, Gerhard Casper established a reputation as a tireless, forward-thinking advocate for higher education. His achievements as head of one of America’s very best higher education institutions have been widely acknowledged, and his speeches renowned for their intelligence, humanity, wit, and courage in confronting head-on the most pressing concerns facing our nation’s universities. From affirmative action and multiculturalism to free speech, politics, public service, and government regulation, Casper addresses the controversial issues currently debated on college campuses and in our highest courts. With great insight and candor, each chapter explores the context of these specific challenges to higher education and provides Casper’s stimulating speeches delivered in response. In addressing these vital concerns, Casper outlines the freedoms that a university must encourage and defend and the essential roles of its administration, its faculty, and its students in the ongoing pursuit of knowledge.

Reception to follow.

Korea is one of the leading countries in technology-driven global markets for semiconductors, HDTVs, and mobile phones; and in shipbuilding industry, but Korea has already faced challenges in its global markets.

Dr. Dongwook Lee, 2013 Visiting Scholar in Korean Studies, will discuss Korea's industrial convergence policies that would help Park administration achieve its national agenda, a creative economy.

Dr. Lee is Director General at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in Korea, and has served as a government official for the past twenty-two years. He led and took part in developing industrial convergence policies and laws. Dr. Lee holds a BA in business administration from Yonsei University, an MA in public administration from Seoul National University, and a PhD in economics from Konkuk University, in Korea. 

Abstract:

Taiwan's system of neighborhood-level governance has origins in institutions of local control employed by both the Republican-era Kuomintang and the Japanese colonizers. In more recent times, the neighborhood wardens (lizhang, 里長) have come to play a complex set of roles, including state agent, political party operative, and community representative. Wardens of a new generation, with more women in their ranks than ever before, have adopted new practices and built different relationships with their communities, parties, and city governments compared to those of the older, often clan-based bosses.

Focusing on Taipei with glances at other locales, this paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews, surveys, public records, and other sources. It explores the particular kind of political and civic engagement that the neighborhood governance system elicits. It is statist; though independent in many respects, wardens have government-mandated duties and work closely with city and district officials. Community development associations (shequ fazhan xiehui), as well as other neighborhood groups and wardens themselves, compete for and receive government funding. Warden elections are also deeply democratic in ways that, in global perspective, are unusual for such ultra-local urban offices. Over the past 25 years, elections have become hotly contested, voter turnout has risen to remarkably high rates, and KMT dominance has partially given way to political pluralization. Citizens’ participation in this setting, like others, often shows deep divisions along partisan lines, with wardens and local associations split by party loyalties. Finally, civic engagement with the neighborhood system shows an inverted class bias. Residents with less education, for example, are more likely to know their wardens and vote in warden elections. Politics in Taiwan’s li thus has evolved substantially over time, and also contrasts in multiple ways with Western images of neighborhood politics.

Speaker Bio:

Benjamin L. Read is an Associate Professor of Politics at UC Santa Cruz. His book, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford University Press, 2012) uses surveys, interviews, and participant observation to compare the ways in which constituents perceive and interact with the urban administrative structures found in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere in the region. He edited Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (Routledge, 2009), also on the role of state-sponsored organizations, and has published research on civil society groups as well, particularly China's nascent homeowner associations. Read's next book, Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles, co-authored with Diana Kapiszewski and Lauren Morris MacLean, will be published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, the China Journal, the China Quarterly, the Washington Quarterly, and several edited books. He earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University in 2003.