The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has challenged itself is to become a single integrated community by 2015.  The prospect has raised high hopes inside the region.  Will they be met?  Efforts to build the community have intensified, yet the clock ticks and the deadline looms.  Although the result will not match what local enthusiasts of regional unification want to see, but it will likely exceed the expectations of skeptical outsiders.  ASEAN is the linchpin of East Asian regionalism, by design and by default.  What happens to the Association over the next several years has far-reaching implications for the United States, China, and not least for the states and peoples of Southeast Asia.  In his talk, Prof. Pongsudhirak will tease out these dynamics, assess their significance, and explore possible futures beyond 2015.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak heads the Institute of Security and International Studies and teaches international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  In 2010 he was an FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor at Stanford and, in spring 2011, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  He has written many articles, chapters, and books on ASEAN and East Asian affairs, and on Thai politics, political economy, and foreign policy.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  He currently serves on the editorial boards of Asian Politics & Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Studies, and South East Asia Research.  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University (School of Advanced International Studies, MA), and the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA). 

This event is co-sponsored by the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at CDDRL together with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Program in Ethics in Society, and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.

Award-winning documentarian and Stanford alumna Abigail Disney will talk about her latest project, PBS mini-series Women, War & Peace — the most comprehensive global media initiative ever mounted on the roles of women in peace and conflict, an area she calls the ignored "second front of war."

Disney is a filmmaker, philanthropist, and scholar. She holds degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. Her work in philanthropy, women's engagement and leadership, and conflict resolution has been recognized through the Epic Award from the White House project, the Changing Landscape for Women Award from the Center for the Advancement of Women, and the prestigious International Advocate for Peace (IAP) Award from the Cardozo Law School's Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution.


Watch the premiere episode of Women, War & Peace, "I Came to Testify," at 11pm on October 11th, 2011 on KQED. Then join the conversation with Abigail Disney at Stanford the following day at 7pm on October 12th, 2011.

When the Balkans exploded into war in the 1990s, reports that tens of thousands of women were being systematically raped as a tactic of ethnic cleansing captured the international spotlight. "I Came to Testify" is the moving story of how a group of 16 women who had been imprisoned by Serb-led forces broke history's great silence — and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law.

This event is free and open to all. However, tickets are required. To get tickets, click here.

The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.

Pheng Cheah is professor of rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (Columbia University Press, 2003), and the co-editor of several book collections, including Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009), Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (Routledge, 2003) and Cosmopolitics - Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (University of Minnesota Press, 1998).  He is currently completing a  book on theories of the world and world literature from the postcolonial South in an era of global financialization.  Also in progress is a book on globalization and world cinema from the three Chinas, focusing on the films of Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang and Fruit Chan.