Shibley Telhami holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was the Director of the Near Eastern Studies Program at Cornell University and has taught at Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley. His publications include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (Cornell University Press, 1995); and Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East , ed. with Michael Barnett (forthcoming, Cornell University Press, 2001); and numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs.

Professor Telhami has actively been bridging the academic and policy world. He served as advisor to the United States delegation to the United Nations during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, and was on the staff of Congressman Lee Hamilton. He is the author of a report on Persian Gulf security for the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-drafter of a Council report on the Arab-Israeli peace process. Professor Telhami is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. He has been a member of the American delegation of the Trilateral American/Israeli/Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee mandated by the Wye River Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and has a weekly radio commentary broadcasting widely over the Middle East.

He received his B.A. from the Queens College of the City University of New York (1974), M.A. from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (1978), and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1986).

Professor Telhami will be reporting on his latest poll of Arab public opinion and interpreting the results on key issues.

In the eyes of many observers of globalization today, its origins are recent and Western. In fact, Indians, Chinese, and Southeast Asians pioneered globalization long before the colonial era. In the 1st century CE, discovery of the monsoon wind brought increasing number of Indian, Roman, and Arab traders to Southeast Asia in search of spices and precious metals. In the 16th century, the port of Malacca emerged as a crucial nexus - the vital transshipment point of commerce between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The discovery of the New World and the ensuing boom in silver bound Southeast Asia even more tightly with India and Europe in triangular trade. Malacca's early importance as an entrepot is akin to the role that Memphis, Tennessee, plays today as the global air-cargo hub for Federal Express. Against this rich background, Nayan Chanda will contend that "calls to shut down globalization are pointless, because nobody is in charge," while at the same suggesting ways in which "we can attempt to nudge our rapidly integrating world toward a more harmonious course."

Nayan Chanda is director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and editor of YaleGlobal Online. In April 2007 Yale University Press will publish his new book on globalization, Bound Together. In 2005 Stanford and Harvard Universities awarded him their joint Shorenstein Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia. In 1990-92 he edited the Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly. His many writings include a widely admired book on Indochina, Brother Enemy: The War After the War (1986). Earlier in his career he worked for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review as its reporter, diplomatic correspondent, and editor.

Co-sponsored with the Global Management Program at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

This is the Southeast Asia Forum's ninth seminar of the 2006-2007 academic year.

At the end of the 1990s, Indonesia seemed on the brink of state collapse and fragmentation. The specter of collapse has subsided. But the country has undergone fragmentation of a less obvious and more incremental sort: a proliferation of sub-national jurisdictions. Since 1999 the number of provinces in Indonesia has increased from 26 to 33 and the number of districts has risen from 290 to nearly 450. In light of the previous and long-standing relative stability in the numbers of provinces and districts, this trend is quite puzzling. What is the source of this newfound territorial reorganization? What are its implications? Ehito Kimura will argue that the fracturing cannot be explained in exclusively national or local terms. He will focus instead on what he calls "vertical coalitions" tied together by political actors moving up and down across national, regional, and local levels.

Ehito Kimura is working on a manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation on the changing political geography of Indonesia. He lived in Indonesia from 2004 to 2005 and in Thailand from 1997 to 1999. His Ph.D is from the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has degrees from Georgetown University (BSFS) and Yale University (MA).

This is the Southeast Asia Forum's sixth seminar of the 2006-2007 academic year.