David Hafemeister is a Science Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (2005-6). He is also Professor (emeritus) of Physics at California Polytechnic State University. He spent a dozen years in Washington as Professional Staff Member, Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs (1990-93 on arms control treaties at the end of the Cold War), Science Advisor to Senator John Glenn (1975-77), Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State Benson and Deputy-Under Secretary Nye (1977-78), Visiting Scientist in the State Department's Office of Nuclear Proliferation Policy (1979), the Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy (1987) and Study Director at the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02). He also held appointments at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and the Lawrence-Berkeley, Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories. He was Chair of the APS Forum on Physics and Society (1985-6) and the APS Panel on Public Affairs (1996-7). He has written/edited ten books and 140 articles and was awarded the APS Szilard award in 1996.

Co-Sponsored with the Humanities Center

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War. Mr. Hitchens, longtime contributor to The Nation, wrote a wide-ranging, biweekly column for the magazine from 1982 to 2002. With trademark savage wit, he flattens hypocrisy inside the Beltway and around the world, laying bare the "permanent government" of entrenched powers and interests. Mr. Hitchens has been Washington editor of Harper's and book critic for Newsday, and regularly contributes to such publications as Granta, The London Review of Books, Vogue, New Left Review, Dissent and the Times Literary Supplement.

Born in 1949 in Portsmouth, England, Mr. Hitchens received a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1970.

Event Synopsis:

Mr. Hitchens recounts the early history of American war, including its first foreign engagement in North Africa against the Ottoman Empire after it had enslaved Europeans and Americans in the region. He then reflects on the turnaround in European and American attitudes toward Islam since 1967, when US President Lyndon Johnson began to make concessions to Israel regarding its presence in Gaza in order to gain support for the Vietnam war. Johnson's predecessors as well as European leaders, in contrast, had pressured Israel to leave Gaza and had threatened economic consequences against Israel and England.

Mr. Hitchens relates recent conversations with several prominent figures - Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Dutch newspaper editor Flemming Rose, and Somali-Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali - as illustrations of the new approach to the Muslim world by America and Europe. He describes a "civil war" within Islam between fundamentalists working to impose Sharia and "export" the conflict to the West, and moderate Muslims. Hitchens also recounts how he discouraged Tony Blair from pursuing measures to allow separate schools for Muslims in Britain, and argued against extending the anti-blasphemy law to cover Islam, instead calling for it to be revoked entirely.

Mr. Hitchens concludes his talk with the observation that the fight against Islamic extremism and terrorism will be a key battle for both the US and Europe in years to come and will transcend cultural or strategic differences between the two regions.

During a discussion session, the audience raised such questions as: Does Mr. Hitchens see the French ban on girls' head scarves as a positive measure? Where are there differences between the war in Iraq and the war against militant Islam? What are the implications for Europe if Turkey joins the EU? Is there a common European view toward terrorism, Islamism, and jihadism?

Jacob N. Shapiro is a graduate student in political science at Stanford University and a homeland security fellow at CISAC. He is also an associate at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy and teaches on terrorist financing at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on the organizational dynamics of terrorist groups. His current projects use economic and sociological organization theory to examine the interactions between individual motivations and organizational structure in covert groups. As a Naval Reserve officer he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Warfare Development Command. Prior to attending Stanford, he served on active duty at Special Boat Team 20 and onboard the USS Arthur W. Radford (DD-968). He received his BA with honors in political science from the University of Michigan.

About the speaker: Achin Vanaik, fellow and board member of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam is one of the most important analysts of contemporary Indian politics. The author of The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India (1990), The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (1997) and Globalization and South Asia (2004.)

Vanaik has served on the board of directors of GreenPeace (India), and as an assistant editor for The Times of India. He writes regularly for the Economic and Political Weekly, The Times and The Telegraph and has written extensively on the nuclear question in south Asia.

Dr. Vanaik's lecture is co-sponsored with the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

About the series: The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Pacific War and Japan's unconditional surrender. Post-war Japan has embraced a new constitution that renounced war as a right of the nation and for the past six decades pursued economic growth under democratic government. Ironically, the years leading to this anniversary were filled with various disputes over territorial and historical issues with China and Korea and questions from neighboring countries whether Japanese society is shifting towards the right. Triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines "A" class war criminals, anti-Japan sentiment is widely spreading among its neighboring countries, accompanied by strong nationalism, and is posing a potential threat to the political stability of the region.

This colloquium series will focus on Japan's relationship with China and Korea and the historical controversies that are central to their deteriorating political relationship. The series speakers will address the following questions: What are the historical roots of these controversies? How did post-war Japanese foreign policy effect and was effected by Japan's handling of its militaristic past? What is the nature of domestic politics of these three countries that politicizes these historical issues and influences their responses to one another?

Each of the speakers in this series has been asked to address a specific aspect of Japan's relations. Professor Iokibe will address Japan's Post-War foreign policy under the pressures of the domestic agenda.

Makoto Iokibe, Professor of History in the Department of Law at Kobe University, is a specialist in Japanese diplomatic history and U.S.-Japan relations. Dr. Iokibe has also taught at Hiroshima University and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and an academic visitor at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Prime Minister's Commission on "Japan's Goals in the 21st Century," which submitted its report in January 2000. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Japan and the Changing World Order; The Occupation Era: The Prime Ministers and Rebuilding of Postwar Japan, 1945-1952; and Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan, 1945-1999. He received his BA, MA and PhD in Law from Kyoto University.

John Barton is a professor emeritus at the Stanford Law School, an FSI senior fellow by courtesy, and a CHP/PCOR associate. His research and publications focus on international scientific research and cooperation, the relationship between intellectual property and antitrust, and the transfer of technology -- particularly vaccine production technology -- to developing countries. Barton has recently published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the pharmaceutical development process, and is co-author of the product development priorities chapter in the forthcoming book Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. He has participated extensively in discussions regarding drug access for developing nations. He is also interested in the marketing structure of the pharmaceutical industry and the impact of vaccine regulation on the structure of the international vaccine industry.

Dr. Ronald F. Lehman II is Director of the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Ron also is Chairman of the Governing Board of the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) in Moscow. . He serves on the State Department Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB) and as a member of the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC). Previously, he was the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and has served in the Defense Department as Assistant Secretary, in the State Department as U.S. Chief Negotiator on Strategic Offensive Arms (START), and in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Tuan H. Nguyen is the Herbert York Fellow in the Center for Global Security Research at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In addition, he is a member of the Forensic Science Center in the Chemistry and Materials Science Directorate at Livermore. Dr. Nguyen has been an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at California State University, East Bay. He received his BS in biochemistry and a PhD in organic chemistry.