Martin Hellman is not your average cryptography pioneer.

Hellman, who is known for his invention of public key cryptography (along with Whitfield Duffie and Ralph Merkle), has a life’s journey to share in story form, one that weaves together the most complex global flashpoints of our age with the deeply personal of any age. He and his wife’s new book, A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet, spans far and wide, covering nuclear risks in North Korea, Iran, and America’s Middle Eastern wars.

But that is not all. He and his wife Dorothie Hellman open up about their marital struggles to show how they eventually reached a point of harmony and true love for each other. As Martin Hellman sees it, conflict in the international and interpersonal arenas has much in common.

“You can’t separate nuclear war from conventional war and conventional war from personal war,” he said in an interview. Hellman is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.  

Just as he and Dorothie (self-acknowledged polar opposites) often butted heads during the first 10 or 15 years of marriage, nations too navigate dangerously outmoded “maps” to protect their national security and interests. Yet these “maps” are soon outdated, whether on the global stage or in the home. Hellman said, however, that differences of opinion, which revolve around fights to prove who is “right,” could instead be transformed into opportunities to learn from one another – and to expand peace in the world.

“You have to believe in the seemingly impossible gifts of unconditional love and greater peace in the world, and then dedicate yourself to discovering how to achieve them,” he said.

Cultivating inner, outer peace

He said that society only truly changes based on individual changes, so he calls for action in how people live their everyday lives. When countries fail to respect each other – and ignore the influence of history on those countries – then conflict is more likely, and it is similar to a person disrespecting another.

“You will see an immediate payoff as your relationships flower,” he wrote in the book. “The small impact that each of us can have on changing the world does not feel concrete enough to most people, but seeing progress in your personal relationships is very concrete.”

That dedication to unconditional love, he said, is the way that individuals can become models for what is needed globally.

And the time is now, he suggests, for such change if our living generations are to leave a more peaceful world for those who follow us. From Afghanistan to Cuba, Russia, Iraq to North Korea and beyond, the countries of the world need a journey of healing and reconciliation, as he writes in the book.

Today, the stakes could not be higher, Hellman noted. Long-running strategies like nuclear deterrence are risky and illogical – over time, given probability theory and the chances of mistake or malice, they won’t work.

“The United States thinks it’s a superpower, but how can we be when Russia or China could destroy us in less than a hour?” he said. “How is that being a superpower?”

As William J. Perry, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Stanford professor emeritus at CISAC, said on behalf of the Hellmans’ book, “The struggle for interpersonal dominance can lead to the end of a marriage, but the struggle for geopolitical dominance can lead to the end of civilization.”

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford is now accepting applications for the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship in Contemporary Asia, an opportunity made available to two junior scholars for research and writing on Asia.

Fellows conduct research on contemporary political, economic or social change in the Asia-Pacific region, and contribute to Shorenstein APARC’s publications, conferences and related activities. To read about this year’s fellows, please click here.

The fellowship is a 10-mo. appointment during the 2017-18 academic year, and carries a salary rate of $52,000 plus $2,000 for research expenses.

For further information and to apply, please click here. The application deadline is Dec. 16, 2016.

Lili Li, Program Coordinator at SCPKU, spoke with Graduate School of Business Assistant Professor Szu-Chi Huang about her research and the contributions SCPKU made to her research in China.

Q: How did your interest in consumer behavior and motivation develop?

Szu-Chi Huang: After receiving my undergraduate degrees in Business and in Financial Law from National Taiwan University, I pursued a career in advertising. While I enjoyed early success in the advertising industry, I found many managerial decisions puzzling. There are many things we don't know about consumers, such as what motivates them to make a purchase, to pursue a goal, to make donations etc. Therefore, after a few years working in the industry, I decided to pursue a PhD degree and conduct research to answer my questions related to consumer behavior and motivation.

Q: Could you give us a brief introduction to your research on “motivation in different stages of goal pursuit”?

Szu-Chi Huang: Through various projects, my collaborators and I examine the changes in the determinants of consumer motivation in different stages of goal pursuit and their impact on consumers' behaviors. When people first begin to pursue a goal, they are less certain about how to approach the goal and whether they can even attain the goal; however, after they have made a significant amount of progress and are getting near the end point of the pursuit, these uncertainties are alleviated, and they focus more on reducing the remaining discrepancy to attain the goal in a timely manner. Because of this switch in people's concerns during the course of goal pursuit, people are in turn motivated by different types of feedback and interact differently as they move from early stages to later stages of the pursuit.

Q: How does understanding motivation change help the motivators and consumers?

Szu-Chi Huang: Our findings provide valuable insights for marketers and organizations that aim to motivate consumers. By choosing the appropriate goal structure for consumers, providing relevant feedback that answers their concerns at the moment, and implementing relevant social infrastructures, organizations can continue to motivate consumers as they advance across various stages of goal pursuit.

Q: In what field/areas do you anticipate seeing the most impact from your research?

Szu-Chi Huang: Our work has important implications for rewards programs and loyalty programs, pro-social events (donation drives, fundraising), and joint goal pursuit programs such as weight-loss programs and smoke-cessation programs.

Q: Describe your research and its connection to China?

Szu-Chi Huang: My research focuses on what motivates people to pursue their goals. I conducted field study in a Chinese dining hall to capture people's food consumption behaviors. I've also collected charity data from China. We found that what motivates people from different cultures may be different -- while Chinese people may be more motivated by temporal impact such as leaving a legacy, US donors are more motivated by scale-based impact. In addition, we suspect that they are motivated to eat different types of "healthy" food, as defined by culture; we are still analyzing the data for this part.

Q: Why did you decide to apply for an SCPKU Faculty Fellowship?

Szu-Chi Huang: I wanted to collect data in China, and also start building collaborative relationships with scholars in China.

Professor Huang's presentation at SCPKU (Photo courtesy of Lili Li)

Q: How valuable was SCPKU's team in supporting your fellowship at SCPKU?

Szu-Chi Huang: Extremely valuable - they provided a nice office equipped with great IT as well as research and staff supports. Also, I had the opportunity to interact with faculty from other departments for collaborations.

Q: What were your fellowship objectives and were they met?

Szu-Chi Huang: My fellowship objectives were to conduct research and collaborate with scholars in China -- they are all successfully realized. SCPKU helped me achieve my objectives by providing facilities and support, but also giving me the flexibility to visit other departments (e.g., the management school) and work with the scholars there as well as in other schools.

Q: What did you learn during your stay and what were the most interesting experiences you had?

Szu-Chi Huang: My stay was wonderful. Chinese scholars are extremely productive and have great connections with the industry for field data. Also, the business environment in China is very different from the US -- it has its own infrastructure and culture. I would encourage my students to visit China and observe these differences themselves. This experience also inspired me to start developing a course that could capture and communicate these important insights and differences.

Q: List at least THREE words that come to mind which best describe your experience at SCPKU.

Szu-Chi Huang: Unique, creative, productive.

Q: Any future plans in China?

Szu-Chi Huang: I'd like to visit again in summer as well as next year, to further cultivate the research relationships I've built during this trip.

Ponte a prueba. Put yourself to the test.

As he explained during the recent Rosenkranz Prize Symposium, Stefano M. Bertozzi used this slogan to promote health reform in the Mexico City prison system. By encouraging inmates to step up and get themselves tested for HIV and other chronic illnesses, Bertozzi, dean and professor of health policy and management at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, was able to decrease the spread of illnesses in Mexican prisons and the surrounding communities.

The Rosenkranz Prize Symposium celebrated research projects that—like Bertozzi’s—address the health care needs of the world’s most vulnerable populations. With support from the Rosenkranz Prize for Health Care Research in Developing Countries, Stanford scholars have stepped up to tackle health issues in regions in need.

Since 2010, the award has funded six young Stanford researchers who aim to improve health in developing countries. The symposium celebrated their achievements.

The award honors the work of Dr. George Rosenkranz who spent his career reducing health disparities around the globe. Rosenkranz, who was the first to synthesize cortisone and the active ingredient in the first oral contraceptive, also celebrated his 100^th birthday at the symposium.

Producing research that will increase care for vulnerable populations globally is the ultimate goal of the Rosenkranz Prize.

Andrés Moreno-Estrada, the 2012 winner, has used the award to study genetics in Latin American and Caribbean populations, aiming to increase knowledge of potential genetic illnesses. He said, “The Rosenkranz Prize is a clear, important step forward to demonstrate that we can do cutting edge science in developing countries that is of international relevance.”

Other winners include Eran Bendavid, Sanjay Basu, Marcella Alsan, Jason Andrews and Ami Bhatt. Their projects range from the effect of AIDS relief efforts on health care delivery to the treatment of diabetes in India to low-cost diagnostic tools for regions lacking infrastructure.

“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate (my father’s) birthday than listening to the bright future of science,” said Ricardo T. Rosenkranz, son of Dr. George Rosenkranz and a prize donor. “We can’t wait to hear what the next Rosenkranz Prize winners tell us.”

Click below for event photo gallery:

The 12th annual Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program gathered 25 democracy leaders from around the developing world for a three-week training program on democracy, good governance, and the rule of law reform. Selected from a large pool of applicants, the fellows have diverse backgrounds across sectors and geographies, working in civil society, public service, social enterprise, media and technology.

Fellows were instructed by an all-star roster of Stanford scholars and policy experts, including former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama and Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Fellows also met industry leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google, democracy leaders such as Carl Gershman of the National Endowment for Democracy and others. During the program, they shared their personal stories about the struggle in their home countries, but also stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, stories of optimism and endurance.

You can find some of their talks below and for more videos visit our YouTube channel. 

Kasha Nabagesera (Uganda)

The founding member of Uganda's LGBTI Movement

"I am the only founding member of Uganda's LGBTI movement who is still based in the country"

Kasha Nabagesera is the executive director of Kuchu Times Media Group, the first LGBTI media platform in Africa. She is known as the “founding mother” of the LGBTI movement in Uganda - where homosexuality is illegal - advocating for equal rights and the eradication of all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Listen to her story about big losses and big wins, everyday dangers and hope.

Rafael Marques de Morais (Angola)

Investigative reporter, MakaAngola

"Why the government is after you when you are sleeping so much?"

Rafael Marques de Morais is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist in Angola, working to investigate corruption and abuse of power by the country’s ruling family. He founded Makaangola, a watchdog website dedicated to exposing corruption and human rights abuses in Angola. Find out why his son thinks that his father is harmless for the government.

Belabbes Benkredda (Algeria)

The founder of Munathara Initiative

"Debate is the central part of the democratic equation."

Belabbes Benkredda is an award-winning social innovator and the founder of the Munathara Initiative, the Arab world’s largest online and television debate forum highlighting voices of youth, women, and marginalized communities. Operating in 11 Arab countries, Munathara’s monthly prime-time TV debates are the only civil society-run, independent political talk program on Arabic television. Munathara Initiative organized over 650 workshops with more than 10 thousand participants from 12 countries. They have around 90 thousand of registered users. More importantly, Munathara Initiative provided safe public space for young women to voice their opinions and mark their presence in public, traditionally dominated by the middle-aged men.