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The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) commenced operations on January 16, 2016. The Bank has approved 24 projects totaling US$4.26 billion to date, and its approved membership totals 84 with 64 members having completed all membership requirements and 20 prospective members in the process of finalizing their membership.
 
President Jin Liqun will give his assessment of the bank’s first two years – its accomplishments and challenges – and the future direction of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. What is the potential impact of AIIB’s financing for regional infrastructure, trade connectivity and economic relations? How can multilateral institutions and various stakeholders best address the US$26 trillion infrastructure gap (from 2016 to 2030) in Asia? How is the AIIB distinguishing itself from other multilateral development banks like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank? What is the AIIB’s commitment and contributions toward global economic governance and best international practices?

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Abstract: Must we, should we, possess a Doomsday Machine?  For over half a century there have been two of these in the world: the U.S. and the Russian strategic nuclear systems, tightly coupled together with their respective warning systems, each poised to escalate armed conflict with the other or to preemptively launch a first strike based on strategic or tactical warning that may be a false alarm such as has occurred repeatedly.  Environmental scientists in the last decade have strongly confirmed what was first warned in 1983, that each of these alert systems, aimed as they are at hundreds of targets in or near cities, constitutes a Doomsday Machine.  Firestorms in the burning cities would loft hundreds of millions of tons of smoke and black soot into the global stratosphere--where it would not rain out and would remain for more than a decade--blocking 70% of sunlight, creating ice age conditions on earth and killing all harvest worldwide, starving nearly humans to death.  Neither the Defense Department nor the National Academy of Sciences has ever studied the actual effects, including smoke and resulting famine, to be expected from the existing plans of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for general nuclear war.  Such a study would almost surely show that China's "minimum deterrence" and no-first-use policy is dramatically less dangerous to the future of humanity, on the way to the more distant goal of universal abolition of nuclear weapons. 

Speaker bio: Daniel Ellsberg is the author of three books: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers(2002) Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001) and Papers on the War (1971). Ellsberg first specialized in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making in the 1950s. As a high-level defense analyst,Ellsberg participated in developing operational guidance for U.S. nuclear war planning during the Kennedy administration. Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions abroad and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing. In December 2006, Ellsberg was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, in Stockholm, Sweden, “. . .  for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.” He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1962.

Abstract: International cooperation has long been founded on the idea that securing a common factual understanding of things in the world is a prerequisite for deciding how to act in concert. However, in recent decades the very possibility of such agreement on the facts has come under attack both empirically, through persistent technical controversies around issues such as climate change and crop biotechnology, and theoretically, from demonstrations that facts and norms are co-produced to build alternate, coexisting worlds. The divergent self-understandings of these worlds, in which epistemic and normative order are interdependent, cannot be bridged by simply insisting on a singular “reality” that must be accepted by all.

In this talk, I use the longue durée case of international biotech regulation to suggest a different basis for long-term cooperation. Using epistemic subsidiarity rather than harmonization as the basis for making progress, I suggest how biotechnology risks might be handled in three regimes of subsidiarity: coexistence, cosmopolitanism, and constitutionalism. The advantages and limits of each regime will be exemplified and reflected upon.

Speaker bio: Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 120 articles and chapters and is author or editor of more than 15 books, including The Fifth Branch, Science at the Bar, Designs on Nature, and The Ethics of Invention. Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. She founded and directs the STS Program at Harvard; previously, she was founding chair of the STS Department at Cornell. She has held distinguished visiting appointments at leading universities in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the US. Jasanoff served on the AAAS Board of Directors and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ehrenkreuz from the Government of Austria, membership in the Royal Danish Academy, and the Humboldt Foundation’s Reimar-Lüst award. She holds AB, JD, and PhD degrees from Harvard, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Twente and Liège.

The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

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Robert Dekle is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Southern California. His field of research include international finance, open-economy and development, macroeconomics and the economies of Japan and East Asia.    He obtained his Ph.D in economics at Yale University and B.A in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Abstract:

In the face of information pollution, legislators in seven states have drafted bills to mandate courses in "media literacy" and “digital citizenship.” But what if the problem is not the lack of media literacy--but that the media literacy we do teach is the wrong kind? Drawing on a survey of 7804 middle, high school and college students, along with a focused study of Stanford undergraduates, academics from universities in California and Washington, and professional fact checkers at the nation’s most esteemed publications, I’ll argue that our approaches to information pollution may not only be ineffectual but may exacerbate the problem. Based on promising pilot data, I’ll suggest more comprehensive and effective solutions, and how we might address this issue here on our own Stanford campus.

Speaker Bio:

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Wineburg’s scholarship sits at the crossroads of three fields: the psychology of learning, history, and education, and his articles have appeared in such diverse outlets as Cognitive Science, Journal of American History, Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. In 2002 his book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past won the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for work that makes the most important contribution to the “improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts.” In 2013, he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission and spent four months crisscrossing India giving lectures about his work. His new book, Why Learn History When It’s Already on Your Phone (Chicago), will be available in September.