Congratulations to the 10 members of the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies. The students were honored at a June 10 ceremony for their successful participation in the interdisciplinary program and for their contributions to the field of international security research.

The Stanford seniors join 114 others who have graduated from the program since its inception in 2000. This year's program was co-directed by Coit D. Blacker and Martha Crenshaw, with assistance from teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer.

In alphabetical order, the students, their majors, and their thesis titles are:

Devin Banerjee

Management Science and Engineering

India's Red Stain: Explaining the Indian Government's Ineffective Response to the Maoist-Naxalite Insurgency Since 1967.

Peter Davis

International Relations

The Non-Aligned Movement: A Struggle for Global Relevance

Anand Habib

Biology

The Demise and Rise of Governance in Health Systems: A Path Forward

RJ Halperin

Political Science

The U.S. and the Origins of the Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program: National Interests, Proliferation Pessimism, and Executive-Legislative Politics

Akhil Iyer

International Relations, Minor in Arabic

The Establishment of the U.S. Africa Command: Form, Function, and the Process of Agency Formation

Astasia Myers

Political Science and International Relations, Minor in Economics

IAEA Enforcement of Nuclear Nonproliferation Violators: Are Some Animals More Equal than Others?

Jimmy Ruck

History

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Evolving Civil Military-Relations in China

Varun Sivaram

Engineering Physics and International Relations

Sunny Side Up: Characterizing the U.S. Military's Approach to Solar Energy Policy

* Recipient of the William J. Perry Award

Jaclyn Tandler

International Relations

Let Them Eat Yellow Cake: Understanding the History of France's Sensitive Nuclear Export Policy

*Recipient of the Firestone Medal

Shine Zaw-Aung

International Relations, Minor in Energy Engineering

The Third Horseman: On Famines and Governments

China today is in the midst of sweeping changes. The economy is roaring ahead. Millions of rural families are uprooting themselves in search of better lives in the city. Traditional ways of living, working, and playing are transforming. This image of China often gives an impression of instability, confusion, extreme inequality, and despair, but in fact, every country that has developed—including the United States—has undergone a similar process.

China in Transition, SPICE’s latest curriculum-in-development, introduces high school students to modern China as a case study of economic development. What are the characteristics of the development process, and why does it occur? How is development experienced by the people who live through it, and how are their lives impacted? How do traditional cultural values—such as China’s emphasis on education—contribute to and/or evolve as a result of modernization? Students examine these questions and others as they investigate the roles that urbanization, migration, wealth, poverty, and education play in a country in transition.

This curriculum project represents a new and unique joint venture between SPICE and the Rural Education Action Project (REAP) to bring modern China alive in U.S. high school classrooms. It is the first project of its kind for SPICE and an exciting new intramural collaboration for FSI. “When I first heard about the work of REAP from Professor Scott Rozelle and his staff, I was immediately struck by the significance of REAP’s efforts to help students from poor rural households in China overcome obstacles and harvest their educational dreams,” says SPICE Director Gary Mukai. “This grew into a REAP-SPICE collaborative, which has the goal of making REAP’s efforts and its many important lessons accessible to U.S. high school students through interactive, interdisciplinary activities.”

The partnership capitalizes on the strengths of both organizations, pairing REAP’s rigorous scholarship and field research in China with SPICE’s expertise in curriculum development. The resulting synergies are helping to refine China in Transition into a rich and dynamic resource for high school classrooms. 

Much of the research for China in Transition was gathered in Fall 2010 by an international team of students who participated in REAP’s “Across the Pacific” program (ATP). The “Across the Pacific” team—which comprised students from Stanford University and Chinese universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University—conducted academic and field research to investigate key topics in modern China (e.g., its shifting economy, urbanization, migration trends, education system) and produced a collection of original multimedia content that will be incorporated into the final publication. These teaching resources, created by U.S. and Chinese college students, will soon be used to build cross-cultural understanding among high school students. 

REAP and SPICE have worked in close consultation with each other throughout the curriculum development process, and they continue to work together to produce the final curriculum unit, due to be published in Fall 2011.

The Center for International Security and Cooperation is pleased to welcome Dr. Amy Zegart as an affiliated faculty member at CISAC in conjunction with her position as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Zegart comes to Stanford after serving as professor of public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S. national security policy, U.S. intelligence, global studies, and public policy. She has won three UCLA teaching awards, including the 2010 Outstanding Public Policy Professor of the Year for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Zegart has been featured by The National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. Her research examines the organizational deficiencies of American national security agencies. Her first book, Flawed By Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC, which chronicled the politics of bureaucratic design of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council, won the American Political Science Association's Leonard D. White Dissertation Award and has become standard reading for several U.S. military and intelligence training programs.

Her second book, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, which examined why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism before 9/11, won the 2008 Louis Brownlow Book Award, the top literary prize given by the National Academy of Public Administration for outstanding contributions to the field.

She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and other leading academic journals.

Zegart served on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council staff. She has testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provided intelligence training to the Marine Corps and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and was a member of The National Academics of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis.  

She currently serves on the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association National Advisory Board, the Los Angeles Police Department's Counter-terrorism and Community Police Advisory Board, and advises local, state, and federal officials on intelligence and homeland security matters.

She will arrive at Stanford on June 17.  

"What if we offered a prayer for the soul of bin Laden?" The question was tossed into the meeting of the February 20 Movement like a hand grenade. But the young men and women gathered in the Moroccan Labor Union building in Rabat didn't duck for cover. Instead, they angrily challenged the questioner, a bearded, middle-aged man representing the Islamist prisoners who have joined from behind the bars with the secular youth movement calling for greater freedoms. "Are you out of your mind?" asked one young man. "Just because we defend you people against torture, it doesn't mean we support terrorism. Don't you impose your creepy agenda on us."

The bearded man beat a hasty retreat. "No problem, let's just do a regular prayer," he said. "We're all Muslims, aren't we?"

The meeting had been held to discuss plans for protest outside the infamous Temara detention center, located in a cork-oak forest near Rabat, where terrorism suspects have been tortured, according to Amnesty International. The Islamist may have thought he could set the agenda: after all, his kind had for decades been the only antimonarchy group of any consequence. But as he discovered, change has come to Morocco.

It must annoy the Islamists that the shots are being called by these new kids on the block — and that their vibrant activism is shaking up the monarchy in ways the Islamists have consistently failed to for more than 30 years. The kids scored their first big success on Feb. 20, when tens of thousands of Moroccans hit the streets of more than 50 towns and cities, demanding change. The protests had been organized by young independent activists responding to calls made on Facebook.

Since that date — so glorious that the youth movement was named after it — hundreds of thousands have demonstrated, at least once a week. The pressure has already compelled King Mohammed VI to promise constitutional reforms, to devolve some of his absolute powers to the elected government. But many young Moroccans want the king to "reign, not rule." The political arm wrestling with the monarchy continues.

But many young Moroccans want the king to "reign, not rule."

The Islamists, long thought to have the only grass-roots organization, had no choice but to line up behind the Feb. 20 banner. But the youth set stringent conditions: they would tolerate no Islamic signs or banners, no chants of "Allahu akbar" (God is great), and no segregation of the sexes. It was a revolution within a revolution.

Not so long ago, the Islamists were condemning as apostates some of the same youth leaders. In 2009, they launched a Facebook group calling for a public daytime meal during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims can eat only before dawn and after dusk. The objective: to "open a debate on freedom of conscience." Predictably, a national scandal ensued. But this was not an isolated instance of iconoclastic behavior. For several years, groups of Moroccans have been using the power of social media — as well as the ability to attract the conventional media — to clamor for the freedom of belief, sexual liberty (notably for gays) and other individual freedoms that had until then been unthinkable.

The country's conservative majority was suitably horrified, but the young activists were able to rally growing constituencies among human-rights advocates, leftist groups and the middle-class youth. Even so, the core group of renegades continued to be perceived as little more than a bunch of crazy kids — until they and their sympathizers spearheaded the most powerful wave of change since the kingdom's independence, half a century ago.

What are the kids going to do with their newfound status? Nizar Bennamate, a leader of the Feb. 20 Rabat group, says some of their more envelope-pushing demands will have to wait for another day. "For now, democracy is our priority battle," he told me. Fair enough. But sooner or later, this battle will come to a close: Morocco's authoritarian system will irrevocably change, for that is the direction of history. When that day comes, Islamists and secularists will face off for a new fight over the soul of the new Morocco.

Who will win? That's hard to predict. But the secular youth have done well to position themselves as the leaders of the antigovernment protests. That planned demonstration at the Temara detention center was brutally broken up by police: 16 protesters were taken to the hospital, but the others reconvened in Rabat's city center to keep protesting. Nobody's calling them the crazy kids anymore.

Stanford seniors Jaclyn Tandler and Varun Sivaram have been awarded the The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and The William J. Perry Prize, respectively, for their theses on France's nuclear export policy and the U.S. military's approach to solar energy.

Both recipients are members of the Center for International Security and Cooperation's Undergraduate Honors Program in International Security Studies.

Tandler, an international relations major, wrote "Let Them Eat Yellow Cake: Understanding the History of France's Sensitive Nuclear Export Policy." After graduating from Stanford, she will begin work at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a junior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program.

Sivaram, an engineering physics and international relations major, wrote "Sunny Side Up: Characterizing the U.S. Military's Approach to Solar Energy Policy." He will be attending Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship next year, studying toward a PhD in physics.

The Firestone Medal recognizes the top 10 percent of all honors theses in social science, science, and engineering. The Perry Prize is awarded to a student for excellence in policy-relevant research in international security studies. 

The Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies (IPS), a joint undertaking of the Freeman Spogli Institute and the School of Humanities & Sciences, is training the next generation of policy experts and leaders. In their second year of the two–year master’s program, students take a two-quarter practicum course, working in teams to conduct policy analyses for real-world client organizations. Read about their demanding projects and findings.


Judicial Performance (California Commission on Judicial Performance)
This report analyzed judicial discipline cases in California between 1990 and 2009 using data collected by the California Commission on Judicial Performance. The purpose of the report was to inform the public about the incidence of misconduct and help the public understand the disciplinary process. The report concluded that the number of disciplinary actions per judge has fallen in the last decade, as compared with the previous ten years.  

Policies to Improve Industrial Competitiveness (World Bank)
This report researched how countries can select Policies to Increase Industrial Competitiveness (PIIC) using case studies and the development of an analytic process for government use in selecting specific industries to support. The analytic process showed that cooperation between the public and private sectors is crucial in policymakers’ ability to select the most beneficial competitiveness policy measures.

Sunni Militancy In India (U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency)
This report analyzed Sunni militancy in India by identifying major Sunni groups, their ideologies, root causes and recent trends.  Utilizing a quantitative overview of Sunni terrorism incidents and deaths, profiles of militant groups, and social network analysis of connections between groups, the report found that the most active and violent Sunni militant groups are related to Pakistan or to the long-running conflict between Pakistan and India in Kashmir.

“The chance to tackle complex, real world policy problems and propose solutions to clients is invaluable for our students as they prepare for their careers” says Kathryn Stoner, Director of IPS and FSI senior fellow.  “It’s one more way that our program bridges theory and practice.”
Rare Earth (Breakthrough Institute and Bay Area Council)
This report examined concerns about domestic shortages of rare earth elements, critical in the production of many clean-tech products.  The report confirmed that China controls a large share of rare earth deposits and production, but found that market forces should increase U.S. production levels in the long run.  The report recommends that the United States accelerate permitting for domestic production and pursue agreements with other rare earth suppliers to mitigate the impact of China's current dominance.

Going Forward: Gas Tax and VMTs (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
This report considered the under-funding of the U.S. transportation system, focusing on two ways to generate revenue—the federal gas tax and a prospective vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee. In the long term, introducing fees-per-mile would generate more revenue than increasing fees-per-gallon. Under both proposals, lower income consumers would pay proportionately more, although the difference in distributional impact is minimal for most policy options under consideration.

Fiscal Responsibility Index (Comeback America Initiative/Peterson Foundation)
This project developed a simple, comprehensive analytic tool and framework, called the Fiscal Responsibility Index, to assess sovereign fiscal responsibility and sustainability. The index was designed to illustrate where the United States is, where it is headed, and how it compares with other nations in the area of fiscal responsibility and sustainability. The U.S. ranks near the bottom when compared with 33 OECD and BRIC nations.