Stanford Launches International Initiative with $94 Million in Gifts
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Stanford University President John Hennessy launched a wide-ranging International Initiative on Thursday and announced corresponding gifts of nearly $100 million to provide resources and expertise in the quest to help solve some of the most daunting global issues of the century.
Stanford alumni Bradford Freeman and Ronald Spogli, business partners and friends for more than 25 years, have committed a lead gift of $50 million to the new initiative.
"The world's problems-international peace and security, global health, poverty-present themselves in the form of challenges that defy traditional rubrics," Hennessy said. "By unifying and strengthening our efforts in the area of international affairs, we affirm that Stanford has a special role to play in addressing these issues and providing real-world solutions."
Hennessy praised the leadership of Spogli and Freeman for jump-starting the initiative with their gift.
"Brad and Ron are true friends of the university," Hennessy said. "Their philanthropy stands for much more, however, than loyalty to their alma mater. It recognizes the magnitude of what is at stake and acknowledges the responsibility Stanford must assume to advance knowledge in the area of international affairs."
Freeman ('64) and Spogli ('70) are founding partners of the Los Angeles-based investment firm Freeman Spogli & Co. Freeman is a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees; Spogli is a member of the board of visitors of the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS).
"We are very pleased to support the International Initiative and enable the Stanford Institute for International Studies to enhance its focus on key issues and challenges of our times," said Freeman and Spogli.
The lead gift will create up to 10 interdisciplinary professorships and endow the directorship of the Stanford Institute for International Studies. Together with an allocation from the Office of the President, it also will create a $3 million intellectual venture-capital fund to support innovative, interdisciplinary research and teaching in international studies at Stanford. In addition, the gift will support the work of the institute's centers and programs and stimulate collaborations between and among the institute, Stanford's seven schools and the Hoover Institution.
Key Stanford donors have contributed an additional $44 million to meet important objectives of the International Initiative:
Craig ('73) and Susan ('84) McCaw will provide critically important need-based scholarship support for international undergraduate students, which President Hennessy recently articulated as a high university priority.
An anonymous donor has pledged a gift to the Graduate School of Business (GSB) to support its Center for Global Business and the Economy and the institute. The gift will strengthen campus-wide collaborations for the initiative, particularly involving the GSB.
Susan Ford Dorsey has made a gift that will permit a substantial enhancement of the International Policy Studies master's program, to be operated jointly by SIIS and the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Longtime supporter Walter Shorenstein will endow the institute's Asia Pacific Research Center, to be named the Walter Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center.
"Thanks to this most generous gift from Brad Freeman and Ron Spogli as well as the contributions from several other farsighted friends of Stanford, the university stands ready to embark on a fundamentally new and very dynamic course in international research and education," said Coit D. Blacker, director of SIIS. "These gifts lay the groundwork for the transformation of international studies at Stanford. We are very excited about what Brad's and Ron's generosity will make possible at Stanford - and very grateful to them for this important vote of confidence in what we are seeking to accomplish."
Stanford's International Initiative will focus on three broad cross-cutting themes: pursuing peace and security in an insecure world; reforming and improving governance at all levels of society; and advancing human health and well being. The International Initiative follows recent multidisciplinary university initiatives in the biosciences and the environment.
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ITRI-SPRIE CONFERENCE: The Greater China Capital Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
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Among the different types of capital resources, venture capital as practiced in Silicon Valley is broadly acknowledged as being an important constituent of a high technology, entrepreneurial habitat. In the past two decades, policy makers from different regions have learned much from its experience.
The IT industry attributes its success partly to venture capital investments in early, risky, stages. Looking ahead, other industries will emerge in the knowledge economy. Within Taiwan and Mainland China, information related industries still dominate investment, yet in Silicon Valley emerging industries including biotechnology, medical instruments and nanotechnology have recently been attracting as much venture capital as the IT industry.
Today, venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and Taiwan are probing what they perceive as growing investment opportunities in Mainland China, On the other hand, the immaturity of its private equity market and the undeveloped state of exit mechanisms there is causing venture capitalists to hesitate to made large investments. Currently, Taiwan's venture capital faces low price-earnings ratios in its 1,400 publicly listed companies. This has contributed to a decline in VC investment. The Taiwan government expects to further liberalize the financing environment to bolster it as a regional center for domestic and international corporations.
This conference will address the influence of the system of capital on regional innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States, Taiwan, and Mainland China. The focus will be on the venture capital industry, corporate venturing and other institutions of capital related to regional industrial development.
Here are some questions to be addressed in this conference:
- What is the pattern of venture capital investing in high-tech start-ups in the Greater China Area?
- What are the trends in this industry?
- How, specifically, does venture capital promote innovation and entrepreneurship?
- What are the similarities among independent venture capital funds, corporate venture funds, angel funds, and commercial bank involvements?
Conference Organization
Conference Chairman
- Dr. Chintay Shih, Dean of College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, and Special Advisor, Industrial Technology Research Institute
Co-chairmen
- Dr. Paul Wang, Chairman, Taiwan Venture Capital Association
- Dr. Henry Rowen, Co-director, SPRIE
- Dr. William Miller, Co-director, SPRIE
Executive Director
- Dr. Sean Wang, Director General of Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center in Industrial Technology Research Institute
Conference Secretariat
- Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute (IEK/ITRI)
Conference Organizing Secretariat
- ITRI: Yi-Ling Wei, Peter Lai, Frank Lin, Shu-Chen Huang
- TVCA: Teresa Yang, Michael Chen, Riva Su
- SPRIE: Marguerite Gong Hancock (Stanford)/Martin Kenney (UC Davis)
Auditorium, The Grand Hotel,
1 Chung Shan N. Road, Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan
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SPRIE selects inaugural postdoctoral fellows for 2005-2006 academic year
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As part of a new initiative on Greater China, SPRIE has selected two outstanding young scholars as the inaugural SPRIE Fellows at Stanford for research and writing on Greater China and its role in the global knowledge economy. Xiaohong (Iris) Quan and Doug Fuller, from the University of California, Berkeley and MIT, respectively, will join the SPRIE research team for the 2005-2006 academic year.
The primary focus of the program is the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship and underlying contemporary political, economic, technological, and/or business factors in Greater China (including Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore). Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, university-industry linkages, globalization of R&D, venture capital industry development, networks and flows of managerial and technical leaders, and leading high technology clusters in Greater China. Industries of ongoing research at SPRIE include semiconductors, wireless, and software.
SPRIE Fellows at Stanford will be in residence for at least three academic quarters, beginning in fall 2005. Fellows take part in Center activities, including research forums, seminars, and workshops throughout the academic year, and will present their research findings in SPRIE seminars. They will also participate as members of SPRIE's team in its public and invitation-only seminars and workshops with academic, business, and government leaders. Fellows will also participate in the publication programs of SPRIE and APARC.
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Studying Islam, Strengthening The Nation
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It remains painfully true, more than three years after Sept. 11, that even highly educated Americans know little about the Arab Middle East. And it is embarrassing how little our universities have changed to educate our nation and train experts on the wider Middle East.
For believers in a good liberal arts education, it has long been a source of consternation that faculties in political science, history, economics and sociology lack scholars who know Arabic or Persian and understand Islam. Since Sept. 11 it has become clear that this abdication of responsibility is more than an educational problem: It also poses a threat to our national security.
The case for bolstering faculty and curriculum resources devoted to the Muslim Middle East is, of course, obvious from an educational perspective. The region is vast. Islam represents one of the world's great religions and provides not only an intellectual feast for comparative study in the social sciences and humanities but also an indispensable comparison and contrast for more familiar religions and ways of life. Particularly in the era of globalization and the information revolution, there is little excuse for universities' continuing to betray the liberal ideal of educating students in the ways of all people.
Our national security interest in this area should also be obvious. As in the Cold War, the war against Islamic extremism will not be won in months or years but in decades. And as in the Cold War, the non-military components of the war will play a crucial role.
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Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from India
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Professor Esther Duflo, co-founder of the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak as part of the CDDRL project on Women and Development. Her talk will focus on her research into women in Indian politics.
Encina Basement Conference Room
Esther Duflo
Professor of Economics
MIT
Conferences
Conference on Health, Demographics and Economic Development
The Conference on the Health, Demographics and Economic Development will take place on May 20-21, 2005 at the Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Stanford Institute for International Studies. This conference is organized by Peter Lorentzen and Romain Wacziarg.
The conference is organized around three themes:
1. The Demographic Transition and the Industrial Revolution
2. Health, Fertility, and Human Capital
3. The Effects of Health on Income and Growth: Micro and Macro Evidence.
Participants include: Manuel Amador (Stanford University), Javier Birchenall (UC Santa Barbara), Hoyt Bleakley (UC San Diego), David Bloom (Harvard University), Michele Boldrin (University of Minnesota), David Canning (Harvard University), Shankha Chakraborty (University of Oregon), Matthias Doepke (UCLA), Miriam Golden (UCLA), Larry Jones (University of Minnesota), Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan (University of Houston), Pete Klenow (Stanford University), Peter Lorentzen (Stanford University), Aprajit Mahajan (Stanford University), John McMillan (Stanford University), Rodrigo Soares (University of Maryland), Uwe Sunde (IZA Bonn), Michele Tertilt (Stanford University), Romain Wacziarg (Stanford University), and David Weil (Brown University).
TBA
Romain Wacziarg
UCLA Anderson School of Management
110 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles CA 90095-1481
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Associate Professor of Economics, UCLA Anderson School of Management
Romain Wacziarg is an associate professor of economics at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Previously, he was associate professor of economics at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. An expert on international political economy, he has focused mainly on international trade and its relationship with economic development. Most recently, he has published research on the relationship between openness to trade and economic growth, as well as on the effect of an open world-trade regime on incentives for geographic regions to secede. His other areas of recent focus include a study linking ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity with economic variables; a study evaluating the economic costs and benefits of political borders; and two studies evaluating the relationship between international trade and the rise and fall of industries.
Wacziarg is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a faculty fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development, and he was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2002-2003. He grew up in India and France and has worked as a consultant to the World Bank. He received his undergraduate degree from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, an MA from the University of Paris-Dauphine and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Europe Center Research Affiliate
Peter Lorentzen
Speaker
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Energy Policy publishes paper by PESD researchers
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Energy Policy, one of the world's leading journals on issues related to energy economics and politics, has published an article by PESD researchers Chi Zhang, Michael May, and Thomas Heller this March documenting how changing incentives for power producers in three provinces have affected the types of plants built and operated, and the implications of those changes for emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
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Globalization of Services: the First Annual Conference
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The offshoring of service provision is rapidly becoming the next stage in globalization. As in any new emerging trend, there are new business and investment opportunities emerging. However, remarkably little is known about the scope of the phenomenon and what is happening in the leading corporations and the new business models entrepreneurs are introducing.
On June 17, 2005, Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center is organizing a one-day seminar partially sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and others on the globalization of services. The presentations will be made by international and U.S. industry leaders and entrepreneurs describing their offshore service activities and leading academic researchers studying offshoring.
The conference will (1) Compare outsourcing locally and globally, examining differences that arise from differences in skills, institutions, regulations, technologies, process and coordination requirements, (2) Take a global view of the value-chain, examining the quantity and quality of skills in service delivery, migration and process management, verticals, and the impact on ownership structures and complexity of work done. (3) Examine the roles of cross-border participants: venture capital, product developers, etc..
Speakers will include representatives of established outsourcers from India, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines and the U.S., established multinationals that offshore work to their own subsidiaries, startups and niche firms that do cross-border work, providers of the supporting infrastructure banks, venture capitalists, law firms, etc. Academicians from Oxford University, Stanford University, the University of California and other academic bodies will also participate.
Case studies and academic papers on outsourcing/offshoring to be presented at the conference:
- Trade Finance (DSL)
- UK HR industry (Oxford University)
- Software and chip design (Tensilica)
- Software application services (TCS)
- Back-office finance & accounts (Agilent)
- Call Center/Multiple Services Firms (TRG, PLDT, I-OneSource, IT United)
- HR development for US firms undertaking Indian operations (Globalex)
- Legal aspects of establishing Indian operations (Thakker and Thakker)
- Network management (GTL)
- Enterprise software as a service (Ketera)
- HR and value-addition (Stanford University/UC Davis)
- Applying process and technology for value-addition (Gecis)
- Managing inhouse work (IBM Daksh)
- Transitioning outsourcing from the US to India (e4e)
Bechtel Conference Center
Rafiq Dossani
No longer in residence.
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PhD
Rafiq Dossani was a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and erstwhile director of the Stanford Center for South Asia. His research interests include South Asian security, government, higher education, technology, and business.
Dossani’s most recent book is Knowledge Perspectives of New Product Development, co-edited with D. Assimakopoulos and E. Carayannis, published in 2011 by Springer. His earlier books include Does South Asia Exist?, published in 2010 by Shorenstein APARC; India Arriving, published in 2007 by AMACOM Books/American Management Association (reprinted in India in 2008 by McGraw-Hill, and in China in 2009 by Oriental Publishing House); Prospects for Peace in South Asia, co-edited with Henry Rowen, published in 2005 by Stanford University Press; and Telecommunications Reform in India, published in 2002 by Greenwood Press. One book is under preparation: Higher Education in the BRIC Countries, co-authored with Martin Carnoy and others, to be published in 2012.
Dossani currently chairs FOCUS USA, a non-profit organization that supports emergency relief in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2010, he was a trustee of Hidden Villa, a non-profit educational organization in the Bay Area. He also serves on the board of the Industry Studies Association, and is chair of the Industry Studies Association Annual Conference for 2010–12.
Earlier, Dossani worked for the Robert Fleming Investment Banking group, first as CEO of its India operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He also previously served as the chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI stock exchange in India, as the deputy editor of Business India Weekly, and as a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University.
Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.
Senior Research Scholar
Executive Director, South Asia Initiative
Conferences
SIIS International Day: Challenges in a New Era
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On May 6, 2005, Stanford IIS will be hosting a full day conference of speeches, discussions, and interaction on critical international issues.
After welcoming remarks from Stanford University President John Hennessy, Hans Blix, Chairman, Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, will speak on the risks of a new nuclear arms race, followed by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics, Oxford, who will discuss issues of governance and democracy. Luncheon speaker Philip Zelikow, Counselor of the Department of State and former Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, will speak on The United States and the World, while dinner speaker Samuel R. Berger, Chairman of Stonebridge International and former National Security Advisor, will speak on U.S. foreign policy.
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