Stanford University

Culture

Latvia in Crisis: Where is a Way Out of It?

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Latvia is a country that has come through a crisis before; can it do it again? Professor Stranga examines the current crisis in Latvia, a country much evolved over the past 50 years. He focuses on a variety of social, economic, and political factors in assessing how Latvia can move forward.

Synopsis

Prof. Stranga begins by examining what he calls Latvia’s “first great crisis” from 1929-1933. At the time, Latvia was a democracy, a member of the League of Nations, but critically had no security guarantees and was stuck between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Prof. Stranga explains that this crisis was overcome by the dictatorship of Karlis Ulmanis, whose regime lasted from 1934 until the Nazi occupation. Those years were seen as the ‘Golden Years,’ times of economic flourishing and national freedom from occupation. Prof. Stranga reveals this period had long lasting effects on the national psyche of Latvia.

To Prof. Stranga, Latvia is in a very different situation today. He argues that these are times of very limited sovereignty, particularly for his country. Prof. Stranga explains that this is mainly due to Latvia’s dependence on the EU, NATO, and the IMF which provide economic and military security. Prof. Stranga identifies the effects of Karlis Ulmanis’ regime as the perception in Latvia that a ‘strong man’ is needed to guide Latvia out of its current crisis. However, the necessity for Latvia to remain a democracy is made clear by the help it receives from the organizations mentioned above.

Although the help is clearly needed, Prof. Stranga feels that its consequences are often very painful. The IMF’s conditions for essentially saving Latvia’s economy include cutbacks in medical assistance and a reduction of teachers and schools, facets of public life deeply engrained in Latvia’s culture. In addition, Prof. Stranga examines the question of energy security. He looks particularly at Latvia’s absolute dependence on Russia exhibited by the fact that Gazprom’s first foreign office is in Latvia, and the fact that this has perhaps hindered Latvia’s progress.

At the same time, it seems clear that Prof. Stranga sees this crisis also as an opportunity. Firstly, he argues that now is probably the time to not be shy but to look for alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy, something Prof. Stranga further discussed when answering questions. Moreover, Prof. Stranga believes there are too many bureaucratic positions, and the crisis is an opportunity to cut these off and direct funding elsewhere. In addition, he feels the crisis is a chance to reconstruct exports. In particular, Prof. Stranga would like to see Latvia leaning more towards innovation rather than timber or agriculture. Finally, Prof. Stranga addresses Latvia’s issue of an internally divided society, particularly between Latvians and Russian speakers. He analyzes Latvian Russians’ diminishing impact as Russia’s economy falters but also expresses concern at the fact that Russian influence in Latvia seems to be heavily dependent on Russia’s economic state.

Prof. Stranga kindly takes the time to briefly answer a few questions and raises several issues in the process. Prof. Stranga cites Latvia's population reduction as perhaps the "greatest" problem it faces. However, he feels reassured by the help of the friendly states of Scandinavia and other organizations across the world. At the same time, Prof. Stranga explains such organizations are not having an entirely positive impact. In particular, he argues against the "inhuman" approach of solely focusing on cutting back capital of the IMF which he feels is an assault on Latvian life.

About the speaker

Aivars Stranga is professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Latvia. He is the author of seven monographs and more than 150 scholarly and general publications on Latvian domestic and foreign policy andinternational relations between 1918 and 1940, and Latvian foreign policy from 1991 to 2000. Professor Stranga was a distinguished visiting professor at Stanford in 2003, teaching courses on Baltic History and the History of the Holocaust in the Baltics.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of History, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Aivars Stranga Professor of History Speaker University of Latvia
Seminars

The Lady with the White Suitcase: Regarding an Exhibition about Nelly Sachs, and Some Reflections Concerning Her Collected Works

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Currently teaching at the Peter Szondi Institute for Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, Swedish writer and scholar Aris Fioretos is editing a three-volume edition of the works of Nelly Sachs for Suhrkamp Verlag, scheduled to appear simultaneously with the opening of an exhibition about Sachs's life and work at the Jewish Museum in Berlin in May 2010.

Aris Fioretos studied at Stockholm, Paris, and Yale universities. Since 1991, he has published over a dozen books - novels, prose poetry, and essays. He has also edited several academic volumes and translated the works of Paul Auster, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Vladimir Nabokov into Swedish. A past counsellor of culture at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin, he is the recipient of several prizes and awards, most recently from the Swedish Academy, the American Academy in Berlin, and All Souls College, Oxford. His most recent publication is the essay collection Das Maß eines Fußes (Hanser Verlag, 2008). In the fall, a new novel will appear.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporay Europe, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Department of German Studies, and Stanford Humanities Center.

Levinthal Hall

Aris Fioretos Author Speaker
Lectures

The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa

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Nathan Nunn is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Professor Nunn was born in Canada, where he received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2005. Professor Nunn’s primary research interests are in international trade, economic development, and economic history. He is an Associate editor of the Journal of International Economics and an NBER Faculty Research Fellow.

One stream of Nunn’s research focuses on the relationship between historic events and current economic performance within Africa. In “Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa’s Past to its Current Underdevelopment”, published in the Journal of Development Economics in 2007, Nunn develops a game-theoretic model showing how the slave trade and colonial rule could have had permanent long-term effects on economic performance. In “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2008), Nunn documents the long-term adverse economic effects of Africa’s slave trades.

A second stream of Professor Nunn’s research focuses on the importance of hold-up and incomplete contracting in international trade. He has published research showing that a country’s ability to enforce written contracts is a key determinant of comparative advantage (“Relationship-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts and the Pattern of Trade”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007).

Summary of talk:

In his presentation "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa", Nathan Nunn offers an empirical investigation into the relationship between Africa's Slave Trade (1400 to 1900) and its culture of mistrust today. The project is an individual-level analysis of whether members of heavily enslaved ethnic groups in Africa display lower levels of trust today. The underlying argument posits that the slave trade created a culture of "enslave or be enslaved", where a non-trivial proportion of slaves were actually tricked and sold off into slavery by their own friends or family members. These conditions left a legacy of mistrust that has persisted to this day.

The empirical analysis relies on estimates of slave flows and records of slaves' ethnic membership. It also relies on 2003 Afrobarometer survey data to measure individual attitudes of trust toward neighbors, family members, local councilmen and co-ethnics in 17 sub-Saharan African countries. The results indicate a negative effect of Africa's slave trade on individual levels of trust: ethnic groups most affected by the slave trade are most likely to be distrusting today. The results further show that this occurs not through the effect the slave trade had on the locality in which the individual currently resides, but rather through the effect the slave trade had on that individual's ethnic ancestors.

» Paper: "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa" (pdf)

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Nathan Nunn Assistant Professor of Economics Speaker Harvard University
Seminars
Human Trafficking

"That Extra Something": A Reading by Aris Fioretos

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Please join the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of German Studies for a reading and discussion of The Truth About Sascha Knisch by author Aris Fioretos.

A "biological thriller" set in the underworlds of Weimar Berlin, Aris Fioretos's The Truth about Sascha Knisch (Jonathan Cape, 2006; Overlook 2008) deals with the so-called "sexual question," its lures and seductiveness, dangers and temptations, but also with the shrewd love between two young people in a Germany at the brink of disaster.

 

Aris Fioretos studied at Stockholm, Paris, and Yale universities. Since 1991, he has published over a dozen books - novels, prose poetry, and essays. He has also edited several academic volumes and translated the works of Paul Auster, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Vladimir Nabokov into Swedish. A past counsellor of culture at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin, he is the recipient of several prizes and awards, most recently from the Swedish Academy, the American Academy in Berlin, and All Souls College, Oxford. His most recent publication is the essay collection Das Maß eines Fußes (Hanser Verlag, 2008). In the fall, a new novel will appear.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporay Europe, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Department of German Studies.

Building 260, Room 252 (German Studies Library)
Stanford University

Aris Fioretos Author Speaker
Conferences

Human Rights for the 21st Century: Sovereignty, Civil Society, Culture

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A new moral, ethical, and legal framework is needed for international human rights law. Never in human history has there been such an elaborate international system for human rights, yet from massive disasters, such as the Darfur genocide, to everyday tragedies, such as female genital mutilation, human rights abuses continue at an alarming rate. As the world population increases and global trade brings new wealth as well as new problems, international law can and should respond better to those who live in fear of violence, neglect, or harm.

Modern critiques global human rights fall into three categories: sovereignty, culture, and civil society. These are not new problems, but have long been debated as part of the legal philosophical tradition. Taking lessons from tradition and recasting them in contemporary light, Helen Stacy proposes new approaches to fill the gaps in current approaches: relational sovereignty, reciprocal adjudication, and regional human rights. She forcefully argues that law and courts must play a vital role in forging a better human rights vision in the future.

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CISAC Conference Room

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow Speaker CDDRL
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Defeating Islamist Radicalism: Building a Global Counter-extremism Network

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C. Holland Taylor is an expert on Islam and the process of Islamization in Southeast Asia, having lived, studied and worked in the Muslim world, from Iran to Indonesia, over a period of more than four decades.  

Mr. Taylor established LibForAll Foundation (www.libforall.org) in 2003, together with former Indonesian president Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, whom the Wall Street Journal has called "the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world" and "easily the most important ally the West has in the ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism." Under their leadership, LibForAll has grown into the leading NGO developing and operationalizing successful counter-extremism strategies worldwide.

Their inspiration lay in the heroic example of President Wahid's own 16th century Javanese ancestors, whose deft use of soft and hard power defeated Muslim extremists, and guaranteed freedom of religion for all Javanese, two centuries before the Bill of Rights led to the separation of church and state in the U.S.

Based on lessons derived from this struggle, LibForAll is forging a Global Rahmatan lil ‘Alamin ("Blessing for All Creation") Counter-Extremism Network of top Muslim opinion leaders in the fields of religion, education, pop culture, government, business and the media, who are joining to proclaim, with one voice, that radical Islam has no theological validity, and thereby mobilize the "great silent majority" of moderate, peace-loving Muslims to reject the extremists' ideology of hatred and violence. 

This strategy has resulted in a number of world-class achievements, causing Wall Street Journal foreign columnist Bret Stephens to proclaim: "LibForAll is a model of what a competent public diplomacy effort in the Muslim world should look like."

In his presentation, Mr. Taylor will explain key elements of LibForAll's ground-breaking strategy and present examples of world class achievements, including: a "musical jihad" against religious hatred and terrorism; development of the first part of a unique 26-episode counter-extremism television/video series (Ocean of Revelation); and convening an historic religious summit where top Muslim leaders condemned the evils of Holocaust denial - generating worldwide publicity that effectively countered the December 2006 Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.

Mr. Taylor's work with LibForAll follows a career as a successful entrepreneur and global telecom executive, during which he served as CEO of USA Global Link, and was credited by numerous leading publications as one of the essential catalysts in the deregulation of the global telecommunications industry.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

C. Holland Taylor Chairman and CEO Speaker LibForAll Foundation
Seminars

The Tamogami Affair: History and Security in Northeast Asia

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Reckoning with the Past:  Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Asia

Is it possible to come to terms with the violent past and foster reconciliation with former foes, what are the obstacles and how can they be overcome? These are some of the questions we are asking in the "Divided Memories and Reconciliation" project. This colloquia will bring several scholars to Stanford to discuss the ‘history problem' in a series of lectures analyzing the ways in which past conflict has or has not been addressed and resolved in contemporary Asia. Examining issues of memory and forgetting, guilt and innocence, apology and restitution from diverse social science perspectives, our speakers investigate the handling of the violent past both within and between countries in contexts ranging from international diplomacy to the broadcast media to mass education.

In November of 2008, the head of the Japanese air self defense force, General Tamogami Toshio, resigned in a swirl of controversy over an essay he wrote entitled "Was Japan An Aggressor Nation?" The essay argued that Japan's seizure of Korea and of northern China was a legal act and that it had pursued a moderate policy of modernization in its colonial rule of Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria, superior to the colonial rule of the Western imperial  powers. General Tamogami also argued, in his published essay, that Japan's war with the United States was a result of being "ensnared in a trap that was carefully laid by the United States to draw Japan into a war." What is the story behind this controversial incident? What does it mean when a senior Japanese military officer holds such views of the wartime past? What are the implications of this for Japan's security relations with its neighbors and the United States?

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Daniel C. Sneider

Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Lecturer in International Policy at the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy
2011_Dan_Sneider_2_Web.jpg MA

Daniel C. Sneider is a lecturer in international policy at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford. His own research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea.  Since 2017, he has been based partly in Tokyo as a Visiting Researcher at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, where he is working on a diplomatic history of the creation and management of the U.S. security alliances with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Sneider contributes regularly to the leading Japanese publication Toyo Keizai as well as to the Nelson Report on Asia policy issues.

Sneider is the former Associate Director for Research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. At Shorenstein APARC, Sneider directed the center’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory in East Asia. He is the co-author of a book on wartime memory and elite opinion, Divergent Memories, from Stanford University Press. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, of Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, from Routledge and of Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, from University of Washington Press.

Sneider was named a National Asia Research Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2010. He is the co-editor of Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, distributed by Brookings Institution Press, 2007; of First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier, 2009; as well as of Does South Asia Exist?: Prospects for Regional Integration, 2010. Sneider’s path-breaking study “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan” appeared in the July 2011 issue of Asia Policy. He has also contributed to other volumes, including “Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era” in Towards Sustainable Economic and Security Relations in East Asia: U.S. and ROK Policy Options, Korea Economic Institute, 2008; “The History and Meaning of Denuclearization,” in William H. Overholt, editor, North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2019; and “Evolution or new Doctrine? Japanese security policy in the era of collective self-defense,” in James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston, eds, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, December 2017.

Sneider’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, National Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Oriental Economist, Newsweek, Time, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Yale Global. He is frequently cited in such publications.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Sneider was a long-time foreign correspondent. His twice-weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News looking at international issues and national security from a West Coast perspective was syndicated nationally on the Knight Ridder Tribune wire service. Previously, Sneider served as national/foreign editor of the Mercury News. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, covering the end of Soviet Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1985 to 1990, he was Tokyo correspondent for the Monitor, covering Japan and Korea. Prior to that he was a correspondent in India, covering South and Southeast Asia. He also wrote widely on defense issues, including as a contributor and correspondent for Defense News, the national defense weekly.

Sneider has a BA in East Asian history from Columbia University and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Daniel Sneider Speaker
Seminars
Reckoning with the Past: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Asia
Divided Memories and Reconciliation
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