Stanford University

Culture

Catalonia: Cultural Policy and Global Nation

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Joan Manuel Tresserras i Gaju was born in Rubí in 1955.

He holds a PhD in Information Sciences. He is a professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB, specialising in the history of communication, analysis of the information society, the study of cultural industries and mass culture. He has also taught about cultural management, political communication, communication policies and media analysis.

He received a summa cum laude Doctorate in Information Sciences (1988-89), the award for research into Mass Communication of the Generalitat de Catalunya (1989), and the Joan Fuster essay award (1994). Among others publications, he has written 'El Regne del Subjecte' (1987) and 'Cultura de masses i postmodernitat' (1994) which he co-wrote with Enric Marín, 'D'Ací i D'Allà, aparador de la modernitat' (1993) and 'La gènesi de la societat de masses a Catalunya' 1888-1939 (1999) which he co-wrote with Francesc Espinet. He has written some fifty academic articles and texts on social communication and has co-written the reports on 'Seguiment de L'impacte social de les noves tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació', sponsored by the Fundació Bofill, and has written 'Un segle de recerca sobre comunicació a Catalunya'. He coordinated the "Cultura" blog of the Informe per a la Catalunya del 2000 (1999).

He was the director of the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB (1991-1993) and coordinator of the degree in Journalism at the UAB (1997-1999). He was a member of the Institutional Advertising Advisory Committee of the Generalitat (1998-1999), a director of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (2000), director of the Catalan Audiovisual Council in charge of research, studies and publications (2000-2006), chairman of the Board for Diversity in the Audiovisual Media (2005-2006) and member of the Mixed Commission for State-Generalitat Transfers (2004-2006). He is vice-president of the Catalan Communication Society, a subsidiary of the Catalan Studies Institute.

CISAC Conference Room

Joan Manuel Tresserras i Gaju Counselor of Culture and the Media, Government of Catalonia Speaker
Seminars

Perverse Prosperos and Cruel Calibans: The (Con)text of Portuguese Postcolonial Positionality

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Phillip Rothwell is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He received a BA (Honors) in Math/Spanish and Portuguese/Phonetics, a MA (2000) and a PhD (2000), all from the University of Cambridge, UK. His areas of specialization are literatures and cultures of Lusophone Africa and Portugal.

Dr. Rothwell is the author and editor of numerous books, reviews, translations, and articles, including “A Postmodern Nationalist: Truth, Orality, and Gender in the Work of Mia Couto”. Bucknell & U.P. (2004); “Fuzzy Frontiers - Mozambique: False Borders, Mia Cuoto: False Margins” Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies. Fall (1998); “A Tale of Two Tensions: Synthesis and Separation in Portuguese National Identity” Forum for Modern Language Studies. April (2000); “Shit, Shrimps, and Shifting Soubriquets: Iracema and the Lesson in Lost Authority” Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies. May (2001); “The Phylomorphic Linguistic Tradition: Or, The Siege of (the) Portuguese in Mozambique” Hispanic Research Journal. June (2001). His most recent book is A Canon of Empty Fathers: Paternity in Portuguese Narrative (Bucknell University Press, 2007).
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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Phillip Rothwell Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Speaker Rutgers University
Seminars

Emerging Superpowers: Influence and Supremacy in the 21st Century

The landscape of world power has evolved dramatically since the end of the cold war. What nations are considered “up and comers” in the 21st century? What are the key elements in the making of a current “superpower”? In addition to military power, nuclear capabilities and forms of government, how will population, human rights, education, religion and culture factor into the equation? Michael McFaul, William Perry, Stephen Stedman address these questions and discuss the role of the U.S., as well as implications to our international security, relations, and policies. Robert Joss, Stanford Graduate School of Business dean, moderates.

Seattle, WA

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
mcfaul_headshot_2025.jpg PhD

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

International Working Group on Russian Sanctions

The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Michael McFaul Speaker
William Perry Speaker

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Conferences

The Legacy of Liberalism in Mexico: Some tension with North American (Rawlsian) liberalism

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According to a common view in Mexico today, the attempt to transform Mexican political institutions according to liberal values since the nineteenth century has been a complete failure. On this view, the reasons for this failure are, primarily, that liberal values and ideas were “foreign” and “imported”, such that they could hardly have taken root in a society that had recently emerged from three centuries of colonial rule and was, therefore, backwards and “traditional”. Scholars often complain that liberals failed to realize the values of freedom and equality, that there is no rule of law, no public culture of toleration, and no effective enforcement of fundamental individual rights either civil or political.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Faviola Rivera Castro Visiting Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center and Philosophy Speaker Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

The Laws of Others: Three Constitutionalist Responses to Interdependence

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Jan-Werner Mueller's research interests include the history of modern political thought, liberalism and its critics, nationalism, and the normative dimensions of European integration.

He is the author of A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale University Press, 2003; German, French, Japanese, and Chinese translations) and Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale University Press, 2000). In addition, he has edited German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave, 2003) and Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2002). His book Constitutional Patriotism is published by Princeton UP in 2007.

He has been a fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, the Remarque Institute, NYU. and the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence; he has also taught as a visiting professor at the EHESS, Paris.  He serves on the editorial boards of the European Journal of Political Theory, the Journal of Contemporary History, and Raison Publique: Revue Internationale de Philosophie Pratique et Appliquée.

Co-sponsored with the Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop in Global Justice and the Forum on Contemporary Europe at Stanford

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Jan-Werner Mueller Speaker Dept of Politics, Princeton University
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Islamist Terrorism and Antisemitism: The Mission against Modernity

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Matthias Küntzel, born in 1955, is a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany. He has served as senior advisor for the German Green Party caucus in the the Bundestag and is currently a Research Associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Küntzel's essays have been published in The New Republic, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Telos. His most recent book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, published by Telos Press,won the 2007 London Book Festival Grand Prize.

In this lecture, Dr. Kuentzel examines an understudied legacy of the Nazi past, the transfer of the ideology of European antisemitism into the Arab world and its role in the formation of contemporary terrorism.

 

Event Synopsis:

Dr. Kuentzel begins his talk by recounting widespread celebrations within some Palestinian communities after the March 2008 killing of 15 young Jewish students by a Palestinian. He shows a video of a sermon from a mosque in Gaza in 2005 which praises the murders. Kuentzel rejects common arguments that the celebrations represent a desire for revenge on Israel for Palestinian deaths since 1948. Instead, he asserts that the incident shows that Islamists are obsessed by genocidal anti-Semitism, which has been influenced by and can be compared to European and Nazi anti-Semitism, both of which he sees as attempts to answer the success of liberal capitalism.

His talk follows the outline of his recent book, and covers four topics:

  1. The birth of Islamism

When the Muslim Brotherhood was established as a mass movement in 1928, it aimed to replace a parliamentary system with a caliphate, emphasizing a return to the roots of Islam. By 1948, the group had 1 million members in Egypt alone. A form of populist Islam, it invoked jihad as a means of establishing Sharia law, and focused its efforts almost entirely against Jews, drawing on both early Islamic thought and Nazism.

  1. Jew hatred as related to the hatred of modernity

Kuentzel sees Islamist anti-Semitism as closely tied to a fear of modernity. In this sense Jews are seen as representing the most threatening aspects of modernity including gender equality, freedom of thought, and individualism.

  1. Islamism and national socialism

Kuentzel draws ties between Islamism and the ideology of national socialism embodied by the Nazi party. He describes a Nazi radio station which broadcast Arabic language programming between 1945 and 1949. The programs emphasized religious identity of Muslims, utilized popular broadcasters, and were professionally produced with strong transmission signals, making them popular and widely accessible.

  1. Present day Islamism and anti-Semitism

Dr. Kuentzel asserts that Nazi ideology persisted in parts of Europe after 1945, and that when the Cold War emerged as the prominent political and economic feature of the era, it obscured/overshadowed the continuation of national socialist thought.

Finally, Dr. Kuentzel offers his views of both Islamism and anti-Semitism today, and concludes that the incidents like the one described at the beginning of his talk represent a revival of Nazi ideology "in new garb." He credits Muslims such as scholar Bassam Tibi who urge tolerance and speak out against anti-Semitism.

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CISAC Conference Room

Matthias Kuentzel Author and political scientist Speaker
Seminars

Rediscovery of India by the American Academy

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In the past decade, academia has experienced a remarkable revival of interest in India. This is largely based on the perception of India emerging as a significant global economic power.

However, there is a non-economic reason as well. The sons and daughters of America's highly educated and prosperous Indian-American community drive this second reason. These students are eager to learn about the culture, religion, literature, and the languages of their parents' and grandparents' homeland.

Goldman will discuss these interesting trends in an effort to contextualize the state of Indian Studies in American higher education today.

Professor Goldman is professor of Sanskrit at UC-Berkeley. His areas of scholarly interest include Sanskrit literature and literary theory, Indian epic studies, and psychoanalytically oriented cultural studies. Goldman's work has been recognized widely, having been awarded several fellowships and research awards. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Philippines Conference Room

Robert P. Goldman Professor of Sanskrit Speaker University of California-Berkeley
Lectures
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