Stanford University

Civil Islam Revisited: Prospects and Meanings of Muslim Democracy

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Civil Islam - Beyond the Headlines

A lecture and three seminars by Robert W. Hefner, 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC and Professor of Anthropology, Boston University

April 28 - May 1, 2008

Media coverage of Islam and Muslims, especially since 9/11, has featured violence and the threat of violence. In his opening lecture and three seminars to follow, Prof. Hefner will explore a different reality "beyond the headlines." Is there a "civil Islam"? Are Islam and democracy compatible? Is "Islamism" always radical, or can it be democratic? How does Muslim schooling affect the answers to these questions? Prof. Hefner will also look beyond the media's focus on the Middle East to examine the interactions between Islam, Muslims, and democracy in Southeast Asia.

The evening program on Monday, April 28 with Dr. Hefner will begin with a public reception at 6:15 p.m.

The lecture will begin at 7:00 p.m.

The following three seminars are scheduled for 4:30 p.m. and will take place in the Board Room of the Stanford Humanities Center. Reservations are not required for the seminars.

The seminar on Tuesday, April 29 is titled Varieties of Islamism: From Radical to Democratic.

The seminar on Wednesday, April 30 is titled Schooling Islam: Madrasas and the Remaking of Muslim Modernity.

The seminar on Thursday, May 1 is titled Muslim Politics in Southeast Asia: Democratic Islam Hijacked? or Re-invigorated?

Robert W. Hefner's latest books include Schooling Islam (co-ed., 2007); Remaking Muslim Politics (ed., 2005); and Civil Islam (2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800. He directs the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991.

All four events are co-sponsored by the the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Southeast Asia Forum in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.

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Levinthal Hall
Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford University
Stanford, CA

Robert W. Hefner

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
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Robert William Hefner, professor of anthropology and associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, is the inaugural Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia.

Professor Hefner has been associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, where he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past thirty years, and has authored or edited a fourteen books, as well as several major policy reports for private and public foundations. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton 2005), ed., and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton 2000). Hefner is also the invited editor for the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.

Hefner is currently writing a book on Islamic education, democratization, and political violence in Indonesia. The research and writing locate the Indonesian example in the culture and politics of the broader Muslim world. His book also revisits the the question of the role of religious and secular knowledge in modernity.

Hefner will divide his time between Boston University, the National University of Singapore, and Stanford, where he will teach a seminar during the spring quarter.

Robert W. Hefner 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC and Professor of Anthropology, Boston University Speaker
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Southeast Asia Program

Blix talks to Boston Review, will hold Global Justice workshop

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Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector from 2000-03, led the inspections in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. On the five-year anniversary of the invasion, Dr. Blix spoke with Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, associate editor of Boston Review Books, about what makes a good diplomat, the Iraq inspections, and his new book from Boston Review Books calling for new, global disarmament efforts. He will discuss his book, Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters, at a special Program on Global Justice workshop Friday, April 4.

How did you get involved in diplomacy and inspection work?

I had originally intended to become a professor. I took a PhD at Cambridge and I also studied at Columbia University for two years. Then as I got back to Stockholm and did some teaching, I was asked to come in as a consultant to the Foreign Ministry, and gradually I got gobbled up by the ministry.

Can you describe the experience of doing inspections in Iraq?

My job was mainly to make sure that our inspectors had all their rights to do what they needed to do, that they were not stopped. Remember that in the '90s, Iraq frequently stopped inspectors and we suspected that they had something to hide. But in 2002-2003, we were never stopped for any inspection, not even the so-called palaces of Saddam Hussein. I thought that in the '90s sometimes the inspectors from New York had been a bit too Rambo-like, and of course inspectors from the teams often had people from the intelligence side, both from the U.S. and the U.K. We were determined to be completely independent. And I think we were. We were in nobody's pocket.

There were moments which were thrilling. At one point our inspectors found some munitions which had been for chemical weapons. There was no chemical in them, but they had not been declared. For a moment we thought maybe this is the tip of an iceberg, but gradually came to the conclusion that it was floes from an iceberg that had been there.

Preemption is where you see an attack coming, where an attack is imminent... You can take action when the airplanes or the missiles are approaching your territory. Another matter, however, is to attack a foreign country saying that we suspect that they will attack us.

From the beginning, like most people, our gut feelings were that there were weapons of mass destruction, although when we were asked about it we said, we are not here to tell you gut feelings, but to inspect. But as we inspected more and more cases, and did not find any weapons of mass destruction, the gut feeling changed, naturally.

There's a sad feeling about the whole thing that we were not able to have a greater impact. I was sometimes told, or it was assumed, that my phone had been bugged. And my reflection on that is simply that I wish that they had listened better to what I had to say.

There were also things that were amusing.

Do you have any amusing anecdotes you want to share?

Well, I remember that before we were admitted, Kofi Annan tried to bring me into discussions with Iraqis in the spring of 2002, and the Iraqis would have nothing to do with me, because they were negative to inspections, and they called me a spy. Before that they said I was a nonentity. Eventually when they accepted inspection, I was addressed as Your Excellency. So I thought when I became a spy I'd at least been promoted from a nonentity, and then when I was addressed as Your Excellency I'd really arrived.

What do you think is the key to being an effective diplomat?

You have to know your mandate first. In our case that was set by the resolutions, 1284 and 1441. As a lawyer I knew them very well. Our role was to inspect and report to the Security Council. We were not there to tell the Council what it should do. We were, as it were, the police investigation and they were the judges.

The second is that you must know your dossier. The facts. We spent lots of time going through what had happened in the '90s.

The third point I think is to exercise critical thinking, as police investigations do. They have a hypothesis, but you must collect and examine all the evidence. If you do not have the right diagnosis, how can [the] Security Council find the right therapy? This was the error, the big error, in the U.S. and the U.K. They did not have critical minds. They came, and they relied far too much on defectors. And the defectors were not interested in inspection, they were interested in invasion.

It also has to do something with--this is the fourth point--how inspectors behave. As I said I thought sometimes in the '90s the animosity and difficulty that they had in Iraq was due to the conduct of the inspectors--Rambo-style. I said when I took over that we intended to use all the rights that we had under the Security Council resolutions, but we were not there in order to provoke or harass or humiliate the Iraqis. When you ask what is important in diplomacy, I think that one of the most important things is always to avoid humiliation.

You say in your book that the climate for arms control has deteriorated, even as international cooperation has increased in some other areas like health and the environment. Why do you think that is?

The interdependence that results from more communication and transport and increased trade forces the world into a great deal of agreements, because it wouldn't function otherwise. SARS or avian flu or what have you--all this requires cooperation. The body of international law has increased tremendously, and most of it functions without any courts or any threats of sanctions.

We also have basic rules about how states conduct against each other, like diplomatic relations and the interpretation of treaties and consular relations, but also, nowadays, on the use of force. And that's an area, as I say in my book, where law is much less reliable. It's relatively new. Such rules did not exist before the U.N. Charter. The League of Nations did not prohibit states to go to war. It obliged them to try first with peaceful means. It's only in 1945 that people in San Francisco laid down the rule that states must not use armed force against each other unless they do it in self-defense against an armed attack or unless they do it under authorization of the Security Council. So that was a leap forward in 1945. Now, during the Cold War there were many violations of this. But what was new in 2002 was that the U.S. National Security Strategy declared that the rules of the Charter were too narrow for them, and they declared that they would take armed action regardless of these limitations in the Charter.

And this is no small point. This is a question of preventive war. Preemption is where you see an attack coming, where an attack is imminent. It is generally recognized that you can take action before the bombs fall. You can take action when the airplanes or the missiles are approaching your territory. Another matter, however, is to attack a foreign country saying that we suspect that they will attack us. In the case of Iran, that's taking armed action already at the sight of a few grams of uranium enriched to 4 percent. Now that's not an armed attack.

What do you think about the current prospects for disarmament?

I'm delighted to see that there's a strong body of American opinion, non-partisan, and led by former Secretary of State Shultz, and Kissinger, and Sam Nunn and Bill Perry. Many, including Colin Powell, side with them. They say, yes, the arsenal of nuclear weapons was needed during the Cold War, but no longer, and it can only damage and give ideas to other people; if the great powers need nuclear weapons maybe we also need them. So they urge the United States to take the initiative vis-a-vis Russia to move toward nuclear disarmament. They're not starry-eyed idealists. They know this is going to take time, but there are plenty of things that can be undertaken now.

And what are the most important steps to be taken now?

I have no hesitation that the most important signal would be a ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This was rejected by the U.S. Senate during the Clinton administration. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said that they would want to have that treaty ratified. And I think the chances are that if the US ratifies it then China will, if China will, India will, if India does I think Pakistan will, then we will get the whole bunch. So this is at the top of the agenda. But taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert--which really is a relic from the cold war--I think is also very high up on the agenda.

What do you think is the most worrisome development in terms of nuclear weapons today?

I think the most acute questions are the negotiations with North Korea and with Iran. I'm favorable to the approach that's been taken lately by the U.S. in relation to North Korea. I don't think that threatening the North Koreans with any military action is a defensible policy. Military pressure is more likely to be counterproductive and lead them to a hardening of their positions; that's what we have seen in the past. However, the six-power talks in Beijing have been looking much more for carrots, and including, notably, a guarantee against attack, and also a guarantee of diplomatic relations with the U.S. and with Japan, if the North Koreans go along with a nuclear settlement. I think this is much more likely to yield results.

In the case of Iran, I think that while the Europeans have a number of carrots on the table, they say that these carrots are only available to Iran if, first, Iran does its part. There's a precondition that Iran should suspend enrichment. I don't know any negotiations in which one party says, yes, I will do my part and then we'll discuss what you'll give me for it. But the two elements I mentioned in the case of North Korea are not, to my knowledge, on the table in the case of Iran. Namely, a guarantee against attack, and talk about diplomatic relations. So I think that playing these two cards would be enormously valuable.

What about the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands?

One can hardly exclude any risk, but most experts deem it highly unlikely that non-state actors would be able to master this. They have to put together the weapons; they also have to find some means of delivery. And we also know from the case of terrorists in Tokyo a number of years ago that they chose rather the chemical weapons in their attack in the subway. There's some talk about what they call dirty bombs, a way of using radioactive material and exploding it and contaminating an area. That would be a terror weapon, but can by no means be compared to a nuclear weapon.

What's your advice to U.S. voters who are concerned about nuclear weapons?

I certainly think that McCain is a respectable, upright person with integrity. But from the point of view of disarmament, and the need for a new wind in international relations, I think that both Hillary and Obama are far better placed.

What are you up to these days?

I give a lot of lectures around the world. I travel much too much.

Actually, what I would want to do and what I'm starting to do is write a book about the development of international law and disarmament. How can we move the world slowly towards more peaceful relations? Well, you'll find beginnings of my thinking in Why Disarmament Matters. This is something I should do, but all these engagements to speak at various conferences take a lot of my time.

Aside from the former U.S. statesmen who support disarmament, are there any other causes for optimism you can see?

We need, as I said, a new wind. And I think a change of leaders, perhaps, could give a chance to that. In Russia you have a change of leaders even though Putin hovers over the scene. In Washington you will have a new leader. In France it's new, in Germany relatively new, and in the U.K., the new government is much more pro-disarmament. So there are some glimmers of hope.

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Assessing Social Support for Suicide Bombing

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Dr. Chiozza investigates the popular basis of support for suicide terrorism carried out against Americans and other Western targets in Iraq. Using survey data from six countries in the Middle East and South Asia, he investigates how demographic factors, such as gender, education, and age, interact with specific predispositions and attitudes, including fear of the United States, anti-Semitism, and personal anomie, to explain who would consider suicide terrorism against American and Western targets in Iraq justifiable. Methodologically, he employs Classification and Regression Tree (CART) models, a novel methodology that allows for a parsimonious identification of interactive and non-linear effects in the data. Dr. Chiozza shows that fear of the U.S. trumps other motivations in the countries that are geographically closer to Iraq.

Giacomo Chiozza (speaker) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD from Duke University and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Milano. Before joining the Berkeley Political Science department, he was a post-doctoral fellow in national security at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His research interests include the study of foreign perceptions of the United States in the American World Order and the quantitative analysis of conflict processes. He is the author of "A Crisis like No Other? Anti-Americanism at the Time of the Iraq War" (European Journal of International Relations, forthcoming); "Disaggregating Anti-Americanism: An Analysis of Individual Attitudes Towards the United States" (In Keohane and Katzenstein, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, 2007), as well as of articles on leaders and conflict processes that were published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Peace Research.

Aila Matanock (discussant) is a doctoral student in political science at Stanford.  She received an undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University, while working with the Belfer Center’s Managing the Atom Project and with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  After graduation, she took a job at the RAND Corporation as a research assistant where she analyzed projects on terrorism and nuclear weapons.  Her current research is on social support for terrorism, the effect of nuclear weapons on conventional conflict, and the reasons for varying levels of shared sovereignty in international agreements.

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Giacomo Chiozza Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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Is America Sill a Free Country?

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Mr. Melia has been Deputy Executive Director since May 2005.  He was previously Director of Research at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Foreign Service, at Georgetown University in Washington, DC where he continues to teach graduate courses about democracy promotion. For more than a dozen years, Melia held senior posts at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), a leading non-governmental organization engaged in the promotion of democracy worldwide. From 1998 to 2001, he was the Institute's Vice President for Programs. Earlier, he managed the Institute's programs in Central and Eastern Europe (1988 to 1993), in the Middle East (1993 to 1996), and directed programs in more than a dozen African countries. 

Mr. Melia was Associate Director of the Free Trade Union Institute of the AFL-CIO (1986 to 1988). Prior to that he served for six years as Legislative Assistant for foreign and defense policy to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY).  Thomas Melia received his M.A. in Africa Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

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Thomas O. Melia Deputy Executive Director Speaker Freedom House
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The Indian Nuclear Program: Reflections Based on a Trip to India

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Abstract
We will present our observations from a visit to India’s nuclear facilities and several think tanks during March 2008. We will comment on India’s nuclear research programs, nuclear energy development, and the implications for the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal and for scientific collaboration between our countries. We visited the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Trombay, had detailed discussions with the top leadership of the India Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and also visited several institutes in Bangalore and Chennai to discuss nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with former CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings.

Siegfried Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at FSI, and co-director of CISAC. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 15 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the National Academy of Engineering Council and its International Programs Committee, as chair of the Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control Nonproliferation Panel.

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Chaim Braun CISAC Fellow and CISAC Affiliate Speaker

Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried S. Hecker Co-Director of CISAC and Professor (Research), Department of Management Science and Engineering; FSI Senior Fellow Speaker
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Sneider: Cautionary lessons for U.S.-Korea relationship

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Daniel C. Sneider
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%people1%, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, gives a few cautionary lessons on U.S.-Korea relations.
Earlier this month I visited Seoul as a member of “New Beginnings,” a study group of former American policymakers and experts on Korea, co-organized by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford, and The Korea Society. We formed this group last year, anticipating that the upcoming Korean elections and the American presidential elections afterwards would offer an opportunity to embark upon a “new beginning” in our alliance.

After several days of meetings in Seoul, most importantly with President-elect Lee Myeong-bak and his senior advisors, we came away convinced that our hopes for a “new beginning” were more than justified. As President Lee takes office, it is clear that his administration is deeply committed to restoring the alliance to its previous place as the foundation of Korean foreign and security policy. Equally important, the new government is focused on the need to boost economic growth based on the free flow of trade and investment, and sees the conclusion of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States as central to that goal.

For those of us who have long argued that a vibrant Korea is vital to America’s interests, these were welcome words. It is no secret that there was a perception in the United States that President Roh Moo-hyun, backed by a significant portion of the Korean people, no longer saw the alliance as a strategic imperative for Korea. Unfortunately, many Americans, particularly in Congress, had begun to share this view of the alliance, fueled by a mistaken belief that Koreans were “anti-American.”

This view of President Roh and of Korea was unfair and even distorted. President Roh deserves credit, particularly in the last two years, for taking important steps to improve alliance relations, not least his promotion of the negotiation of the FTA. He made unpopular decisions, such as the dispatch of troops to Iraq, in order to preserve a cooperative atmosphere. And as we saw demonstrated in the election, public opinion in Korea regarding the United States has shifted dramatically since the emotional days of 2002.

The Lee administration can anticipate a warm greeting in Washington, as is already clear in the preparations for his visit next month. The new President has sounded all the right notes – seeking closer cooperation on North Korea policy, restoring positive ties with Japan, America’s other vital ally in Northeast Asia, and building a broader strategic partnership with the U.S. beyond the Korean peninsula.

Amidst the renewed embrace of the alliance, it is worth however keeping a few cautionary lessons from the past in mind:

1. Not everything will be Smooth Sailing

Despite the welcome official rhetoric, it is no secret that the relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea has never been entirely smooth. From its earliest days, born out of Korea’s liberation and the trials of the Korean War, the alliance has been marked by both close cooperation and by clashes over key policy goals. While bound together by strategic necessity, the national interests of Korea and the United States have not always been identical.

There is nothing unusual about such differences among allies. Look for example at the tensions that plagued U.S.-European relations over the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Even with the best of intentions, there will be moments of conflict between Seoul and Washington. What is important is how governments manage those differences to protect the underlying relationship. Both Koreans and Americans need to remember the virtues of quiet diplomacy, trying to avoid negotiating their differences through the media.

2. All politics is local

Alliance relations can no longer be managed solely by diplomats or by friends meeting behind closed doors. Those ties are crucial but both Korea and the United States are democracies in which the issues that are at the core of the relationship – from trade to the alignment of military forces – are matters of public discussion. Domestic politics shapes policy decisions but both Koreans and Americans sometimes forget the pressures operating on the other side.

This is particularly important in an election year. The Korean National Assembly election in April is already having an impact, delaying ratification of the FTA. The U.S. election will mean FTA ratification by the U.S. Congress this year may be impossible. Presidential candidates are taking positions that they may adjust after gaining power. On another level, the new government in Seoul needs to remember that the Bush administration is a lame duck affair and begin to prepare for a new government in Washington.

3. Expect the Unexpected, particularly with North Korea

The limited progress on the nuclear negotiations with North Korea has temporarily brought closer coordination between Korea and the US. But it would be foolish to assume that this trend will necessarily continue. The negotiations are already facing a slowdown as negotiators grapple with much tougher problems. If they break down, both Seoul and Washington, along with their other partners in the 6-party talks, will face some hard questions about how to respond. Any attempt to pressure Pyongyang is likely to bring an escalatory response, not least to test the new government in Seoul.

It is possible that Seoul and Washington will once again be somewhat out of synch. Ironically, the Bush administration – and whatever follows it -- may favor greater concessions than the new administration in Seoul would prefer to make.

These differences are manageable. The key is real policy coordination between the US and Korea – and the inclusion of Japan in a revived trilateral coordination mechanism. If both sides keep that commitment, we will indeed have made a “new beginning” in our alliance.

Daniel Sneider is the Associate Director for Research at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. A former foreign correspondent, Sneider covered Korea for the Christian Science Monitor.
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Larry Diamond appointed as FSI Senior Fellow

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Larry Diamond has been appointed as a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a renowned scholar of democratization, and prolific in both editorial and policy work, Diamond is an active member of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He coordinates the Program on Democracy - Completed, which examines the comparative dynamics of democratic functioning and change in the contemporary world, with a particular focus on the countries of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the post-communist world. He has also established the offshoot program, The Taiwan Democracy Project, in 2006, and is a central participant in the The Taiwan Democracy Project.

Primarily an Africanist, Diamond received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 1980. He currently serves as the co-director for the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies in Washington DC, as a member of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, and as adviser and lecturer at the World Bank, the United Nations, and the U.S. Department of State. Previously he was senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and consultant to USAID.

He is also founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, the premier journal in the field, and a co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has an impressive record of public service, which includes numerous board memberships and government appointments, and he has published widely. In his prolific portfolio of books and papers, he has advanced the knowledge on the conceptualization, determinants, and importance of democracy by examining the relationship between development and democracy, the multidimensional nature of the democratization process, and the significance of democratic consolidation.

Diamond’s commitment and contributions to teaching are also reflected in his receipt of Stanford’s 2007 Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education, a strong testament to the breadth and depth of his engagement at the University.
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German Muslims and Turkish Christians: Cultural Racism, Fears of Religious Conversion, and National Security in the New Europe

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Esra Ozyurek is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Nostalgia for the Modern: Privatization of State Secularism in Turkey. Her areas of expertise are the following: Islam, Secularism, Modernity, Social and Cultural Memory and Turkey. 

This event is jointly sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum and the Forum on Contemporary Europe at Stanford University.

For more information: The Mediterranean Studies Forum

History Building (200), Room 307
Stanford University

Esra Ozyurek Assistant Professor of Anthropology Speaker University of California, San Diego
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International grants totaling $1 million awarded to interdisciplinary Stanford research teams

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Projects to enhance health security and child survival in Africa with improvements in water and sanitation, examine why poor business-management practices persist in India, study the relationship of legal courts to politics and human rights, and understand why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress were recent recipients of grants totaling just under $1 million from Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.

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