Abstract:

Political polarization has paralyzed the functioning of democracy in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Taiwan, where students have recently occupied the parliament building.  Civil liberties and political opposition are under intensified assault by an abusive prime minister in Turkey.  Indian democracy is increasingly diminished by brazen corruption and rent-seeking. Several African democracies have failed, and others are slipping.  The Arab Spring has largely imploded, and Egypt is in the grip of military authoritarian rule more repressive than anything the country has seen in decades.  After invading and swallowing a piece of Ukraine, Russia now poses a gathering threat to its democratic postcommunist neighbors.  For the eighth consecutive year, Freedom House finds that the number of countries declining in freedom have greatly exceeded the number improving.  And most of the advanced industrial democracies, including the United States, seem unable to address their long-term fiscal and other policy challenges.  Is there an emerging global crisis of democracy?  And if so, why?

Speaker Bio:

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

 

Description:

Arab screens along with social networks have been flooded over the past three years with words, images and videos that were meant to shed light on the revolts and uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain Libya and Syria. What started as a celebrated influx of information soon turned into means for disseminating sectarian and ethnic hatred, mainly in the cases of Syria and Egypt. Dr. Zahera Harb will discuss ethical boundaries that have been applied in Arab media coverage of the Arab revolts and uprisings, drawing on journalism epistemologies in the Arab world and focusing on recent developments in Syria and Egypt.

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Zahera Harb is a Lebanese journalist and academic. She is currently a senior lecturer in international journalism at City University London. Her recent publications include a co-edited collection titled Narrating conflict in the Middle East: Discourse Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (I.B. Tauris, 2013) and a monograph titled Channels of Resistance: Liberation propaganda Hezbollah and the Media (I.B. Tauris, 2011). She is a review editor for the Journal of Media Practice.

Dr. Harb has 11 years' experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organizations. She started as a news reporter and distinguished herself in particular in the coverage of war operations in the battlefield of South Lebanon. She was then co-producer and presenter of a popular socio-political program (Khamseh Ala Sabaah, 5/7) before becoming one of the main news anchors at Tele Liban (the public service TV in Lebanon). At New TV she was appointed to a news anchor-editor post and hosted the main daily political show (Al Hadath). At Future TV (Pan Arab satellite channel) she produced and presented her own socio-political program (Ala Madar Assaa) while assigned as satellite news editor. She also produced several political and social documentaries for Lebanese TV stations and completed reporting assignments for BBC Arabic service (radio), CNN world report and Dutch TV. She hosted live coverage of distinguished political events inside and outside Lebanon.

Dr. Harb was trained in Lebanon, Holland and the UK and has a BA in Journalism, a Diploma in Broadcasting News and an MA and PhD in Journalism Studies and Political Communications.

She has been on the consultancy board of the Thomson Foundation UK for 7 years conducting media training in the UK and other parts of the world including Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait, UAE, Malta, Spain, Armenia, Ukraine and Brussels.  

---

This event is sponsored by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and Mediterranean Studies Forum and in partnership with the Stanford Humanities Center and Arab Studies Table. 

 

Abstract:

Gender equality is considered important for development and good governance, yet the causes of cross-national variation in gender equality are still not well understood. This paper claims that the distinct types of rule pursued by the French versus the British imperial powers selected for postcolonial institutions that are systematically correlated with gender equality. The paper evaluates this conjecture using three tests: a cross-country test of former British and French colonies, a historical comparison of Syria and Iraq, and a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border within modern-day Cameroon (see Lee and Schultz 2012). Results indicate that, despite our understanding of British colonialism as beneficial for a variety of economic institutions (Acemoglu and Johnson 2004, La Porta et al. 2008, Lipset 1994) French institutions often better promoted gender equality. This paper contributes to the discussion on the relative importance of colonial institutions versus natural resource endowments or religion (Nunn 2013, Sokoloff and Engerman 2000, Ross 2008, Fish 2002, Inglehart and Norris 2003).

Speaker Bio:

Adi Greif is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Yale University and a pre-doc at CDDRL for the academic year 2013-2014. Her dissertation, "The Long-Term Impact of Colonization on Gender", investigates why gender equality varies by former colonizer (French or British) in the Middle East and globally. It uses cross-national statistics, a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border in Cameroon, and interviews from Egypt and Jordan. Her research abroad was supported by a Macmillan Dissertation Fellowship.

Adi's research interests are colonialism, international alliances, state formation and comparative gender policies with focus on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. She has lived in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, and visited Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Adi holds an M.A. in Political Science from (Yale University) and a B.A with honors in Political Science and a minor in Math (Stanford University). Before coming to Yale, she worked at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. through the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy.

WE ARE AT FULL CAPACITY - PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY FOR A SEAT

The US-Japan alliance is the longest, most stable, and most indispensable alliance in the modern history of East Asia.  It has served as the foundation for the region's security structure for well over a half-century.  However, with China's emergence as a rising economic and military power, and given territorial disputes involving China, Japan, and South Korea, and with escalating nationalistic rhetoric and fundamental disagreements over historical interpretations of the Pacific War, the United States and Japan are now facing worrisome tensions and strains that could undermine the solidarity of the US-Japan alliance.  Is the time-tested US-Japan alliance capable of managing both the shifts in the regional balance of power, and the threat of conflict over disputed territories, and the rising thermometer of nationalistic sentiments?   

Ambassador Ryozo Kato, former Ambassador of Japan to the United States from 2001 - 08, the longest tenure of any Japanese Ambassador to the United States, and former Commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball from 2008 - 2013, has had a long and distinguished career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Japanese Government. A graduate of Tokyo University Faculty of Law and Yale Law School, he served his country in Australia, Egypt, and the United States, in addition to multiple global assignments within the Ministry in Tokyo.

Positions which Ambassador Kato served in the United States include the Third Secretary in the Embassy (1967–1969), Minister in the Embassy (1987–1990), and Consul-General in San Francisco (1992–1994). He returned to Japan to serve as the Director-General of the Asian Affairs Bureau (1995–1997) and the Deputy-General of the Foreign Policy Bureau (1997–1999). After serving as the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs (1999–2001), he was appointed the Ambassador of Japan to the United States of America from 2001 to 2008. He has been recognized and respected on both sides of the Pacific for his outstanding understanding of the issues and his clarity in direction to resolve them.

Koret Distinguished Lecture Series: Lecture IV

From early 2012, South Korea-Japan relations worsened due to what many Koreans regard as a series of Japanese provocations involving historical and territorial disputes. Unfortunately, the neighbors failed to utilize the opportunity to improve the situation following leadership changes in both countries at the beginning of 2013. Today their bilateral relationship, long considered a cornerstone of peace and stability in Northeast Asia, appears to the worst since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1965. Former Korean ambassador to Japan Shin Kak-soo will analyze the complicated structural reasons behind this downward spiral and explore whether differences over history can be addressed and an early diplomatic "reset" achieved.

Ambassador Shin has served various diplomatic positions during his thirty-five year career in foreign affairs, including service as ambassador to the State of Israel from 2006 to 2008 and to Japan from 2011 to 2013. He is currently a professor at the Korean National Diplomatic Academy and also a special research fellow at the Institute of Japanese Studies, Seoul National University.

The Koret Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 2013 with the generous support of the Koret Foundation. 

With rising tensions over history and territory among Asian nations, China's rise as a regional power, and a so called rebalancing of the American role and presence our two most important alliances in the region will demand careful management in future years. What should we, and our partners in Japan and South Korea, be doing to assure that our alliances remain vibrant and relevant in this evolving regional context?

Ambassador Bosworth is a former career diplomat, he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Tunisia. Most recently, he served as U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy for the Obama administration.