Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, will give a talk at Stanford titled "Economic Growth, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America—A President's Perspective" from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, in Bishop Auditorium.
The address is free and open to the public and is the 2008 Robert G. Wesson Lecture in International Relations Theory and Practice offered by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). It is co-sponsored this year by the Graduate School of Business.
Fox ran for the presidency in 2000 as the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) on a platform focused on ending corruption and improving the economy, and was the first to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had governed Mexico for more than 70 years. A former rancher, businessman and chief executive of Coca-Cola in Mexico, Fox devoted his efforts as president to expanding trade with the United States, promoting economic growth and job creation, and reducing corruption, crime and drug trafficking.
Since leaving office, Fox has been involved with a sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years, launched by Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru from 2001 to 2006. Toledo is a Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford this year.
"It is a pleasure to welcome my friend, former President Vicente Fox, to Stanford, the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, where serious scholars and practitioners are committed to develop democracy that delivers concrete results for the poor and fosters social inclusion," said Toledo.
FSI Director Coit D. Blacker and Toledo will give opening remarks. Toledo will join Fox for the question-and-answer session at the conclusion of the lecture.
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For traditional media, such as novels, copyright represents a “bargain” between the individual author and the general public: the author has an exclusive right to make and sell copies, but anyone can look at the novel, learn from its ideas, and use those ideas as a stimulus for the creation and a reward for the publication of new works.
The European Union and the United States, the world's leaders in the fields of innovation and high technology, share a common set of values based on a commitment to democracy, human rights, market economics, and the rule of law. But EU and US approaches to many technology related issues in law and policy differ significantly, causing barriers to trade across the Atlantic and legal uncertainty within the Transatlantic Marketplace, which comprises about 450 million people in the EU and 300 million people in the US.
Conventional wisdom says that relations between China and Japan are fated always to be exceptionally wary, if not openly hostile -- and Japanese leaders' visits to the notorious Yasukuni have done nothing to undermine this view. Nor have Sino-Japanese standoffs over the disputed Senkaku islands. Meanwhile Beijing's opposition has been widely credited as the reason why Japan has failed in its reported aspiration to join the United Nations Security Council. Author and long-time Tokyo-based East Asia watcher Eamonn Fingleton argues that these issues have been grossly misunderstood in the West and that on closer inspection they say little if anything about the true state of Sino-Japanese relations. He insists that on a host of substantive issues overlooked by the press, Japan and China have been cooperating closely for decades. So much so that Japanese help has been one of the most powerful factors in China's rise.
A former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, Eamonn Fingleton has been monitoring East Asian economics since 1985. He met China's supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986 as a member of a New York Stock Exchange delegation. The following year he predicted the Tokyo banking crash and went on in Blindside, a controversial 1995 analysis that was praised by J.K. Galbraith and Bill Clinton, to show that a heedless America was fast losing its formerly vaunted leadership in advanced manufacturing to Japan.
His 1999 book In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity anticipated the American Internet stock crash of 2000. In his 2008 book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony, he issues a strong challenge to the conventional view among Washington policymakers and think tank analysts that China is converging to Western economic and political forms and attitudes. His books have been read into the U.S. Senate record and named among the ten best business books of the year by Business Week and Amazon.com.
He was born in Ireland in 1948 and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He was the recipient of the American Values Award from the United States Business and Industry Council in 2001.
Copies of Fingleton's newest book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony - due March 4 by St. Martin's Press - will be for sale during the event.
Philippines Conference Room
Vicente Fox served as Constitutional President of the United Mexican States from December 1, 2000 through November 30, 2006.
Originally from Mexico City, Fox was born on July 2, 1942, the second of nine children born to José Luis Fox, a farmer, and Mercedes Quesada. When Fox was just a few days old, his family moved to the San Cristóbal Ranch in the municipality of San Francisco del Rincón, in Guanajuato state. There, Fox came into contact with the children of ejido owners and was able to gain firsthand experience of one of the problems that could be avoided in Mexico: poverty.
In 1964, he joined Coca-Cola de México as a route supervisor and, while riding aboard a delivery truck, he had the opportunity of traveling almost 2,500 routes, some of which led to the most isolated places in Mexico. This experience and his constant contact with everyday people led Fox to develop an understanding of adverse situations and, upon returning to Guanajuato, he decided to participate in the business, political, social, and educational sectors.
Whether as a business leader or politician, Fox has always sought the common good, and has constantly given his support to Mexico's people. He was President and Founder of the Amigo Daniel Children's Home Foundation; President of the Loyola Foundation; and a promoter of the León campus of the Universidad Iberoamericana, and the Lux Institute, an educational center where thousands of state residents have received training.
As part of his constant efforts to apply his business knowledge to benefit his fellow countrymen, Fox has been a Counselor of the Mexico-American Chamber of Commerce. Likewise, as Director of Grupo Fox, he has managed companies operating in the areas of agriculture, livestock breeding, agro-industry, and the production of shoes and boots for export. All of these activities have generated sources of employment.
During the 1980's, Fox began his political career by joining the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). In 1995, he participated in the extraordinary election for the governorship of Guanajuato, and was elected by an overwhelming majority of two votes to one.
Fox was one of the first state governors to give a clear, public and timely account of the finances of Guanajuato state. He strove to promote economic development by encouraging the private sector, foreign investment, and, above all, the consolidation of small firms. In order to open up new markets, he promoted the sale of goods manufactured in Guanajuato overseas. Fox improved and broadened the state's economic infrastructure so as to attract domestic and foreign investment. He also created a unique system in which micro-credits with no overdue portfolio were granted. Under Fox's leadership, Guanajuato became the fifth largest state economy in Mexico, and in certain productive sectors, even surpassed the national average.
Fox has a great commitment to Mexico and to his desire to continue working to attain a better life for all. Thus, he has constantly traveled the country, speaking to different sectors of Mexican society. In his speeches, he commonly remarks: "I've set my heart and all my strength and determination to overcoming this challenge, and I wish this to be clearly understood. I will uphold my commitment until the very end."
In Fox's first message as Mexico's President, he stated: "I will undertake to form a plural, honest and capable government. A government that incorporates our country's very best citizens. I, Vicente Fox, give my word as a free and honest Mexican, I give my word to the nation and to history that I will do everything in my power to achieve a better future, without limits or reluctance, and with true love and passion."
Fox studied Business Administration at the Universidad Iberoamericana and Management at Harvard Business School.
This event is co-sponsored by Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Bishop Auditorium
Graduate School of Business (South)
518 Memorial Way
Stanford University
North Korea has shut down its key nuclear facilities and is discussing how to retrain workers at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, CISAC Co-Director Siegfried S. Hecker said Feb. 20 following a five-day visit to the country.
"The disablement actions at the three key nuclear facilities--that is [the] fuel fabrication plant, the reactor, and the reprocessing plant--those disablement actions are just about complete at this point," Hecker told reporters during a press conference at Stanford. "In my judgment, they are very serious actions, and they will require serious time and effort to restart those facilities."
Hecker, a research professor of management science and engineering and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, visited scientists at Yongbyon and government officials in Pyongyang from Feb. 12 to 16. Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official, and Keith Luse, a staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, accompanied him during a private visit that also involved discussions on formalizing health and educational exchanges between the two nations. "All the way around, it was a very good visit, a very professional one on the DPRK's side," Hecker said, referring to the country's acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
According to Hecker, "significant hurdles" remain before North Korea will offer a "complete declaration," or complete list of its nuclear program, both past and present. The North Koreans told Hecker that the process has been delayed because other parties in the six-party talks, which aim to find a peaceful resolution to the country's nuclear weapons program, have been slow in delivering compensation such as heavy fuel oil. Despite this, Hecker said, cooperation between the U.S. and North Korean technical teams was excellent during the visit. "The DPRK wants these obligations [of the other member nations] to be met quickly so they can move on to the next stage, that's the stage of dismantlement," he said, referring to agreements reached Oct. 3, 2007, during talks to achieve a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula.
To avoid that and other nightmare scenarios, a group of 12 scientists with extensive nuclear expertise, headed by Stanford physicist Michael M. May, is urging an international push to improve the science of nuclear forensics.
May is a research professor emeritus and former co-director the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He also is the former director of the U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Other members have experience in nuclear intelligence and defense research. One member, Jay Davis, was a United Nations inspector in Iraq.
They say there is an urgent need for more nuclear detectives, armed with science PhDs and instilled with the instincts of an investigator. And those detectives will need training, advanced equipment and stronger ties to intelligence agencies, political leaders and law enforcement.
With the right mobile equipment, nuclear detectives could sift through the debris and the radioactive cloud of an attack in this country or elsewhere and quickly glean crucial information, the scientists argue in a 60-page report to be discussed Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.
The report, Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, Program Needs, was written by a joint working group of the AAAS and the American Physical Society.
Using radiochemistry techniques and access to proposed international databases that include actual samples of uranium and plutonium from around the world, the nuclear investigators might be able to tell the president—and the world—where the bomb fuel came from, or at least rule out some suspects.
“Nuclear forensics can make a difference,” May said in an interview.
But the U.S. capacity for such investigations has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, when the capabilities were well supported at the nuclear weapons laboratories. “Presently available trained personnel are highly skilled, but there are not enough of them to deal with an emergency and they are not being replaced,” according to May. “A program to refill the pipeline of trained personnel should be undertaken.”
There’s also a need for development of new equipment, both in the lab and on the street, which could provide a faster analysis during a crisis. The authors also recommend more coordination between scientists and law enforcement; even simple steps such as trading phone numbers could prove crucial. “You really want the top decision makers to know where to get information,” May said.
The remnants of an atomic explosion carry a host of clues, even at the microscopic level, including crystal structures and impurities.
Uranium, for example, varies in isotopic composition and impurities according to where it was mined and how it was processed. Weapons-grade plutonium can be exposed during its production to different neutron fluxes and energies, depending on the particular reactor used. It is also possible to establish the length of time plutonium spent in the reactor.
In some cases, it may be possible for scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or Los Alamos National Laboratory to use their experience, intelligence data and software codes to reverse-engineer a nuclear bomb from its debris and learn telltale details of the design of the explosive.
These clues would not be the equivalent of fingerprints or DNA, May said, but would in most cases allow officials to at least rule out or in broad classes of possible sources.
Tracing bomb material to its source may be only the beginning of an investigation, rather than the end, as the authors acknowledge. Discovering that a terrorist explosive was made of uranium stolen from a specific site in Russia, for example, does not identify the terrorists, but it does provide a starting point, especially if there is suspicion that the bomb makers had inside help.
In their report, the scientists recommend that atomic sleuthing be applied also to radioactive materials seized by law enforcement agencies or border guards. Tracking the substances back to their source might prevent or deter attacks, they said. The authors note that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Illicit Trafficking Database contains 1,080 confirmed events involving illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials between 1993 and 2006.
Convincing the nuclear states to share database information about their own uranium and plutonium may be difficult, May said. He suggests that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has databases of its own, could play an important role.
The authors of the report:
Michael M. May, Chair, Stanford University
Reza Abedin-Zadeh, International Atomic Energy Agency (retired)
Donald A. Barr, Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired)
Albert Carnesale, University of California-Los Angeles
Philip E. Coyle, Center for Defense Information
Jay Davis, Hertz Foundation
Bill Dorland, University of Maryland
Bill Dunlop, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Steve Fetter, University of Maryland
Alexander Glaser, Princeton University
Ian D. Hutcheon, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Francis Slakey, American Physical Society
Benn Tannenbaum, American Association for the Advancement of Science
